📍Ancient Agora of Athens, Adrianou 24, 105 55 Athens, Greece
469 BC – 399 BC“I was the son of a stonemason and a midwife, from the district of Alopeke just south of Athens. My father, Sophroniscus, taught me his trade, and for many years I worked stone. My mother, Phaenarete, delivered babies, and later I said that my work was like hers: I helped others give birth to ideas, though I claimed to have none of my own. I served as a foot soldier in Athens' wars, and I was known for enduring cold and hardship, walking barefoot even on ice. My real home was the Agora, the busy marketplace and civic heart of Athens. Every day I went there, barefoot and in a plain cloak, to talk with anyone who would stop: craftsmen, politicians, poets, young men from rich families and slaves alike. I sat in the workshops around the square and in the shady colonnades, asking what courage, justice or piety really meant, and showing people that they knew less than they thought. The oracle at Delphi had said no one was wiser than me; I concluded that my wisdom lay only in knowing how little I knew. The young followed me, among them Plato and Xenophon, who later wrote down our conversations. The powerful found my questions irritating, and in 399 BC Athens put me on trial for impiety and corrupting the young. Even then I would not give up philosophy, which I believed was a service to my city. My conversations live on in the dialogues, and visitors to the Agora today still walk among the stones where I questioned Athens, asking how they ought to live.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today