THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES by I....

THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES by I. F. Stone (Anchor Books/Doubleday: $9.95)

When illness forced I. F. Stone to retire from his “I. F. Stone’s Weekly” of 19 years’ standing, he embarked on an extraordinary work of historical fact-finding, teaching himself the Greek language to understand better how the free Athenian state could have condemned Socrates to death. Socrates’ trial “horrified me as a civil libertarian,” Stone writes. “It was a black mark for Athens and the freedom it symbolized.”

Stone returns to the ancient sources--Plato, Xenophon as well as Aristophanes--to fashion a portrait of the historical Socrates. But he goes beyond Socrates’ sympathizers to Aristotle and others to measure how Socrates was viewed by fellow citizens: to build “the missing case for the prosecution.”

“(Socrates) and his disciples saw the human community as a herd that had to be ruled by a king or kings, . . .” Stone writes. “The Athenians, on the other hand, believed--as Aristotle later said--that man was ‘a political animal,’ endowed with logos , or reason, and thus capable of distinguishing good from evil and of governing himself in a polis. “

According to Xenophon’s “Apology,” Socrates “wanted to be convicted and did his best to antagonize the jury.” In this he succeeded.

A fascinating reconstruction of the trial that took place in 399 BC and a major work of history.