"Slandering Socrates" with Dr. David Mirhady

Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies is a part of SFU: The Canadian university that is Engaging the World

SFU Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies

Join us Friday, November 28, 2025 in person or online!

W.A.C. Bennett Library, SFU Burnaby

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University is pleased to present Professor David Mirhady, SFU!Join us Friday, November 28th at 2:30pm in person at the Bennett Library, SFU Burnaby, Room 7200, or online (<a href="https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84272815270" title="https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84272815270" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84272815270</a>) for his talk titled “Slandering Socrates”.This talk will be moderated by <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/humans/people/s-higgins.html" title="https://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/humans/people/s-higgins.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Dr. Sabrina Higgins</a>, Director, SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies.Attendance is free. The event is open to the public and will be webcast and recorded.This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the <a href="https://www.snf.org/" title="https://www.snf.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Stavros Niarchos Foundation</a> (SNF).

ABSTRACTSocrates is recognized as the first great martyr in western philosophy, put to death by an Athenian democracy unwilling to tolerate his new ideas. This paper will examine one of the vehicles of this intolerance, the slander and prejudice against him that was exploited by his prosecutors. It will focus in particular on the early rhetorical tradition of slander (diabolē), against which he responds in Plato’s Apology of Socrates, and which led to both Aristotle and Anaximenes devoting chapters to slander in their rhetorical manuals two generations later.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY<a href="https://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/humans/people/d-mirhady.html" title="https://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/humans/people/d-mirhady.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">David Mirhady</a>'s research spans several related fields: Greek rhetoric, law, and the school of Aristotle. It began with a dissertation on the political and legal writings of Aristotle's student Theophrastus. In order to get a background for that, he looked at Aristotle's approach to legal argumentation in his Rhetoric, which led to articles on the parallel accounts of argumentation on documentary forms of evidence in the Rhetoric, its contemporary, the Rhetoric to Alexander, and in the Athenian orators, the speeches of one of whom, Isocrates, he translated. He has also continued his interests in the parallels between the Rhetoric and the Rhetoric to Alexander, which led to a Loeb translation of the latter.

MODERATOR BIOGRAPHYI am a field archaeologist and art historian cross appointed between the Departments of Global Humanities and Archaeology. My work is inherently multidisciplinary, intersecting the fields of Late Antique Studies, Archaeology, Religious Studies, Art History, Papyrology, and Gender Studies. At present, my research is largely situated in the field of Marian studies, specifically the ways in which we can use material culture to understand the development and spread of the early cult of the Virgin Mary in Egypt. More broadly, I am also interested in the ways in which art and space interact within Late-Antique Christian religious structures and the manner in which art is used by socially marginalized populations to exert agency. In addition to these research interests, I maintain three active field projects, including the Philae Temple Graffiti Project and The Ibis Hypogeum Graffiti Project, North Abydos (both in Egypt), as well as the excavations of the late antique site at Golemo Gradište in North Macedonia. I am also the co-founder of two digital humanities projects, Peopling the Past and the Digital Mary Project.

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