The hemlock cup : Socrates, Athens and the search for the good life / Bettany Hughes.
Hughes, Bettany.
2011
B316 .H84 2011 (Mapit)
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Title
The hemlock cup : Socrates, Athens and the search for the good life / Bettany Hughes.
Author
Hughes, Bettany.
Edition
1st U.S. ed.
ISBN
9781400041794 (alk. paper)
1400041791 (alk. paper)
Publication Details
New York : A.A. Knopf, 2011.
Language
English
Description
xxxv, 484 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), maps ; 25 cm.
Call Number
B316 .H84 2011
Dewey Decimal Classification
183/.2 B
Summary
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 historian Bettany Hughes 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, and Hughes 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.--From publisher description.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Record Appears in
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Athena's city
1. The water-clock: time to be judged
2. Athena's city
3. Socrates in the Agora
4. The Stoa of the King
5. The first blood sacrifice
6. Checks, balances and magic-men
7. Persuade or obey
8. Peitho, the power of persuasion


Socrates as a young man
9. Alopeke: a philosopher is born
10. Kerameikos: potters and beautiful boys
11. Pericles: high society, and democracy as high theatre
12. Delos: and the birth of an empire
13. Purple ambition
14. Paddling in the river, sweating in the gym: Socratic youth
15. Gym-hardened fighting men
16. 'Golden Age' Athens
17. Aspasia: Sophe kai politike, wise and politically astute


Socrates the soldier
18. Samos
19. Flexing muscles
20. Socrates the soldier
21. Demons and virtues
22. The plague


New gods, new possibilities: Socrates in middle age
23. Silver Owls and a wise owl
24. Hot air in the Agora
25. Democracy, liberty and freedom of speech
26. The good life: after dark
27. Delphi, the Oracle
28. Gnothi seauton: know yourself
29. Aristocrats, democrats and the realities of war


The fight goes on
30. The Peloponnesian War, phase two: a messy siege
31. Brickbats and bouquets
32. Amphipolis


Socrates and love
33. Socrates in the symposium
34. The trouble with love
35. Oh, tell me the truth about love
36. Diotima: a very social priestess
37. Little Bears
38. Xanthippe
39 Alcibiades: violet-crowned, punch-drunk


Cutting down the tallest corn
40. Melos
41. Venus de Milo abused
42. Priest of nonsense: playing with fire
43. Sicily
44. Rivers of blood
45. Decelea: closing down the mines
46. Time of terror
47. Arginusae: standing out in the crowd
48. Tall poppies, cut corn
49. Thirty Tyrants


The trial and death of Socrates
50. The scapegoat
51. An apology
52. Twilight and Delos at dawn
53. Socrates bound
54. Flight from the world


Coda: The tomb of Socrates: the Tower of the Winds
Appendix one: Honouring Aphrodite
Appendix two: Mysteria: the Eleusinian Mysteries.

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