Socrates was the author of a hymn to Apollo and versifications of Aesopic fables. He was not the author of anything philosophical. Socrates acknowledged the authority of gods, of Athenian law, and of his commanding officers. He did not acknowledge any philosophical authority. Nor indeed did he claim any philosophical authority for himself. If Socrates belongs in a volume on Authors and Authorities, that is because, in line with the old slogan that ‘For any one pair of opposites, there is a single branch of knowledge,’ he can illuminate philosophical authorship and philosophical authority by being so distant from them both.