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Robin Waterfield
Why Socrates Died
Dispelling the Myth
New York 2009
Stron XXV+253; format: 15x23cm
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Socrates' trial and death together form an iconic moment in Western civilization. In 399 BCE, the great philosopher stood before an Athenian jury on serious charges: impiety and "subverting the young men of the city." The picture we have of it—created by his immediate followers, Plato and Xenophon, and perpetuated in countless works of literature and art ever since—is of a noble man putting to his lips the poisonous cup of hemlock, sentenced to death in a fit of folly by an ancient Athenian democracy already fighting for its own life. But an icon, an image, is not reality, and time has transmuted so many of the facts into historical fable.
Aware of these myths, Robin Waterfield has examined the actual Greek sources and presents here a new Socrates, separating the man from the myths. As Waterfield recounts the story, the charges of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens were already enough for a death sentence, but the prosecutors accused him of more. They asserted that Socrates was not just an atheist and the guru of a weird sect but also an elitist who surrounded himself with politically undesirable characters and had mentored those responsible for defeat in the Peloponnesian War. Their claims were not without substance, for Socrates numbered among his close companions Alcibiades, Critias, and several other known or suspected oligarchs and admirers of Sparta, Athens's enemy. In fact, as Waterfield perceptively shows through an engrossing historical narrative, there was a great deal of truth, from an Athenian perspective, in these charges.
The trial was, in part, a response to troubled times—Athens was reeling from a catastrophic war and undergoing turbulent social changes—and Socrates' companions were unfortunately direct representatives of these troubles. Their words and actions, judiciously sifted and placed in proper context, not only serve to portray Socrates as a flesh-and-blood historical figure but also provide a good lens through which to explore both the trial and the general history of the period.
Ultimately, the study of these events and principal figures allows us to finally strip away the veneer that has for so long denied us the real Socrates. Why Socrates Died is an illuminating, authoritative account of not only one of the dcfin ing periods of Western civil ization but also of one of its most defining figures.
Contents
List of Illustrations ix Preface xi
Acknowledgements xvii Key Dates xix Maps xxi
the trial of socrates
1 Socrates in Court 3
2 How the System Worked 20
3 The Charge of Impiety 3 2
the war years
4 Alcibiades, Socrates and the Aristocratic Milieu 5 l
5 Pestilence and War 67
6 The Rise and Fall of Alcibiades 85
7 The End of the War 103
8 Critias and Civil War 122
crisis and conflict
9 Symptoms of Change 139
10 Reactions to Intellectuals 155
the condemnation of socrates
11 Socratic Politics 173
12 A Cock for Asclepius 191
Glossary 205
References 209
Bibliography 227
Index 247
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