Crito of Alopece - Life

Life

Crito grew up in the Athenian deme of Alopece alongside Socrates and was of roughly the same age as the philosopher, placing his date of birth around 469 BCE. Plato's Euthydemus and Xenophon's Memorabilia both present him as a wealthy businessman who made his money from agriculture, which scholars speculate was conducted in Alopece itself. He seems to have married a woman with impressive aristocratic pedigree and had at least two sons, including the elder Critobulus (Κριτόβουλος, Kritóboulos), one of Socrates' young followers, and the younger Archestratus (Άρχέστρατος, Archéstratos), later a successful general. His participation in the events surrounding the trial and death of Socrates of 399 implies that he survived into the 4th century.

Diogenes Laërtius treats Crito as a philosopher himself and attributes to him the composition of 17 dialogues; he also names three further sons Crito: Hermogenes, Epigenes and Ctesippus. Modern scholars generally treat Diogenes' account as apocryphal, most likely a conflation with another author, since the genre of Socratic literature did not develop until well after Crito's period of flourishing and these sons appear nowhere in the contemporaneous historical record. Despite his strong friendship with Socrates, historians are skeptical of Crito's status as a philosopher, as opposed to mere associate within the Socratic circle, due largely to his portrayal as a pragmatic and non-propositional thinker within the literature.