Plato - Apology

Plato — Apology (c. 1940)
Editor: T. R. Mills • Publisher: University Tutorial Press
ISBN: none (Socrates preferred cross-examining to barcoding)
Condition: Good (upright, school-issue, morally improving)
Imprint: Crappy Old Books
Provenance: Ex–Old Palace School, Croydon (where Attic Greek met drizzle and both persisted)

Roll up for the most decorous day in Athenian court history, rendered in the handsome utility livery of University Tutorial Press—the imprint that could get a sixth-former through anything from algebra to hemlock. T. R. Mills presides with a firm but kindly apparatus: introductions that get you to the dock on time, notes that wag a finger at sloppy particles, and vocabulary that knows when to let you sweat.

Condition “Good” translates as “has survived education with credit.” Boards show honest shelfwear; spine gilt still makes an effort. The hinges hold like an oath before the archons; the text-block is a respectable ivory with a light dusting of foxing (think tea steam, not shipwreck). Expect the scholastic trifecta: an Old Palace stamp (ceremonial), a tidy shelfmark in pencil (bureaucratic), and the faint ghost of a date-due slip (nostalgic). Marginalia, where present, are of the improving kind—“irony!” in the gutter, a corrected breathing mark, and perhaps a discreet underline when Socrates annihilates Meletus with polite questions.

Inside, the Apology does what it’s always done: turns a legal hearing into a masterclass in refusing to flatter anyone—jury, accusers, or reader. Socrates buzzes like the original gadfly, the citizens shuffle on their benches, and somewhere a teacher in Croydon whispers, “Translate quietly; admire the balance of clauses.” Mills’s notes keep you from wandering into the agora of confusion; the man can explain an idiom with the briskness of a stationmaster.

As a reading copy, it’s excellent; as a relic, it’s practically a small ethics department in hard covers. Place it on your desk and your other classics will adopt better posture. Read it and you may develop inconvenient habits: asking for definitions at dinner, preferring truth to applause, and treating death scenes as opportunities for grammar.

Useful things to announce at parties (or staff meetings):

• The gadfly speech still stings; no ointment supplied.

• Socrates’s modest request for free meals in the Prytaneum remains history’s most persuasive expense claim.

• “I know that I know nothing” doubles as a superb alibi for unfinished homework—though Mills will notice.

Physical charms, honestly listed: lightly rounded corners (experience), a few page tips creased (enthusiasm), zero detached gatherings (discipline). Smell profile: clean library with a suggestion of chalk and ink. If you require “mint,” try a herb garden. If you prefer character with a Greek accent, this is your copy.

Crappy Old Books guarantee: we vend books that have already sat the exam. Here is Socrates in a Croydon school blazer—courtroom calm, textual backbone, and just enough patina to prove he’s been out in the world asking unhelpful questions.

Keep browsing: See more Ancient Classics books Other books by TR Mills