Now in paperback, a new reading of Plato’s philosophy that reveals it as deeply shaped by his experiences in Athens. Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Born during a war that would lead to Athens’ decline, Plato lived in turbulent times. Carol Atack explores how Plato’s life in Athens influenced his thought, how he developed the Socratic dialogue into a powerful philosophical tool, and how he used the institutions of Athenian society to create a compelling imaginative world. Accessibly written, this book shows how Plato made Athens the place where diverse ideas were integrated into a new way of approaching the big questions about our lives, then and now.

Who was the so-called ‘father of medicine’, commonly associated with the celebrated Hippocratic Oath? Elizabeth Craik explores evidence for the historical Hippocrates, who lived in the fifth century BCE, and combines it with evidence and compelling excerpts from the ‘Hippocratic Corpus’, a vast and varied collection of Greek medical texts, linked in transmission with his name. Through a focus on locality and innovatory attention to language, Craik shows how several different ‘voices’ may all be regarded as Hippocratic. Hippocrates: Man, Medic, Myth brings a vital new orientation to important questions of origins and authorship and provides a novel interpretation of a key figure in the history of medicine.