The Death of Socrates: The Price of a Principle | Jacques-Louis David

One man reaches for a cup of poison. He looks calm. Everyone around him seems devastated. Why did Athens condemn Socrates — and why did he refuse to escape? What did Jacques-Louis David choose to change, add or hide when he painted the scene more than two thousand years later? And what does an apparently heroic decision cost the people who love us? We explore three discoveries in David's The Death of Socrates (1787), including the scientific evidence of a woman and child that David painted over. Their identities and the painter's motives remain uncertain. 00:00 The last decision 00:53 Why Socrates accepted the sentence 03:35 The story David changed 06:32 The cost to others 09:03 Looking at the painting again The Death of Socrates, Jacques-Louis David, 1787, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access / CC0, accession 31.45: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect... Met technical discoveries: https://www.metmuseum.org/perspective... Met historical essay: https://www.metmuseum.org/perspective... Plato, Phaedo and Crito (philosophical literary accounts). Narration and script: KROMOS. Synthetic Benjamin narration via ElevenLabs; no historical personalities impersonated. KROMOS. More than meets the eye.