In the Apology, Plato transcribed for us the three speeches given by Socrates who was on trial for impiety and "utterly destroying" the youth at Athens in 399 B.C. At the end of the book, the greatest philosopher of all time delivers a moving speech which concludes with the idea that death could be the best thing that ever happened to a man. For if death is sleep, then eternity is but a day. But if it is true that one goes to a better place, than what could be a greater boon than to spend eternity questioning the ancients?

The Apology is among other things a tragedy. For a man with the best intentions in the service of the god Apollo sought out men reputed for wisdom and proved that he was wiser than them for, when he did not know, he at least knew that he did not know. And that if he knew anything at all, he knew better than to claim to know what he could not possibly know. Undefeated in argument, at the end of his life he was slandered to death by jealous men who were inferior to him in every respect-physically, morally, and intellectually. Fearless in the face of death, he out did them in valor. Defeating them in argument, he surpassed them words. Not bearing the guilt of pederasty, he bested them in morals.

And so, poison hearted men whom we have every reason to believe were homosexuals, Aristophanes among them, turned the theoretical cruelty of "utterly destroying" him by mocking, slandering, and publicly humiliating him into the practical cruelty of out right killing him-Schadenfreude became sadistische Grausamkeit.

In this work, the Greek text of Plato's Apology is placed side by side with Edward Campbell's original translation. In his commentary he provides more than 600 annotations to grammatical points for the Greek text. Making the most widely read work in all of higher education more accessible than ever.

Edward H. Campbell is a grammarian and a self-styled philologus of both the Greek and the Latin languages. He lives in Colorado. This is his fourth book.