Socrates Heard a Voice

And it wasn't his conscience

Alcibades Being Taught by Socrates (Detail), François André Vincent, 1776. (Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain) The painting by Vincent shows an angel-like personification of the divinity (“daimonion”) that spoke to Socrates.

We know this for sure — commentators impose the prevailing orthodoxies of their time on the ideas of other ages or cultures.…