Why Socrates died
Subtitle: dispelling the myths
By: Robin Waterfield.
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780393065275
Subjects: Socrates -- Trials, litigation, etc; Socrates -- Death and burial
Description: In the spring of 399 BCE, Socrates stood trial in his native Athens. The court was packed, and after being found guilty by his peers, Socrates died by drinking a cup of the poison hemlock, a defining moment in ancient civilization. Yet time has transmuted the facts into a fable. Aware of these myths, Robin Waterfield has examined the actual Greek sources and presents a new Socrates, not an atheist or the guru of a weird sect, but a deeply moral thinker whose convictions stood in stark relief to those of his former disciple, Alcibiades, the hawkish and self-serving military leader. Refusing to surrender his beliefs even in the face of death, Socrates, as Waterfield reveals, was determined to save a country that was tearing itself apart, one in moral decline. Why Socrates Died is not only a powerful revisionist book but also a work whose insights translate clearly from ancient Athens to modern America.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: class: part
title: The trial of Socrates; class: part
title: Socrates in court; class: part
title: How the system worked; class: part
title: The charge of impiety; class: part
title: The war years; class: part
title: Alcibiades, Socrates, and the aristocratic milieu; class: part
title: Pestilence and war; class: part
title: The rise and fall of Alcibiades; class: part
title: The end of the war; class: part
title: Critias and Civil War; class: part
title: - Crisis and conflict; class: part
title: Symptoms of change; class: part
title: Reactions to intellectuals; class: part
title: The condemnation of Socrates; class: part
title: Socratic politics; class: part
title: A cock for Asclepius.