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Author Topic: The Last Days of Socrates  (Read 2334 times)

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Nabubrush

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The Last Days of Socrates
« on: February 13, 2004, 07:12:29 pm »
This forum doesn't seem to get enough love.

So, I picked up Plato's The Last Days of Socrates at the thrift store as I was getting rid of a bunch of stuff the other day. Penguin Classics edition, translation by Hugh Tredennick, first published in 1954. I get the feeling while reading it that the translator is introducing some stuff that maybe isn't justified in the original, but that's just a feeling. Given that I'm not going to learn Greek in order to read the original, does anyone have a translation they favor?
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monkey punch

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The Last Days of Socrates
« Reply #1 on: February 16, 2004, 11:58:05 pm »
GMA Grube translates Plato very nicely (or so I am told), and introduces his works even nicelier.  For these and other reasons, colleges like to use his editions, meaning they are a plague upon used bookstores; notice that the following link to amazon.com shows 176 used copies for sale, the cheapest of which is only 25 cents.

Grube's Five Dialogues

Check out also his versions of Aristotle's "Poetics" and his Selections from Sextus Empiricus; the latter is especially important, as its introduction will brief you on the true nature of classical (Greek) Skepticism, which happens to be a fairly awesome system of thought by which to live.
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monkey punch

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The Last Days of Socrates
« Reply #2 on: February 17, 2004, 12:04:01 am »
In response to your doubts as to the quality of your translation, Penguin Classics presently publishes extremely reliable translations of classical literature; their translations of Herodotus (by Aubrey de Selincourt) and Thucydides (by Rex Warner), for example, are standard and well respected.  I say "presently publishes" because I don't know whether penguin has always been so reliable--i.e. during the 1950s.  Still, I'm inclined to trust them.

In case you're interested, UChicago publishes the best translations of greek tragedy.

Also, anyone who wants to see classical allusions in Nate Small should pick up a copy of Peter Green's readable, short and complete history of ancient greece, simply called "Ancient Greece."
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Nabubrush

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The Last Days of Socrates
« Reply #3 on: February 17, 2004, 05:28:38 pm »
Thank you - I knew someone around here would know a great deal more about this than I do.
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