Socrates

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Socrates is mentioned by Dante in Inferno IV, 134, within the group of the great wise men of antiquity whom the poet encounters in the first circle. According to the notes to the canto, the wise men are placed higher than the heroes of the active life, because the contemplative life is considered by Dante to be superior. Socrates is cited together with Plato as an Athenian philosopher, of whom Aristotle was, for Dante—following Cicero—the continuator and perfecter. Dante knew Plato only indirectly, especially through Cicero's De finibus, and may have read the Timaeus, a text widely diffused in the Middle Ages in the translation by Calcidius; in any case he recognized his greatness, citing the two masters alongside Aristotle in the decisive passage of Purgatorio III 40-45, which confirms and illuminates the meaning of the scene in Limbo.