Waterfield, an accomplished translator of ancient Greek texts, notes that in Athenian law all cases began as personal grievances. “Why Socrates Died” opens with Socrates on trial in the Athenian Agora, in front of a jury of 500 dikasts (or they may have been 501 of the Greek officials the record on this, like many other points, is inconclusive), and facing the dual charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. This is the central insight behind Why Socrates Died, Waterfield’s remarkable and thoroughly original new book, which attempts to understand Socrates’s trial and execution in light of the political and social upheaval racking his native Athens at the time he drank the fatal hemlock. According to Robin Waterfield, though, it was actually more common qualities – innocence, naivete, and maybe a little vanity – that got Socrates into trouble. Since his death in 399 BC, Socrates has lived well in history, enjoying a reputation as the West’s first philosopher and its first dissident.
0 kommentar(er)
