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Paul Johnson's Socrates is an Ancient Greek Paul Johnson. In his hands, Socrates becomes an anti-gay monotheist. Yup. To give you an idea of Johnson's reasoning, see this passage:

"When Socrates was at his most devout, he always refers to 'god' or 'the god,' not 'the gods.' He was a monotheist." 107

So, you can be sure that if Socrates mentions "gods" in the plural, he is not being very devout.

A similar reasoning comes into play when Johnson discusses Plato. If Johnson likes the Socrates that Plato is portraying, it is a real, historical portrait. If he doesn't like the Socrates, he is really "Platsoc"--his term for Plato speaking through Socrates. I blinked twice when I read this: "in the early dialogues, when Plato is producing the real, actual, and historic Socrates and recording accurately what he said..." How can an eminent historian like Paul Johnson write that?? Does he have access to a secret tape recording of Socrates?

He also credits to Socrates anything good that happens at all. Some examples:

"Diodotus says, 'I think it better for the empire to allow ourselves to suffer wrong than to destroy, however justly, those whom we ought not to destroy.' The last phrase reveals a Socratean thought peering out among the general argument of expediency, and it pursuades me that Diodotus allowed himself to be guided by the philosopher, in part at least."

"The committee, no doubt prompted by Socrates, protested the illegality and unconstitutionality of the proceedings." 144 No doubt.

About the debates over the use of the atomic bomb (I'm not kidding):

"The fact that these debates took place at all is due to the initial moral revelation of Socrates and its subsequent illumination of the universal conscience." 121

If Socrates had never been born, clearly we would all still be "primitives" (a term Johnson actually uses in the book--no political correctness here).