Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1

by George Grote

George Grote, the banker and radical politician who wrote the great Victorian History of Greece, followed it in 1865 with Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, a survey of Greek philosophy as a sequel to his history. This first volume of the four-volume third edition opens with the speculative philosophy of Greece before Socrates, from Thales and Pythagoras to the Sophists, with Grote's spirited defense of the latter, and then devotes chapters to the life and method of Socrates and to his other companions, Xenophon, Antisthenes, Aristippus, Euclid of Megara and the rest, before the examination of Plato's dialogues that fills the later volumes. Grote reads the ancients as a utilitarian and an empiricist, and argues with them as equals. It is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, with the first chapter free.