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FIRST I must say whom I mean by "Socrates." I shall use that name to refer to the main protagonist of Plato's authentic dialogues. Hence the prayers examined in this article are literary phenomena. They belong to the second of Friedrich Heiler's two classes of prayers "prayed" prayers and literary prayers.' In a sense they are also prayed prayers, for the Socrates of the dialogues is not just a product of Plato's poetic genius. Plato had known Socrates well. and it seems reasonable to assume that he would not have written prayers incongruous with Socrates' character. Still these prayers are more the product of art than of spontaneous piety.3 I have located twelve prayers of Socrates in the dialogues.4 These