Socrates' Life Story

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Socrates’ Life Story Socrates, who was a celebrated Greek philosopher and moralist, was born in Athens, Greece, in the year 469 B.C. He was the son of the icon Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and of the midwife Phaenarete. As a young man, he was refined in gymnastics and music. As he got older, he made himself familiar with geometry and astronomy and he studied the methods and the doctrines of the leaders of Greek thought and culture (http://www.sacklunch.net/biography/S/Socrates.html). He began life as a sculptor. In fact, in the 2nd century A.D., a group of the Graces, believed to be his work, could still be seen on the road to the Acropolis. Soon he abandoned art and gave himself to what may best be called education, envisioning that he had a divine commission, witnessed by oracles, dreams and signs, not really to teach any positive doctrine, but to convict men of ignorance, mistaking itself for knowledge, and by so doing to encourage their intellectual and moral improvement (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A279632). Socrates served as a hoplite at Potidaea, where on one occasion he saved the life of Alcibiades, at Delium, and at Amphipolis. In these campaigns his bravery and endurance were noticeable. But as a result, while he performed the ordinary duties of a Greek citizen with credit, he neither accomplished nor wanted political position. His “divine voice,” he said, had warned him to refrain from politics, presumably because office would have entailed the sacrifice of his principles and the abandonment of his proper profession. Although in 406 B.C., he was a member of the senate (http://www.2020site.org/socrates.html). “Not less courageous than this opposition to the civium ardor prava jubentium was his disregard of the vultus instantis tyranni two years later. During the reign of terror of 404 B.C., the Thirty, anxious to implicate in their crimes
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