Political theory is by all accounts a discipline peculiar to Western civilization. It has its origin in the Greek city-state, particularly in Plato's account of the death of Socrates. In The Republic Plato went on to ask whether the just man could live in even the best state. Socrates, we know, fought in the Peloponnesian Wars and died by virtue of a public trial in 399 B.C. By his own testimony he died obedient to the laws of the civil community in which he chose to live his life, thereby condemning the unjust use of Athenian law and stigmatizing forever those 281 hapless jurists who voted for his guilt. Moreover, Socrates died calmly because he believed in the immortality of his own soul and because he was by no means sure that an already aging man would not be much better off in the Isles of the Blessed.