Early Greek history "sets a special challenge to the disciplined mind. It is a game with very few pieces, where the skill of the players lies in complicating the rules". So wrote Iris Murdoch in her novel The Nice and the Good. Strictly speaking, she was referring to the archaic period. But in practical terms, it could be extended to embrace the whole of ancient history, where sources are few; or, rather, appear in a sudden floods (usually associated with a very well-preserved writer such as Cicero) closely followed by frustrating periods of drought. Historians must wring every last drop of juice from this or that inscription, potsherd, or literary source, proceeding with painstaking care and engaging in minute acts of close-reading. But then the fun of it is that they may make the most extraordinary leaps of the imagination to bridge the gaps. This process, of almost pettifogging exactitude combined with what some might regard as little short of fantasy, can be frustrating. But it is this marriage of precision, abstract thinking and creativity that makes ancient history so absorbing and endlessly fresh. Someone is always coming along and knocking down the fragile house of cards constructed by the last thinker, and boldly building another elegant edifice.
Robin Waterfield, in Why Socrates Died, has his moments of unbridled creation. For instance, with an attractive flourish, he creates, from hints and later writings, a putative text of one of the prosecution speeches at Socrates's trial in 399BC. If we had the real document, many mysteries from more than two millennia ago would be solved. It is a mark of the clarity, confident arguing and good sense of Waterfield - known for his translations of Plato and Herodotus as well as a previous historical work of non-fiction, Xenophon's Retreat - that the version he invents reads so plausibly at the climax of his book.
It is almost impossible to overestimate the historical importance of the trial and execution of Socrates. Plato more or less invented philosophy as we know it in the wake of, and because of, his teacher's death. As Emily Wilson wrote in her excellent book The Death of Socrates, "the only death of comparable importance in our history is that of Jesus". Wilson's work is primarily concerned with Socrates's posthumous career as (variously) martyr, hero, villain and saint. By contrast, Waterfield's book (and the two make good companion pieces) is an investigation into the reasons he was killed.
These reasons, on the face of it, are opaque. What harm did Socrates ever do anybody? Famously, he was a philosopher who never wrote anything; he refused money for his teachings; and he took no active part in politics. All he did was wander around Athens talking to people. For admirers of Athens's radical democracy, his execution remains a traumatic subject. How could a society that championed free speech condemn an apparently innocent 70-year-old?
The charges against him were of not acknowledging the city's gods; of introducing new gods; and of corrupting the young men of Athens. But what precisely did that all mean? The charge of introducing new gods seems particularly peculiar - true, Socrates talked of his daimonion, the little voice in his head that guided his actions, but that hardly seems worthy of the death penalty. Equally, Socrates emerges from Plato and Xenophon's writings as perfectly observant of conventional religious ritual. (His dying wish, according to Plato, was that a cock be sacrificed to Asclepius - to which mysterious injunction we shall return.) Which leaves us with the corrupting of the young.
The cleverness of Waterfield's richly told and enjoyable book is that he uses the death of Socrates as a way of introducing a wonderfully full picture of Athens in the fifth century. His contention is that to understand Socrates's demise we need to understand the city - its legal system, its politics, its generation of rich, clever young-men-in-a-hurry, its aristocratic culture of late-night partying, and, in particular, its war. In as clear an exegesis of the Peloponnesian war as the general reader will find, Waterfield builds up a cogent picture of a power-hungry, restless democracy that came under unbearable stress through its exhausting war with Sparta, and put itself at the mercy of ambitious, often unscrupulous politicians - not least among them Alciabiades: fashion icon, sexually voracious bon vivant, national traitor, mercurial military commander.
The most important reason Socrates was condemned, argues Waterfield, was his association with this young generation of controversial men such as Alciabiades. He skilfully draws out Socrates's probable anti-democratic leanings in his vivid description of the brutal oligarchic revolutions that engulfed the city in 411 and 404. Critias, one of the most bloody figures of that second coup, was a pupil of Socrates. In 399, the philosopher was unfinished business; a sore on the face of the restored democracy. That is why, argues Waterfield, he had to die. And the cock sacrificed to Asclepius? Waterfield's intriguing theory is that the gesture relates to Socrates's offering himself as a scapegoat, a sort of self-sacrifice to heal the wounds of the bruised city-state. But no doubt someone will be along soon to overturn that particular house of cards.
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