Socʹrates
.The greatest of the ancient philosophers, whose chief aim was to amend the morals of his countrymen, the Atheʹnians. Cicero said of him that “he brought down philosophy from the heavens to earth;” and he was certainly the first to teach that “the proper study of mankind is man.” Socrates resisted the unjust sentence of the senate, which condemned to death the Athenian generals for not burying the dead at the battle of Arginu’sæ.
“Socratēs—
Socrates used to call himself “the midwife of men’s thoughts.” Out of his intellectual school sprang those of Plato and the Dialectic system; Euclid and the Megaric; Aristippos and the Cyrenaʹic, Antisʹthenes and the Cynic.
