Greetings from Socrates. The Portrayal of the Philosopher in the Pseudo-Socratic Epistles

This study reassesses the seven pseudepigraphic letters attributed to Socrates, with particular attention to Epistles 1 and 6. These texts fashion a moralizing and doctrinaire Socrates grounded in Xenophon yet selectively shaped by Platonic themes – adopting elements such as the daimonion while rejecting Platonic political ambitions and the ironic elenctic posture. The letters develop a coherent ethical program centred on wealth, self-sufficiency, friendship, parrhesia, and the refusal to teach for pay. Although they echo Cynic and Stoic motifs, they function primarily as epistolary diatribes that recast Socrates as a paradigmatic sage. Read as “half-dialogues,” the letters extend the tradition of Socrates as a teacher engaged in a continuous, if fictional, philosophical exchange.