Old Age before the Court: Monnica and Socrates in Book Nine of Augustine’s Confessions.

Omnibus Omnia: the reception of Socrates in ante-Nicene Christian literature

“…For Tertullian, there can hardly be any parallelism between the death of Socrates and the death of Christian martyrs (to speak nothing about the death of Christ), 54 and while it has been shown that other early Christian writers clearly drew the connection between the two, they certainly did not equate them in merit. 55 Tertullian notwithstanding, it may be concluded that early Christian writers considered -by and large -the conduct of Socrates facing death to be admirable -so much, in fact, that they did not hesitate to 54 While not directly relevant to the discussion limited to ante-Nicene literature, it is interesting to note that the negative assessment of the trial of Socrates in comparison with the "trial" of Augustine's mother Monnica (Confessiones 9.13.34-37) has been argued for by Stróżyński (2014), who claims that "nothing can be more contrary than Monnica's and Socrates' attitudes before the court" (op. cit., p. 127) and that "Augustine seems to give his readers a choice -they can act like Socrates (or any 'rational' defendant), or they can act like Monnica (in her trust in the folly of the cross)" (op.…”