Emma Park

An unlikely heart-throb

Even Plato didn’t see him as that. But Armand D’Angour does, presenting him in youth as a handsome hoplite, in thrall to Pericles’ seductive mistress

issue 30 March 2019

If western philosophy is no more than ‘footnotes to Plato’, so, arguably, is the myth of its founding hero, Socrates. While there is good evidence for certain aspects of Socrates’ life — his preoccupation with ethics, question-and-answer technique and his trial and death in 399 BC — most of it is shrouded in uncertainty.

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