A revisionist account of the most famous trial and execution in Western civilization - one with great resonance for modern society
In the spring of 399 BCE, the elderly philosopher 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 poison hemlock, his execution 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, presenting a new Socrates, not an atheist or 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 morally decayed country that was tearing itself apart. Why Socrates Died is then not only a powerful revisionist book, but a work whose insights translate clearly from ancient Athens to the present day.
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Key Dates
Maps
The Trial Of Socrates
1 Socrates in Court
2 How the System Worked
3 The Charge of Impiety
The War Years
4 Alcibiades, Socrates and the Aristocratic Milieu
5 Pestilence and War
6 The Rise and Fall of Alcibiades
7 The End of the War
8 Critias and Civil War
Crisis And Conflict
9 Symptoms of Change
10 Reactions to Intellectuals
The Condemnation Of Socrates
11 Socratic Politics
12 A Cock for Asclepius
Glossary
References
Bibliography
Index.
Preface
Everyone has heard of Socrates, and even if they know little or nothing else about the man, they usually know that he was put to death by his fellow Athenians in 399 BCE. The events surrounding Socrates' death have become iconic - more discussed, portrayed or merely mentioned - than any except those surrounding the death, some four hundred years later, of a Jewish prophet called Yehoshua. In fact, the two trials and executions often seem to meld in people's minds, so that Socrates too becomes a kind of martyr - a good man unjustly killed for his views, or for being an outstanding individual in a collectivist society, or something like that. Do a web search for 'Socrates and Jesus' and you will see what I mean. But Socrates would have been the last to want to leave a cultural icon unexamined, and that is what I do in this book: examine all the evidence in order to reach a fuller understanding of Socrates' trial and execution than has been achieved before.
