The Death of Socrates
The Death of Socrates () is an oil on canvas painted by French painter Jacques-Louis David in 1787. The painting focuses on a classical subject like many of his works from that decade, in this case the story of the execution of Socrates as told by Plato in his "Phaedo". In this story, Socrates has been convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens and introducing strange gods, and has been sentenced to die by drinking poison hemlock. Socrates uses his death as a final lesson for his pupils rather than fleeing when the opportunity arises, and faces it calmly. The "Phaedo" depicts the death of Socrates and is also Plato's fourth and last dialogue to detail the philosopher's final days, which is also detailed in "Euthyphro", "Apology", and "Crito".
Secret history
Paul Levinson's "The Plot to Save Socrates" asserts (as its title suggests), that the philosopher Socrates did not drink hemlock, as history tells. Rather, a clone died in his place and the true Socrates lived some more years in Twenty First Century America. Also according to the same book, the politician and general Alcibiades had a long life and many adventures after the moment when history records his death; Alcibiades' mistress Timandra and the famous fourth-century mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria were one and the same person, a time-traveling American woman; the inventor Hero of Alexandria was also an American time traveler; and finally, according to the same book, the nineteenth-century publisher William Henry Appleton had an extensive secret life as a time traveler, had visited Classical Greece and met some of the famous ancient Greek writers and philosophers whose works he published, and also several times visited the twenty-first century – but always found his own nineteenth-century milieu to be the most congenial.