There are essentially four sources to base our historical Socrates upon . Writers both of, and after his time, they have varying degrees of accuracy. Plato, a philosopher of the highest order, and an extremely close companion to Socrates himself, is the first and probably the most accurate of the sources. Aristotle, a pupil of Plato and an esteemed philosopher in his own right, would have had second hand knowledge of Socrates. Xenophon, a military general who at the time of Socrates, was probably only a casual aquaintance . The last of the sources is the comic poet and social critic Aristophanes, who wrote rather disparately of Socrates in his comedies.

Plato gives the last of the Socratic images from the sources available, and his are regarded by many as the most accurate in depicting the historical Socrates. The Platonic Socrates, as depicted in The Apology etc, is one, which is sufficiently profound and complex that it can be imagined why he would be convicted and sentenced to death for rejecting the gods, introducing his own strange deities, and corrupting the young. Plato depicts a Socrates who is nondogmatic, even skeptical. A moral philosopher who exposes other pretenses to wisdom.

s consented that the dialogues can be roughly divided into three periods: the early, which would include the apology, and Crito. The Middle, which includes Republic and Symposium, and the late period, which includes Critias and Laws.

“Why, Meletus, are you at your age so much wiser than I at mine? …Am I so hopelessly ignorant as not even to realize that by spoiling the character of one of my companions I shall run the risk of getting some harm from him?”

Some topics in this essay:
Platonic Socrates, Athenians Delium, Aristophanes Socrates, , Plato’s Apology, Gregory Vlastos’, Elenchos Socrates, Xenophonteon Socrates, Socrates Xenophon, Socrates Writers, historical socrates, moral philosopher, actually mean, philosopher own, knowledge socrates, socrates probably, historical philosopher, historic socrates, aristophanes socrates, plato’s apology,