Socrates 469-399BC
Greek philosopher

He was born in Athens, the son of a stonemason (which he also became). In middle age he married Xanthippe, by whom he had three sons. He fought bravely as a hoplite in the Peloponnesian War, opposed the collective sentence on the generals convicted after Arginusae (406), and refused to co-operate with the Thirty Tyrants. He is represented as ugly, snub-nosed and with a paunch. He wrote nothing, founded no school and had no formal disciples, but along with Plato and Aristotle is one of the three great figures in ancient philosophy. His pivotal influence was such that all earlier Greek philosophy is classified as 'pre-Socratic', and he was responsible for the shift of philosophical interest from speculations about the natural world and cosmology to ethics and conceptual analysis. He was caricatured by Aristophanes in The Clouds, in which he is associated with the Sophists, whom in fact he opposed, and was adulated by Xenophon. The principal sources for his life are the dialogues of Plato, especially the Apology, Crito and Phaedo, which describe Socrates' trial, last days and death; in later dialogues he makes Socrates the mouthpiece for what were undoubtedly his own opinions. He held aloof from politics, guided by his 'voice' which impelled him to philosophy and to the examination of conventional morality. The 'Socratic method' was to ask for definitions of familiar concepts such as justice, courage and piety, to elicit contradictions in the responses of his interlocutors, and thus to demonstrate their ignorance, which he claimed to share. This unpopular activity no doubt contributed to the demands for his conviction for 'impiety' and 'corrupting the youth', and he was tried at the age of 70. He rejected the option of merely paying a fine, declined a later opportunity to escape from prison, and was sentenced to die by drinking hemlock.

Bibliography: W K C Guthrie, Socrates (1971)