Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life

The Hemlock Cup

A riveting, lively and brilliantly researched biography of Socrates by the author of the acclaimed bestseller Helen of Troy.

Hughes cleverly extracts the man from the dramatic scene-setting... This intelligent, bright-eyed vigorous book [has] a life as vibrant and provocative as that lived by its subject

In The Hemlock Cup Bettany Hughes does a very good job of recreating the material world in which Socrates lived...she is up to date on recent archaeological discoveries... She writes frankly of the nastiness of the world in which Socrates grew up and lived

No physical aspect of life as experienced by an Athenian man is left out...Hughes's expert attempts to make him flesh and blood, to fill in the gaps...teach us about the value of the real as well as the philosophical

Terrific and passionate writing about a philosopher whose heroism is unquestionable (though that heroism resides in a constant questioning); and as lively and learned an introduction to classical Athens as you could want

Hughes's prose is the literary equivalent of CGI, re-creating for the reader a sense of the clamour and dazzle of the classical city that has rarely been bettered

The Hemlock Cup is another vibrant and atmospheric work from this well-known promoter of the ancient world

A lively and learned introduction to classical Athens

In trying to find the man, Hughes uses the skills of historian and documentarian combined in create a fresh and surprisingly pacy biography

Independent on Sunday, Christmas round up

This tour de force is a vivid social and political history of Athens in the 5th century BC. An extremely exciting narrative...Descriptions of Athens aren't dry but dripping with colour; the city itself is dirty, smelly, defiantly alive. This is not a study of Socrates' philosophy but his world. As thought-provoking as it is thrilling, the book is a beacon for the relevance and interest of classics today

Hughes' writing is full of the kind of earthy, real-life details and personality that can make events from thousands of years ago seem real and relevant to a modern reader... This book is as all encompassing as it can be. For anyone who has felt that they should know more about Socrates... The Hemlock Cup has to be the best place to start

This is a fascinating history, which gives a great deal more than might be expected

You won't get a better introduction to every aspect of the classical city than this... A fascinating, provocative read

Bettany Hughes is a historian, author and broadcaster who has devoted much of the last twenty years to the vibrant communication of the past. Her first book, Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore was published to great critical acclaim and has now been translated into ten languages. Bettany has made a number of factual films for the BBC, Channel 4, PBS, Discovery, The History Channel and ABC for both the British and International markets including The Spartans, When The Moors Ruled in Europe, Athens:The Truth of Democracy, The Women of the Bible and Helen of Troy. These have now been seen by over 100 million worldwide.

We think the way we do because Socrates thought the way he did. His aphorism 'The unexamined life is not worth living' may have originated twenty-five centuries ago, but it is a founding principle of modern life. For seventy years Socrates was a vigorous citizen of Golden Age Athens, philosophising in the squares and public arenas rather than in the courts of kings, before his beloved city turned on him, condemning him to death by poison. 
 
Socrates lived in and contributed to a city that nurtured key ingredients of contemporary civilisation - democracy, liberty, science, drama, rational thought - yet, as he wrote almost nothing down, he himself is an enigmatic figure. In The Hemlock Cup, acclaimed historian Bettany Hughes gives Socrates the biography he deserves, painstakingly piecing together Socrates' life and using fresh evidence to get closer to the man who asked 'how should we live?' - a question as relevant now as it has ever been.

Bettany Hughes

The book triumphantly reclaims Helen from some of her traducers. Hughes' portrait is as close to a real, living Helen as we are likely to get

This book is a real tour de force. It combines astonishing erudition and knowledge of the early classical world with a wonderful easy fluency of writing

Evoking in sensuous and gorgeous prose the citadels, the palaces and the luxuries of that long-vanished world... A passionate book

Fantastic... I have never, ever, read anybody write so well about travels in Greece and going to explore archaeological sites

Goddess, Princess, Whore

As soon as men began to write, they made Helen of Troy their subject; for nearly three thousand years she has been both the embodiment of absolute female beauty and a reminder of the terrible power that beauty can wield. Because of her double marriage to the Greek King Menelaus and the Trojan Prince Paris, Helen was held responsible for both the Trojan War and enduring enmity between East and West. For millennia she has been viewed as an exquisite agent of extermination. But who was she? 
 
Helen exists in many guises: a matriarch from the Age of Heroes who ruled over one of the most fertile areas of the Mycenaean world; Helen of Sparta, the focus of a cult which conflated Helen the heroine with a pre-Greek fertility goddess; the home-wrecker of the Iliad; the bitch-whore of Greek tragedy; the pin-up of Romantic artists. 
 
Focusing on the 'real' Helen - a flesh-and-blood aristocrat from the Greek Bronze Age - acclaimed historian Bettany Hughes reconstructs the context of life for this elusive pre-historic princess and places her alongside the heroes and heroines of myth and history. Through the eyes of a young Mycenaean woman, Hughes examines the physical, historical and cultural traces that Helen has left on locations in Greece, North Africa and Asia Minor. Vivid and compelling, this remarkable book brilliantly unpacks the facts and myths surrounding one of the most enigmatic and notorious figures of all time.

Bettany Hughes

Praise for Helen of Troy

The book triumphantly reclaims Helen from some of her traducers. Hughes' portrait is as close to a real, living Helen as we are likely to get

This book is a real tour de force. It combines astonishing erudition and knowledge of the early classical world with a wonderful easy fluency of writing

Evoking in sensuous and gorgeous prose the citadels, the palaces and the luxuries of that long-vanished world... A passionate book

The book triumphantly reclaims Helen from some of her traducers. Hughes' portrait is as close to a real, living Helen as we are likely to get

This book is a real tour de force. It combines astonishing erudition and knowledge of the early classical world with a wonderful easy fluency of writing

Evoking in sensuous and gorgeous prose the citadels, the palaces and the luxuries of that long-vanished world... A passionate book

The book triumphantly reclaims Helen from some of her traducers. Hughes' portrait is as close to a real, living Helen as we are likely to get

This book is a real tour de force. It combines astonishing erudition and knowledge of the early classical world with a wonderful easy fluency of writing

Evoking in sensuous and gorgeous prose the citadels, the palaces and the luxuries of that long-vanished world... A passionate book

Books by Bettany Hughes

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