The Last Days of Socrates

Oct 24, 2024 6:28 PM

Author:Plato,Hugh Tredennick,Harold Tarrant,Harold Tarrant,Harold Tarrant

Euthyphro/Apology/Crito/Phaedo

'Nothing can harm a good man either in life or after death'

The trial and condemnation of Socrates on charges of heresy and corrupting young minds is a defining moment in the history of classical Athens. In tracing these events through four dialogues, Plato also developed his own philosophy of a life guided by self-responsibility. Euthyphro finds Socrates outside the court-house, debating the nature of piety, while the Apology is his robust rebuttal of the charges against him. In the Crito, awaiting execution in prison, Socrates counters the arguments of friends urging him to escape. Finally, in the Phaedo, he is shown calmly confident in the face of death.

Translated by HUGH TREDENNICK and HAROLD TARRANT with an Introduction and notes by HAROLD TARRANT

Reviews

This is one to gobble up in a single sitting

—— Company

Hugely enjoyable

—— Heat

A witty novel about love

—— B

The leading comic romantic novelist of her generation

—— Guardian

Williams has fashioned an always engaging, psychologically convincing work of fiction - a consistent and well-realized portrait

—— New Yorker

A highly imaginative account of the life and times of Augustus-a brilliant novel

—— Library Journal

A brilliant epistolary novel about Octavius Caesar and ancient Rome...all three [of John Williams'] novels show a similar narrative arc: a young man's initiation, vicious male rivalries, subtler tensions between men and women, fathers and daughters, and finally a bleak sense of disappointment, even futility.

—— New York Times

Exquisite...brims with great lines

—— Chicago Tribune

A vividly imagined re-creation of classical Rome, but its intuitive grasp of the experience of immense power makes it an unusual, and superior, novel

—— Boston Globe

There could be no better year than 2014 to rediscover this one

—— Mary Beard , Times Literary Supplement

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