ABSTRACT
Socrates was sentenced to death by a jury of some 500 fellow Athenians and died by taking hemlock in a jail in Athens in 399 BC. He was born in Athens ten years after the final defeat of the Persians, and spent all his seventy years in that city. During his life he was part of the rise of Athens to her glory, but during the devastating Peloponnesian War he also saw the rapid decline of Athens. During his years Greece was the centre of the world, and Athens was the centre of Greece. He met, mixed, and talked with all manner of men: great statesmen like Pericles, brilliant dialecticians like Zeno, clever and dazzling sophists like Protagoras, eminent generals like Nicias and Laches, and the greatest sculptors, architects, poets, and playwrights of Greece; he also cross-examined lesser know-it-alls like Euthyphro and Meno, silly jacks-of-all-trades like Dionysodorus and Ctesippus, corrupt politicians like Critias, and dozens of ordinary citizens, clever and dull, honest and dishonest. He tried to teach philosophizing to beautiful and willing youths, like Charmides and Lysis, wild and brilliant Greeks like Alcibiades, devoted friends and pupils like Crito and Phaedo; and he succeeded beyond any teacher’s expectation in what has to be the most brilliant pupil of all time, Plato himself. In the midst of the terrible upheavals around him and the variety of his experiences with people Socrates displayed an awesome presence, maintained a vast philosophic calm, and must have been the only stable thing in Athens in the last half of the fifth century. Day in and day out he went to the same places, talked to the same people, raised the same questions, discussed them in the same way, and ended up with the same mixture of success and failure. In this way, having the fortune of many brilliant pupils and at least one great one, Socrates created a revolution in Greek philosophy.
