# Socrates — On the Art of Reading character guide

> Socrates in On the Art of Reading by Arthur Quiller-Couch.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0003-lecture-i-introductory

## Snapshot

The Athenian who prayed for inward beauty and confessed that anyone with a book under his cloak could lead him anywhere by the nose.

## Who they are

Socrates appears in the lectures as half of a marriage of wisdom and beauty between two minds with small acquaintance with books — and yet, by his own admission, helpless before anyone carrying one. That contradiction is the point: Hellenic culture at its best was independent of book-learning and still craved it. He matters to the book's early arc because he lets Quiller-Couch argue that the love of reading is older and stranger than the institutions that now prescribe it.

## Relationships

### [Phaedrus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_the_art_of_reading_se/characters/phaedrus)

_friendship_

Phaedrus is Socrates's devoted companion and interlocutor in dialogues about rhetoric and love, with a dynamic of teacher and admiring student.

### [Unknown Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_the_art_of_reading_se/characters/unknown_narrator)

_psychological_

The narrator invokes Socrates as a model of dialectical inquiry and the pursuit of truth through questioning.

### [Phaedrus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_the_art_of_reading_se/characters/phaedrus)

_friendship_

Phaedrus is Socrates's devoted companion and interlocutor in dialogues about rhetoric and love, with a dynamic of teacher and admiring student.

### [Phaedrus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_the_art_of_reading_se/characters/phaedrus)

_friendship_

Phaedrus is Socrates's devoted companion and interlocutor in dialogues about rhetoric and love, with a dynamic of teacher and admiring student.

### [Unknown Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_the_art_of_reading_se/characters/unknown_narrator)

_psychological_

The narrator invokes Socrates as a model of dialectical inquiry and the pursuit of truth through questioning.

## In the story

### [On the Art of Reading](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_the_art_of_reading_se/chapters/on-the-art-of-reading)

Invoked as a model of dialectical inquiry and the pursuit of truth through questioning.

### [Lecture XI: Of Selection](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_the_art_of_reading_se/chapters/lecture-xi-of-selection)

Mentioned as walking with Plato in Athens, embodying the oral, book-free culture of classical Greece.

### [Lecture XII: On the Use of Masterpieces](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_the_art_of_reading_se/chapters/lecture-xii-on-the-use-of-masterpieces)

Mentioned in connection with the price paid for the 'Phaedo' through his death.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_the_art_of_reading_se/characters/socrates
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_the_art_of_reading_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_the_art_of_reading_se/characters