The translation of Aristophanes cited comes from Jeffrey Henderson's Loeb edition (Frogs, Assemblywomen, Wealth: Aristophanes Vol. 4, Boston, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2002).
3 plato and others
The Penguin translations of Plato and Xenophon are excel- lent. See Xenophon's Conversations of Socrates, translated and edited by Hugh Tredinnick and Robin Waterfield (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1990), and Plato's The Last Days of Socrates, translated and edited by Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant, (London, Penguin Books, 2003).
Other Latin and Greek fragmentary sources, untrans- lated, may be found in the indispensable scholarly collec- tion, edited by Gabriele Giannantoni, Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae, 4 vols. (Naples, Edizioni dell' Ateneo, 1990).
On Xenophon's Memorabilia, see A.-H. Chroust, Socrates: Man and Myth: The Two Socratic Apologies of Xenophon (London, Routledge, 1957). The methodology used in this book is dubious, but Chroust provides an essential starting point for those hoping to reconstruct Polycrates' Prosecution of Socrates from Xenophon's Defence. Vivienne J. Gray's 'The Framing of Socrates: The Literary Interpretation of Xenophon's Memorabilia' (Hermes, 1998, pp. 1-202) offers a worthy defence of Xenophon's merits.
There are, of course, an enormous and ever-growing number of excellent books and publications about Plato. The following list is extremely selective; it will lead you to more.
The introduction to Michael Stokes's edition of Plato's Apology (Warminster, Aris and Phillips, 1987) is accessible to the Greekless and provides a stimulating account of why Plato is little or no use as a source for the historical Socrates. For a different approach, see C. D. C. Reeve, Socrates in the Apology: An essay on Plato's Apology of Socrates, Indianapolis IN, Hackett Publishing, 1989.
Recent 'literary' or 'dramatic' readings of Plato's dia- logues include James A. Arieti, Interpreting Plato: The dia- logues as drama (Rowman and Littlefield, Savage, MD, 1991; and Ruby Blondell, The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002).
A helpful attempt to grapple with the different voices of Plato's Crito is Roslyn Weiss, Socrates Dissatisfied: An Analysis of Plato's 'Crito' (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998); even more useful is Verity Harte's article 'Conflicting Values in Plato's Crito', Archiv fŭr Geschichte der Philosophie, 81 (2), 1999, pp. 117-47, which distinguishes the voices of Crito, Socrates and the Laws. A sympathetic and stimulating account of Socrates' interlocutors, including both Crito and Euthyphro, is John Beversluis's Cross-examining Socrates (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000). More classic articles on the Apology, Crito and Euthyphro, and further bibliography, can be found in Brickhouse and Smith, The Trial of Socrates.
On the last words, see Glenn Most, 'A Cock for Asclepius', Classical Quarterly, 43, 1993, pp. 96-111. Most gives a clear account of various possibilities and points to further bib- liography. His own interpretation is that the words refer to Plato's illness. See also George Dumezil, The Riddle of Nostradamus: A Critical Dialogue (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), for a further attack on the 'life-is- sickness' interpretation.
4 'a greek chatterbox'
A translation of Diogenes Laertius' Life of Socrates is included in Ferguson (ed.), Socrates: A Source Book. Diogenes' Life of Socrates is also included in The Unknown Socrates, edited and translated by Bernhard Huss et al. (Wauconda, Bolchazy- Charducci, 2002). This is a helpful collection of four late antique sources, with parallel English translations: as well as Diogenes, it includes Libanius' Apology, Maximus of Tyre's Whether Socrates Did the Right Thing and Apuleius' On the God of Socrates.
Regretfully, I have passed over the fascinating topic of Socrates' influence on Hellenistic philosophy. On the influ- ence of Socrates on the development of Greek philosophi- cal schools, especially Cynicism, much has been written, but relatively little is in English. The classic study is Klaus Doring, Exemplum Sokrates: Studien zur Sokratesnachwirkung in der kynisch-stoischen Popularphilosophie der frŭhen Kaiserzeit und im frŭhen Christentum (Wiesbaden, Franz Steiner, 1979). See also M. Gigante Giannantoni et al. (eds), La Tradizione Socratica: Seminario di studi (Naples, Bibliopolis, 1995). A useful introductory article in English is A. A. Long's 'Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy', Classical Quarterly, 38, 1988, pp.
150-71. A good collection of scholarly essays in English is The Socratic Movement, edited by P. V. Waerdt (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1984).
Mark Morford surveys Roman ambivalent attitudes to philosophy in The Roman Philosophers: From the Time of Cato the Censor to the Death of Marcus Aurelius (London, Routledge, 2002); Morford discusses Cato's rejection of the Athenian embassy.
Little has been written about Cicero's relationship to Socrates. There is an article by Raymond DiLorenzo, 'The Critique of Socrates in Cicero's De Oratore, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 11, 1978, pp. 247-61.
The death scenes of Seneca, Petronius and Thasea in Tacitus are discussed by Catherine Connors, 'Famous Last Words', in Reflections of Nero: Culture, History and Representation, edited by Jas Elsner and Jamie Masters (London, Duckworth, 1994, pp. 225-36).
5 pain and revelation
In general, see G. Hanfmann, 'Socrates and Christ', Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 60, 1951, pp. 205-33.
Links between the Gospel of Luke and the death of Socrates are discussed in Peter J. Scaer, The Lukan Passion and the Praiseworthy Death (Sheffield, Phoenix Press, 2005).
On Libanius, see William Calder, 'On Libanius' Silence of Socrates', Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 1, 1960, pp. 185-201).
The Apologies of Justin Martyr are available in a recent English translation: The First and Second Apologies, translated by L. W. Barnard (New York, Paulist Press, 1997).
On Erasmus and other humanists, see R. Marcel, '"Saint"'
Socrate, patron de l'humanisme', Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 5, 1951, pp. 135-43.
On Montaigne's responses to Socrates see the final chapter of David Quint's Montaigne and the Quality of Mercy (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1988); also Joshua Scodel, 'The Affirmation of Paradox: A Reading of Montaigne's De la phisionomie', in Yale French Studies, 64 (Montaigne: Essays in Reading), 1984, pp. 209-37; and Nehemas, Art of Living, pp. 101-27.
6 the apotheosis of philosophy
For those who can read French, Raymond Trousson's excel- lent and lively book discusses the relationship of three eighteenth-century French writers to Socrates: Socrate devant Voltaire, Diderot et Rousseau (Paris, Minard, 1967).