Forum Plus: What Socrates’ Downfall Can Teach Us Today; A conversation with Matt Gatton

Santa Fe resident Matt Gatton is a respected scholar of the use of physical light in ritual spaces during prehistory and classical antiquity. His latest book, The Shadows of Socrates: The Heresy, War and Treachery Behind the Trial of Socrates, draws on original research to reopen the philosopher’s trial, sentencing, and execution. In our conversation, Gatton explains how he first became intrigued by the study of light, why his work is regarded as groundbreaking, and what Socrates’ fate reveals about the volatile swings, often violent, between democracy and oligarchy. As he writes, “A democracy can make a tyrant, but a tyrant can unmake a democracy.”