A review
of G.M. A. Grube's translation of Plato’s The Trial and Death of
Socrates with John M. Copper revising (circa 390 BC, my copy 2000)
(Rating 4 of 5)
The
Trial and Death of Socrates is a collection
of works by Plato on Socrates that gives a narrative of Socrates's trial and
execution. Socrates had been going around Athens committing the horrible crimes of saying things that other people don’t like. Unfortunately for Socrates, those “other people” were the ones who held
power in Athens. That really is the long and short of it.
Socrates
was living in a time where people believed in multiple gods that intervened in
peoples’ lives. Not believing in the
gods had consequences, such as floods and plagues. Socrates going around telling people to think
for themselves meant people might question the existence of gods or worship
new gods that were not of Athens.
Therefore Socrates was a threat to their safety and had to go.
 |
| Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David |
Socrates,
who chose not to escape his impending doom because of his own philosophy of
obedience toward law (although also being past seventy might have made him a
little more accepting of the end), became a martyr for free thought and
expression. Of course all of his work and sacrifice could
have been lost considering Socrates never wrote anything down. Fortunately his old pupil, Plato, would be sure to give witness with his writings to Socrates and his ideas. In this respect we can say that Plato was just as, if not more, important.
On
the technical side I found having the footnotes at the bottom of the page
instead of the end of the book to be more effective in dealing with the
text. I didn’t have to keep going back
to check the footnotes.
