“Despite his insistence on the examined life,” Socrates has never been a figure the rest of us have known well, said Walter Isaacson in The New York Times. Western philosophy’s first great thinker ...

Considered to be the founding father of Western philosophy, Socrates examined all aspects of life in ancient Athens—to his own detriment. Socrates was put to death in 399 B.C. for showing irreverence ...

Socrates was notoriously annoying. He was likened to a gadfly buzzing around while one is trying to sleep. The Oracle of Delphi declared him the wisest of all human beings. His life and death would go ...

The brilliant cultural historian Hughes (Helen of Troy) has again produced an intriguing and entertaining biohistory of one of the most important individuals in the ancient world, and of the Athenian ...