To be honest, we simply don't know for sure .

There are three main sources for our information on Socrates: Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes.

Aristophanes was a comedic playwright who poked some serious fun at Socrates in his play The Clouds. He portrays Socrates as a sophist who gets money by uncouth means but this is obviously meant to be exaggerated parody and the two men were reputedly friends. Unfortunately, The Clouds was held, at least by Plato, to be partly responsible for the public opinion turning on Socrates and his eventual execution. This may or may not be true, of course, but if we take Plato's narrative that the Athenians were antagonistic towards sophists as true and we know from reading that The Clouds inaccurately portrayed Socrates as a sophist then we can see how it may have played a part in his downfall.

Plato, of course, portrays Socrates in many of his dialogues, (arguably) the most prominent of which being the Apology and the Crito as far as describing Socrates's character go. We can say with relative surety that Plato didn't run around taking dictation for Socrates and there's a certain literary lilt to the words that we see as characteristic of Plato's literary technique so historians generally settle on the idea that Plato's Socrates, while idealised, is a pretty good summary of the man's ideas and general character but maybe not the most bare-bones, brass and balls, straight facts biography. You'll see in Plato that Socrates's willingness to die was on the basis of "The search for wisdom cannot be silenced" whereas in later Xenophon Socrates seems more concerned with his own logical consistency and doesn't really mind getting to die now and skip turning old and feeble.

Xenophon is going to get a bad rap from me here which pains me because his Cyrus the Great and (despite my hatred of all things equine) On Horsemanship are texts that I feel we should lock away for a thousand years like sacred scrolls so that humanity may one day hear them with fresh ears. Xenophon's Socrates is...well, kinda boring. He walks around and gives really practical insight into issues, he doesn't wax poetic, he's only mildly annoying where Plato's Socrates is a straight-up jackass at nearly every possible opportunity (gadfly indeed), he doesn't even (and this is strictly my opinion but I believe that Greek scholarship will support me here) do anything really groundbreaking philosophically. The Socrates of Plato is a near-divinity of Wisdom and Genius, Xenophon's Socrates is like your baseball-and-apple pie grandfather who doesn't read a lot of high-minded stuff but knows how to fix a leaky roof, raise two children, put food on the table, deal with the loss of a loved one, and throw a solid punch.

But those three are pretty much it as far as what we know about Socrates. There's very little in the way of objective resources on the man's life and the wild popularity of Plato's works has gone even further to eclipse any such documents there might have been. We know a few things with relative certainty because the sources mentioned above agreed on them but there are no contemporary objective sources on Socrates's life. In fact, this dilemma has famously been called the "Socratic problem". Unfortunately when it comes right down to it the difference between the historical Socrates and Plato's character Socrates is that we know things about Plato's character.

Now there are things that different historians will posit as historical and, if you like, I could give you a run down on these things but, other than that, I'm afraid you'll find little on the 'historical' Socrates. The majority of what we know about him is actually gleaned through literary analysis more than historical. That happens to be my specialty so if you're curious as to more I can provide that as well.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Sources and Further Reading = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Kahn's Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form

Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, of course.

Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens: Religion and Politics During the Peloppenesian War

The Socratic Problem: The History-The Solutions : From the 18th Century to the Present Time 61 Extracts from 54 Authors in Their Historical Context ^I ^got ^this ^little ^gem ^for ^free ^on ^Amazon ^and ^it ^turned ^to ^be ^a ^real ^treat.