SHAKSPER 2001: Re: Socrates

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 09/12/01 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.2153  Wednesday, 12 September 2001

From:           Larry Weiss <pandw@akula.com>
Date:           Monday, 10 Sep 2001 23:29:26 -0400
Subject: 12.2145 Re: Cartmell's Views
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.2145 Re: Cartmell's Views

Don Bloom correctly points out that Socrates was probably guilty of the
sedition he was accused of.  But Don then makes the same sort of mistake
he corrects by asserting that the difference in political views between
Socrates and the dominant Athenians

> wouldn't have mattered had it not been for the catastrophic failure of
> the Pelopennesian War.

Surely, whether any war is a success or a failure depends on which side
one favors.  But this one ended with the deaths of both Cleon and
Brasias and the Peace of Nicias, which would have been to the advantage
of both Athens and Sparta had Alcibiades not thwarted it.  In what way
was the war a "catastrophic failure" except in that neither Cleon nor
Brasias succeeded in dominating the entire Aegean?

By the way, these were Fifth Century events (not Fourth).  The Peace of
Nicias was in 421 B.C. and Socrates died in c. 399 B.C.

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