At a certain point in Gorgias Socrates refers to his interlocutor under the title of “Callicles the Acharnian,” identifying him by his deme, and in turn Callicles calls him “Socrates of Alopece.” Why?  —Along the way there will be an argument for an early occurrence of the sense of a Greek word.

The exchange goes as follows (495d–e, Loeb ed., trans. Lamb):

Soc.  Come now, let us be sure to remember this, that Callicles the Acharnian said pleasant and good were the same, but knowledge and courage were different both from each other and from the good.

Call.  And Socrates of Alopece refuses to grant us this; or does he grant it?

Soc.  He does not; nor, I believe, will Callicles either, when he has rightly considered himself. …

In the first place, adding “the Acharnian” lends the formality that belongs to a declaration under oath, such as a legal deposition: here Callicles, who has specifically warned Socrates of the latter’s incompetence in a law court (486a–c), is held formally responsible for his testimony. This is warranted by the importance of the assertion, which is at the heart of the discussion to follow. But the designation by deme seems also to reach back to Aristophanes’ Archarnians, in which the peace-seeking protagonist Dicaeopolis (Δικαιόπολις), whose name suggests justice for the city, has to defend himself against the chorus of angry Acharnians. They, having seen their lands laid waste by the Spartans, want to continue the war. With help from Euripides, elsewhere recognized by the playwright as an associate of Socrates, Dicaeopolis persuades some of them, but others appeal for support to the commander Lamachus, whose shield bears a terrifying Gorgon—a monster that suggests Gorgias of Leontini, admired by Callicles, who fancies himself a lion (483e–484a): see my post “Socrates and the Hobgoblin” (October 17, 2012). “Oh, Democracy! Will such talk be tolerated?” cries the soldier (618, Loeb ed., trans. Henderson), words which would be at home in the mouth of Callicles. So Socrates now facing the incredulity and outrage of the Acharnian is in the position of Dicaeopolis before the Acharnians of another day.

Moreover, the dialogue slyly alludes to a later scene of the play: to compare a philosopher to a doctor competing against a cook before children or silly men (464d, 521e) evokes the contest of Dicaeopolis with Lamachus, in which the former’s tasty dishes oppose the latter’s martial equipment. There, instead of corresponding to the Socrates of our dialogue, Dicaeopolis takes the role of the cook, to make the foolish warrior’s mouth water. “I’m under a bad sign,” says Lamachus; “It serves you right, for signing up with a big Gorgon,” Dicaeopolis responds (1094 f). —To confirm this association I recall the opening of the dialogue, where proverbial wisdom yokes a fight with a feast.

In naming the deme Socrates has employed a rhetorical device; so Callicles imitates him, both because he is an enthusiast for rhetoric, and because imitation is a form of flattery, to which he is so accustomed that he finds himself practicing it despite himself. At the same time, he intends to mock, by a childish echoing that seizes upon the name of the other’s deme, Ἀλωπεκή from ἀλώπηξ “fox”: “Foxton,” as it were. Socrates, he means, is foxy, an opinion he has already expressed at length in other terms. In comparison to a lion a fox is a paltry creature, such as Callicles has made the elderly philosopher out to be.

Now there may be something more to this figure of a fox. The English word alopecia, hair loss, derives from ἀλωπεκία, which in Hellenistic Greek means mange in foxes (in which hair falls off), or a bald patch on the head. It is not attested in Greek of the classical era, except possibly in a fragment of Sophocles, where its occurrence is doubtful. (On the fragment no. 419 see A. C. Pearson, ed., The Fragments of Sophocles, Vol. 2 (Cambridge U P, 1917) p. 78, found here.) But perhaps its meaning is implied in the present exchange. Cannot Callicles’ naming of the deme imply the baldness, and thereby the age, of his opponent? What is disgraceful, he feels, is not the pursuit of philosophy simply, but its persistence into adulthood, and still more into old age (485d): while the Acharnian is manly, the Alopecean is like a decrepit fox. An old fellow like that “can be given a box on the ear with impunity” (486c; more lit. “a blow on the temple,” κόρρη). Thus in the comedy, once Dicaeopolis has persuaded the chorus of old men by winning his debate with Lamachus, they complain of poor treatment by the city: “You throw aged men into lawsuits and let them be the sport of stripling speechmakers,” they say (679 f); and later, when Lamachus returns for the contest of fight and feast, looking in his polished shield he says, “I see an old man about to be prosecuted for cowardice.” (1129)

The suggestion of alopecia may be supported by what immediately follows, in which Socrates introduces the notion of getting rid of things (ἀπαλλάττομαι); and further, by the theme of stripping away—of possessions, as Callicles applies it (486c), or of everything that clothes the soul, as Socrates does, envisioning one’s ultimate trial before the sons of Zeus (523e). Then too, since a Gorgon has snaky locks (Prometheus Bound 799), the loss of hair can serve to distinguish the philosopher from a Gorgian sophist. And there seems to be a playful allusion to the baldness of Socrates in another dialogue, where Agathon speaks of hard pates (Symposium 195e).

A last suggestion of lion and fox comes by way of a saying of subtle Lysander, who, approving the use of deceit, observed that “where the lion’s skin will not reach, it must be patched out with the fox’s”: ὅπου γὰρ ἡ λεοντῆ μὴ ἐφικνεῖται, προσραπτέον ἐκεῖ τὴν ἀλωπεκῆν (Plutarch, Lysander 7.4, Loeb ed., trans. Perrin). Indeed, in our dialogue Callicles proves unable to carry argument through to the end, so that Socrates has to cover the ground alone.

Finally, I suspect that Pindar’s Pythian 2, 72 ff, has considerable relevance to all this, but I won’t pursue the idea here.