Book Reviews

Several decades ago I read Plato‘s book, The Trial of Socrates.  The book is written in the standard classical Greek format of a discussion between a small group of men, one of whom is Socrates.  Socrates was asking questions, and his associates were proposing possible answers to each question.  The posited answer was then examined and discussed.  Each of the presumably fictional discussants posed an archetypal point of view, so an array of viewpoints were represented.

This was a very enjoyable way way to consider philosophical questions.  Roughly halfway through the book I found myself fully engaged in Plato’s mock discussion.  I was thinking about how fun the whole process was, and I sudden caught myself.  I realized just how very odd what I was experiencing was:  Some guy in 4^th century BC Greece had written this discussion down in Classic Koine Greek (I assume).

Plato’s writing must have then been hand copied many times.  Eventually it was mostly likely translated into Arabic, during the Golden Age of Islam.  Still later, sometime around the beginning of the second millennia after Christ, the Arabic version was translated into Latin, and it was read and hand copied by the early Roman Catholic scholastics.

Eventually the movable type printing press system came along, and someone decided to publish the book in Latin.  It also must have been translated into the vernacular languages of Western Europe and published for those audiences.  Finally some modern English language publisher had printed the copy I was reading.

Yet, through all those eras and across all those geographic regions, this guy, Plato was speaking directly to me in the late 20^th century!  Some guy Plato could not have imagined was reading his words 2500 years after he wrote them!

Yes!  Books ARE time machines!