Socrates, an Athenian stonemason's son, became a pivotal figure in Western philosophy, known for his relentless questioning ...

The Hemlock Cup Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life by Bettany Hughes Knopf, 528 pp., $35 In 399 b.c., in a prison cell in Athens, a man — convicted and sentenced to death a month ...

“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 ...

A Greek philosopher from Athens, Socrates is credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy and contributed the Socratic method. Although he has been gone since about 399 BC, these Socrates ...

On Thursday, the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago hosted a Re-trial of Socrates, hearkening back to the famous conviction in 399 B.C. that sentenced the philosopher to death by hemlock. Last week, ...

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 ...