Thread by @HNIJohnMiller

1) Alright, hearing's getting started.

You know what that means.

FUCK THE HEARING.

Seriously, I saw a side shot of Yovanovaskovavodka, and thought it was a dude for a moment. Screw that shit.

LETS TALK ABOUT A REAL MAN.

SOCRAMOTHERFUCKINGTES.

2) See, people seem to forget the key bit about the Greek city-states. Landowning citizens, ie the rich, were hoplites (Hop-lee-tays). They bought their own armor and weaponry, and they were expected to physically train in the gymnasiums, and expected to fight in the phalanx.

3) Oftentimes, this wasn't even a period of service situation. They'd be called up, gear up, and go fight in a campaign, then go home and tend to their business up until the next campaign happened a few years later.

There were no exceptions.

4) That means, every Greek philosopher we know?

Was a hoplite.

And really, this is logical. Why else would people listen to Plato talking about some kind of fucking cave? He was a fucking BAMF. Aristotle? BAMF. Xenophon? BAMF.

Socractes? The GOAT of BAMFs. The War Hero.

5) That's right. In Greece, philosophy wasn't liberal arts majors sitting around in shitty offices trying to argue semantics and bullshit.

Greek philosophy was a Navy Seal colonel, a Marine Sergeant, and an Army General getting in each other's faces and fucking shouting.

6) Socrates wasn't some big general, or a strategist, or what have you. Dude was a hoplite in the phalanx among thousands. He fought during the Peloponnesian Wars, the series of conflicts between Sparta and Athens with their related allies.

7) He fought in three major campaigns.

Each one was a fucking DISASTER for Athens.

Which makes his stories of badassitude all the more incredible.

8) The first campaign he fought in was a siege against the city of Potidae.

You might be asking, "Wait, wouldn't hoplite phalanxes be absolute dogshit trying to besiege a city? Would that even work?"

They were dogshit trying to besiege a city. And it didn't work.

9) Sieges are long, messy, drawn out affairs, and even moreso in ancient Greece. Initially, the Athenians went out with 1000 hoplites and 30 ships, blockading the city of Potidae from the sea and building a series of fortifications along the land hoping to starve them out.

10) The city and reinforcing friendlies fought a series of battles trying to break the siege. It is unclear exactly when Socrates' engaged in his first act of BAMF-ness, but I imagine it was during an early and particularly fierce fight when part of the Greek phalanx collapsed.

11) A phalanx collapsing, as you can imagine, is a really, REALLY shit situation for all those in said phalanx. Suddenly, your flanks get exposed, you're likely to get wounded, and if you get hurt in the wrong spot good luck hauling yourself and your 100 pounds of gear to safety

12) It is in such a situation that Alcibiades found himself. The phalanx had collapsed, his gym bros Squaticles and Deadlifticus were nowhere to be seen, and he's wounded and laying on the ground, with soldiers of Corinth bearing down on his handsome ass.

13) Suddenly, out of fucking nowhere, comes this bearded angry motherfucker Socrates, swinging a sword, bashing people in the face with his shield, and yelling what I assume to be along the lines of "FUCKING CORINTHIAN FUCKFACES! GET THE FUCK OFF HIS CAPE YOU GOAT FUCKING-"

14) Socrates then, keeping his own gear, throws Alcibiades over his shoulder, and keep in mind this is a grown ass muscular man in 60 pounds of armor and Socrates already has his armor and shield and such on him, and CARRIES HIM all the way back to safety.

15) Then, if reports are to be believed, Socrates drops him behind friendly lines, AND THEN GOES BACK FOR MORE.

That's right, this dude just carried a grown ass man with 60 pounds of bronze armor while still holding his shield and wearing his own 60 lbs of armor, THEN GOES BACK

16) That was just the FIRST incident, and Socrates wasn't even recognized for that; according to Plato's writings, he was passed over for recognition, and instead the glory was granted to Alcibiades. Who then defected to Sparta. Where he fucked the queen. Then ran to Persia.

17) Not to have his BAMF-ness diminished, Socrates can be found 8 years later in the battle at Delium, against the Boetians. Again, Athens lost, and were routed from the field.

The Athenian general, Laches, gets caught in the middle of this rout, and gets surrounded by Boetians.

18) That's right, IN DIVES SOCRATES, yelling something along the lines of "GET THE FUCK UP YOU PANZY WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF GENERAL ARE YOU GET YOUR ASS MOVING RAAAAAAAAAGH"

He then proceeds to simultaneously FIGHT and DRAG General Laches across the entire fucking battlefield.

19) After the fact, when some work was done to figure out how the battle went so goddamn wrong, it turns out some of the Athenian hoplites got confused and started attacking each other, which made some think that the Boetians had gotten around the flank, and causing the rout.

20) General Laches was, apparently, caught right in the middle of the fratricidal melee when the Boetians pressed in.

That's right.

SOCRATES FOUGHT PAST TWO FUCKING ARMIES DRAGGING GENERAL LACHES TO SAFETY.

FUCKING.

BAMF.

21) The final recorded campaign Socrates fought in was at Amphipolis. Amphipolis was a city under Athenian sway the Spartans had seized. The Athenians sent out a task force, including Socrates, and hired Thracian mercenaries in an attempt to seize the city back.

22) It was a DISASTER. The Thracians committed the equivalent of war crimes to the Athenians, often mutilating corpses and leaving the bodies unburied which was against Greek traditions. The Athenians sacked and slaughtered outlying villages. It was by all definitions a bad war.

23) The Spartans, meanwhile, had seized the city through DIPLOMACY, a reversal of methodology that allegedly threw Athenian morale into question, and even granted safe passage to any who wished to leave, which is how Athens first found out about Sparta seizing the city.

24) So when the Athenians arrived and first marched forwards, they thought maybe the Spartans would give into their warrior instinct and sally out of the city to fight.

The Spartans sat and waited.

So, when the Athenians decided to retreat...

The Spartans leapt all over them.

25) Its unclear from historical records exactly how many Athenians were deployed, but given previous battles showed around 1000 as a nominal-sized task force, it is safe to assume this is about how many were present for the battle at Amphipolis.

600 Athenians died that day.

26) Socrates' final bout as a war hero consisted of a fighting retreat, holding the rearguard and being responsible for the few Spartan deaths that occurred that day (allegedly no more than a dozen) so that the rest of the Athenians could retreat.

27) He spent the rest of his days in contemplation.

Not QUIET contemplation, mind you. Very loud contemplation. Very loud, very angry contemplation.

He, like the other Greek philosophers, were warriors, you see. Warriors of body and mind.

They don't tell you that nowadays.

28) How the fuck are you supposed to take people like these seriously, when they're trying to preach to you THEIR interpretations of men who could have literally broken them in HALF without even breaking a sweat?

29) A hotly debated idea that a certain @bronzeagemantis put forwards is that to achieve the clarity of mind that the Greek philosophers had, you must first achieve perfection of the body.

Queue the spindly little shitsticks and their outcries of how that's just not reasonable.

@bronzeagemantis 30) But, when you compare the fact that even someone with no interest in philosophy can name Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, warriors one and all, but can't name a SINGLE modern philosopher...

@bronzeagemantis /end