The Socratic Revolution

Imagine a world in which there is no morality. There are platitudes about how to act and how to treat other people…

Plato 4.5 The Thirty Tyrants

The following year, 404 BC, under pressure from Sparta and her allies, the Athenians voted to write a new…

Explaining Eclipses

Who first explained eclipses correctly?

Plato 3.5 The Paradox of Socrates

Today we can look back at Socrates through the lens of Plato’s writings, and indeed the twin lenses…

Plato 10.5. Pushback: The Sophist

About the same time that Isocrates published his pamphlet Against the Sophists, another pamphlet…

Plato 4.3 The Battle of Aegospotami

The Athenian fleet continued its daily sally against the Spartan fleet, followed by the dispersal…

27.3 Death Scene

At the end of the discussion Plato his friend Phaedo narrate the final actions and words of Socrates. “Now,” says Socrates, “fate…

Plato 8.4 What Is Courage?

One way of distinguishing between courage and other virtues is to note that the possessor of the virtue must…

10.3 Isolating Sparta

Meanwhile in Greece, the Pax Spartica was falling apart. At the end of the Peloponnesian War, the Peloponnesian League…

Plato 5.7 Socrates’ Trial: The Evidence

For the third time in his life, Socrates had done what he saw as his duty in the public…