Classics Club: The Last Days of Socrates
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The Last Days of Socrates, by Plato
I must have read this in college, since I own a copy and there is a photocopy stuck inside, but I can no longer remember anything about it. Katie will be doing ancient history again next year, and I'm trying to prepare a bit by reading some of the texts she will need to know about. Our guru-book suggests that we try reading part of a dialogue aloud together--I'm not going to have her read the whole book!
Anyway, it's not a terribly difficult text and I got through it pretty quickly. I enjoyed the first dialogue, the Euthyphro, and Socrates' self-defense speech the most. His debating style, or philosophical style--whatever you want to call it--is so generalized and abstract, I'm always wanting to argue back. Of course there is quite a lot about Forms.
I suppose I should plan on reading more Plato, but on the other hand I just got a book about ancient rhetoric styles, and am thinking of reading Aristotle's writings on rhetoric to compare. And that prospect makes me a bit tired!
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