The hemlock cup

the long version

In his unwavering commitment to truth and in the example of his own life, Socrates set the standard for all subsequent Western philosophy. And yet, for twenty-five centuries, he has remained an enigma: a man who left no written legacy and about whom everything we know is hearsay, gleaned from the writings of Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes. Now the author, a historian gives us a vivid portrait of Socrates and of his homeland, Athens in its Golden Age. His life spanned "seventy of the busiest, most wonderful and tragic years in Athenian history." It was a city devastated by war, but, at the same time, transformed by the burgeoning process of democracy. The author re-creates this fifth-century B.C. city, drawing on the latest sources to illuminate the streets where Socrates walked, to place him there and to show us the world as he experienced it.