Socrates and Athenian society in his day
Contents of the book
- Athens before and after the Persian wars ... ... ... ... I
- The part playedby Socrates in History 24
- Socrates in Plato's dialogues: the Sophists ... ... ... ... 36
- The better teachers of the time: Gorgias and Protagoras ... ... 47
- The worse teachers: Euthydemusand Thrasymachus ... ... ... 85
- Socrates among the young: lysis and Charmides ... ... ... 104
- The 'symposium' ... ... ... 122
- The xenophobic Socrates ... ... 1 39
- The 'clouds' ... ... ... 162
- Trial and death of Socrates ... 1 82
- the story ... ... ... 2l6
Excerpt:
The all-important era in the history of Athens was the Persian War and the victories of Marathon and Salamis; before the opening of the fifth century B.C., neither town nor people were in any way markedly differentiated from the rest of the little self-centred communities of Greece. Perhaps there are here and there indications of a quicker and brighter intelligence, a more restless spirit of enterprise.
Herodotus cites Athenians as being distinguished for their " social gift " and conversational powers; and the^am £ of Solon, and later of Cleisthenes, is pre-eminent among early Greek legislators— They enjoyed, too, the nearly unique distinction in the history of being, as Athenian speakers, remind the rest of Greece, — descendants, that is, of the "original" inhabitants of Attica, Separated by natural boundaries from Peloponnesus, and dwelling (as a glance at the map will show) outside the paths which would naturally be followed by the half-mythical, half-historical " Dorian invasion " which had submerged the old Achaian civilisation of Homeric times beneath an influx of hard-fighting but comparatively barbarous northerners, Attica had retained the old Ionic Popul ajioa^ and the old Ionic speech practically unchanged.