The Death of Socrates, oil on canvas by Jacques Louis David, 1787.

Accused by the Athenian government of denying the gods and corrupting the young through his teachings, Socrates (469-399 B.C.) was offered the choice of renouncing his beliefs or dying by drinking a cup of hemlock. The printmaker and publisher John Boydell wrote to Sir Joshua Reynolds that it was "the greatest effort of art since the Sistine Chapel and the stanze of Raphael."