Emily Wilson

“An exceptionally lucid introduction to this famous trial and death . . . The history of the interpretation of Socrates’ death, it turns out, is in large part the history of philosophy itself.” —Thomas Meaney, Wall Street Journal

There were heroic lives and deaths before and after, but none quite like that of Socrates. He died not by sword or spear, braving all to defend home and country, but as a condemned criminal, swallowing a painless dose of poison. And yet Socrates’ death in 399 BCE has figured large in our world ever since, shaping how we think about heroism and celebrity, religion and family life, state control and individual freedom, the life of the intellectual and of the ordinary citizen. In The Death of Socrates, best-selling translator and classicist Emily Wilson analyzes the enormous and enduring power that the trial and death of Socrates has exerted over the Western imagination.

Wilson offers a critical and comprehensive look at the death of Socrates as both a historical event and a controversial cultural ideal. She considers works by Plato, Cicero, Milton, Voltaire, Hegel, and Brecht, among others, that used the death of Socrates to discuss power, politics, religion, the life of the mind, and the good life. Wilson vividly shows how Socrates’ death—more than his character, actions, or philosophical beliefs—has mattered so much, for so long, to so many different people.