The journey from the democratic experiment in ancient Athens to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and to our present day democracy, is so great a distance in time and tradition that it is difficult to appreciate how these two experiments in government are related. The conversations of Socrates can at times seem like an obscure history of a great eastern despotic civilization, rather than the heritage of our own modern democracy. Perhaps, if we could step outside of time, and through an all-knowing lens, observe the trajectory and path from the ancient Greeks to our own present day, we could then see the amazing and unlikely road our civilization has traveled to find the vision, courage, and will to attempt democracy. In one sense, the ancient Greek world was a great despotic civilization in which nature’s uncontrollable forces were each represented by gods and extolled through diverse legends. But in the Minos, we see how the Greek gods and legends provided a common language and heritage for the Greek world. And, we see how Socrates used these universally known gods and legends to prompt his Athenian students to think more deeply about the embryonic Greek discoveries of political philosophy, logic, and democracy. BOOK LIST: Plato. The Minos. Reproduced in W.R.M. Lamb, Charmides; Alcibiades I, II; Hipparchus; The Lovers; The Ages; Minos; Epinomis [Loeb Classical Library, 201] 1964.