Socrates wrote nothing. What is known of him comes from Plato, Xenophon and a hostile comedy by Aristophanes, and the three do not entirely agree. He spent his days in the Athenian agora asking people to define the words they used confidently — justice, courage, piety — and demonstrating that they could not. In 399 BC the city tried him for impiety and corrupting the young, and he was executed. His method survives better than his opinions, which may have been the point.
