"Socrates" by Edward Radzinsky, summary Automatic translate

This book is a collection of two dramatic works, written in 1969 and 1980. The text lays bare the physiology of state power, detailing the brutal conflict between free reason and tyranny through the lives of ancient thinkers. The author reinterprets historical myths, forcing ancient heroes to speak in contemporary language about the eternal problems of moral compromise and betrayal.

Both plays from this collection have enjoyed numerous successful theatrical productions. They were brilliantly adapted into television productions, with leading Soviet actors playing the main characters.

Conversations with Socrates

The action begins in Athens during a nighttime feast at the home of the wealthy citizen Prodicus. Seventy-year-old Socrates is engaged in table talk with the young Apollodorus and the First Disciple. The harmony of the feast is disrupted by the sudden arrival of the influential tanner Anytus. He brings grim news: the Pythian Meletus has officially accused the philosopher of atheism and the systematic corruption of the capital’s youth. Socrates categorically refuses to cease public speaking for the sake of saving his own life. He grabs Anytus by the nose, physically demonstrating the logical inconsistency of his claims. The sage bluntly declares that the death of the enlightener only strengthens blind faith in his ideas. He foresees his own execution and declares: "Death is not worth the humiliation, especially for an old man."

That same night, the ambitious poet Meletus sells his case against the sage to the city’s rulers. In exchange, he receives the right to write a hymn for the sacred embassy in Delphi. Soon, the young man betrays all his poetic ideals for the sake of the beautiful hetaera Harpy. The tanner Anytus skillfully manipulates the poet’s weaknesses. Later, Meletus is killed with a dagger on Anytus’ orders, with the youth’s death being passed off as suicide. At the trial, the old man refuses his usual abject pleas for mercy. In a dialogue with Prodicus, the philosopher vividly demonstrates how eloquence masks total emptiness. Most of the judges cast stones into the urn of condemnation. The condemned man reacts to the prospect of execution with irony. Instead of repentance, he demands free meals.

In prison, the sage is visited by his quarrelsome but sincerely loving wife, Xanthippe. She speaks painfully of her loneliness with the great thinker. Then a repentant Prodicus enters his cell. The wealthy orator reveals to the old man the unpleasant truth: he was the one who wrote the indictment for the trial. Prodicus confesses to a long-held, dark envy of the impoverished philosopher’s fame. He is outraged by the fact that Socrates’ poverty brought him far more public renown than all of Prodicus’s wealth. The orator curses the prisoner and, terrified, flees from prison.

After a severe fever, the prisoner suddenly experiences a sharp physical thirst for life. The disciples secretly plot an escape to Thessaly, bribing the jailer and providing fast horses. However, the elder refuses to violate Athenian law. Early on the morning of the execution arrives. The sage bids farewell to the weeping Xanthippe and gulps down the poisoned cup. Just before his death, a terrible detail is revealed. The first disciple deliberately informed Anytus of the planned escape. The fanatical follower decided to cold-bloodedly sacrifice his teacher for the sake of creating an ideal myth about the infallible Socrates. The first disciple sends the hot-tempered Apollodorus to kill Anytus, knowing that the young man will perish himself. Socrates dies with words about how much blood is shed for goodness.

Theatre during the times of Nero and Seneca

The events unfold on a sultry night in the arena of a gigantic, empty circus in Rome. Emperor Nero orders his guards to fetch his old teacher, Seneca. The ruler stages a sinister and absurd performance for his mentor. Among the emperor’s retinue are the effeminate boy Sporus, playing Cupid, and a harlot posing as a naked Venus. Nero demonstrates his mad "metamorphoses" to the old man. Former senator Antonius Flavus is transformed into a horse harnessed to a chariot, obediently munching oats. The humiliated patrician obediently shouts false eulogies in honor of the ruler.

In the gloomy dungeons of the circus, the slaughterers, doomed to die in the morning, are drinking. The tyrant mocks the philosopher’s moralizing, revealing the people’s primal fear of imminent torture. The emperor forces Seneca to read aloud intercepted letters to Lucilius. Each message quickly becomes an act of moral revelation. The text of the letters proves that the noble thinker consistently justified the bloodiest crimes of his maddened protégé. Seneca turned a blind eye to the poisoning of the young Britannicus and the brutal reprisal against the emperor’s mother, Agrippina.

The ruler mercilessly tears away the mentor’s mask of virtuous righteousness. Nero forces Venus to reenact the deaths of her relatives, and then cold-bloodedly stabs the harlot to death right there in the arena. The emperor informs the old man that the conspiracy of the Roman senators has been completely exposed. All the thinker’s faithful companions — Piso, Lateran, and the poet Lucan — have already voluntarily slit their wrists in fear. They bequeathed their wealth to the murderer. The emperor reveals a terrible secret to the mentor. It turns out that the sinister chief of the secret police, Tigellinus, was strangled many years ago. Nero personally invented the living Tigellinus. The phantom villain served as a convenient cover for both.

In the arena stands a huge golden barrel, containing the crippled old man Diogenes. The emperor orders the legionaries to crucify him on a golden cross in the role of Prometheus. The humiliated senator, a horse, takes a spear and plunges it into the martyr’s defenseless body. Diogenes slowly dies on the cross, forgiving his cruel executioners and retaining a sincere love for lost people. Seneca silently observes this act of true meekness.

The philosopher realizes the utter failure of his teachings and the falsity of his own long life. While the tyrant pathetically sings Aeschylus’s verses to the accompaniment of the cithara, the old man makes the only correct decision. He secretly climbs into Diogenes’s empty wooden barrel. The emperor, completely unaware, coldly sets fire to the Cynic’s dwelling. Seneca burns silently to death, accepting a terrible death and atoning for his guilt. The comedy of life ends with the quiet laughter of Nero and his retinue over the burning barrel.