A question can change a life.
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
Socrates wrote no books and left no authenticated letters. This is therefore a catalogue of major witnesses and further reading, not an authored bibliography. Plato’s complete dialogue corpus belongs on Plato’s profile; the dialogues listed here are a selected route into the trial and death. Xenophon’s four Socratic works and Aristophanes’s Clouds are distinguished from later fragment collections. Lost Socratic dialogues and pseudonymous Socratic letters are not treated as works authored by Socrates.
Plato represents Socrates defending himself against charges of impiety and corrupting the young, proposing a penalty and addressing the jury after condemnation. The speech makes philosophical examination a public vocation, while its literary form prevents treating it as a verbatim court record.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Crito offers an escape from prison; Socrates asks whether accepting would be just. A personified speech by the Laws examines obligation to Athens, while the dialogue’s earlier principle forbids returning injustice for injustice.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Phaedo recounts Socrates’s last day, weaving arguments about the soul with the emotional experience of friends facing his execution. The dialogue develops distinctively Platonic metaphysics, so its account cannot simply be assigned to the historical Socrates.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Four books defend Socrates against accusations of impiety and corruption through selected conversations about friendship, household management, leadership and self-control. Xenophon presents a practically beneficial teacher, offering a valuable counterpoint to Plato without becoming a neutral witness.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Xenophon explains Socrates’s elevated tone at trial through a report associated with Hermogenes. The account links his refusal to plead for survival with the prospect of avoiding old age’s deterioration, producing a notably different emphasis from Plato.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)A banquet hosted by Callias brings Socrates into conversation about beauty, pride, friendship and love amid entertainment and playful competition. Xenophon connects philosophical conversation with sociability rather than isolating it from embodied communal life.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Socrates discusses household management with Critobulus and recounts his conversation with the landowner Ischomachus. The work links knowledge, wealth and leadership, while its account of marriage and labour reflects deeply unequal household institutions.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Strepsiades seeks an education that will help him evade debts and encounters a comic Socrates running a school of dubious argument. The play combines natural inquiry, rhetoric and impiety into a caricature that became important evidence for Socrates’s public reputation.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Fragments and testimonies preserve parts of a much larger Socratic literature, including works by Aeschines, Antisthenes and other companions. Giannantoni’s modern collection organises evidence about Socrates and the Socratics; its title does not designate a book written by Socrates.
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