[HoneyBadger]

If this quite fascinating debate ever does get thrown off this thread for being off-topic, you're more than welcome to move it over to my history of the multiverse thread.

My opinion on Socrates is that he simply envisioned the "best" government being one in which he would have a place he would most enjoy.

He was a teacher of morality. One either becomes a teacher of morality by believing that "God" has made you "right"-which was clearly not the case with Socrates, and has it's own set of problems attached to it, or you do by being driven to it by your consciousness because you're able to see the evil around you, compare it to the evil inside yourself, and come to a conclusion that, through reason, and reasonable men, there's got to be a better way.

He didn't want to lead society as a leader, he just wanted to teach the leaders of the society, and turn them into men "who know the good" so they could go forth and lead society in good directions, and make his own life less complicated in the process.

This national vision gave him a place of value and respect in a society where he'd be able to live a life he'd enjoy living, while at the same time, separating him from those aspects of leadership he found undesireable-namely, absolving him from taking the head spot and all the headaches, etc. that would go along with it.

Democracy was a path to the position he desired in the society-as opposed to strictly an end result-because, as a poor mason/soldier/laborer/whatever, he was limited by his position in an arbitrarily classed society, but less so if he were able to drive the vehicle of an established democracy-wherein, we must remember, military service was required-and which he already had done his time.

Socrates was building a nation around himself, to fit himself, in my opinion, thus invoking the old maxim that "everybody wants to rule the world."

(Keeping in mind that he just wanted to rule it in a more abstract way, as part of a greater, and less fallable, governing machine.)

He wanted what he wasn't ever really able to obtain-a comfortable life of less stress and more respect where he could just exist, occasionally advise, and seek happiness, rather than having to fight for ideals he was driven to fight for by both his intellect and reasonability, and his consciousness as a "man who knew the good".

Plato, in the end, was smart enough and perhaps disillusioned enough by the death-and manner of death-of Socrates to understand that, despite all of Socrates' hopes for himself and everyone, and for all his upstanding character and ideals, ultimately the world would not allow such a society to exist within Socrates' lifetime, if ever, thus we come to Plato's concept of a "Utopia".