Socrates' fame spread all over Greece, and the most respected and educated men from all around came to him, in order to enjoy his friendly company and instruction.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.
Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?
In ancient Greece, Socrates reportedly didn't fancy a literate society. He felt that people would lose the capacity to think for themselves, simply adopting the perspective of a handy written opinion, and that they would cease to remember what could be written down.
My hero Socrates trained Plato on a rock. How much did that cost? So the greatest minds in history became the greatest minds in history without spending a lot of money.
A Socrates in every classroom.
In that prehistoric time, before the Internet, before information floated in the ozone, I was a soccer novice who had never heard of Socrates until somebody pointed him out - swarthy, shaggy, tall, slender, mysterious.
The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics.
What I always liked about Socrates was his insistence on questioning things for the sake of reaching some sort of clarity - even if it is only clarity about the gaps in our knowledge.
The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame, each of them, by a single sentence consisting of two or three words.
Socrates, after all, could be an intensely annoying man, all the time questioning passers-by until they became exasperated.