In the complex and often violent political arena of ancient Greece, ideals of civic engagement and self-determination mingled ...

After Socrates had been found guilty of impiety and corrupting the morals of the city's youth, he was next invited to propose a suitable punishment. This was a legal tradition in Athens and an ...

Show more Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Plato's Crito and Phaedo, his accounts of the last days of Socrates in prison in 399 BC as he waited to be executed by drinking hemlock. Both works show ...

During Socrates' youth Athens was a city at the height of its power and the intellectual center of the Greek world. The spirit of openness which democracy encouraged had given rise to new fields ...