Part 13

He then draws a fanciful picture of the various regions of the earth, to which the good and the bad will respectively go after death, and exhorts his friends to use every endeavour to acquire virtue and wisdom in this life, “for,” he adds, “the reward is noble and the hope great.”

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Footnote 24:

§ 132-145.

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Having thus brought his subject to a conclusion, Socrates proposes to bathe himself, in order not to trouble others to wash his dead body. Crito thereupon asks if he has any commands to give, and especially how he would be buried, to which he, with his usual cheerfulness, makes answer, “Just as you please, if only you can catch me;” and then, smiling, he reminds them that after death he shall be no longer with them, and begs the others of the party to be sureties to Crito for his absence from the body, as they had been before bound for his presence before his judges.

After he had bathed, and taken leave of his children and the women of his family, the officer of the Eleven comes in to intimate to him that it is now time to drink the poison. Crito urges a little delay, as the sun had not yet set, but Socrates refuses to make himself ridiculous by shewing such a fondness for life; the man who is to administer the poison is therefore sent for, and on his holding out the cup, Socrates, neither trembling nor changing colour or countenance at all, but, as he was wont, looking stedfastly at the man, asked if he might make a libation to any one, and being told that no more poison than enough had been mixed, he simply prayed that his departure from this to another world might be happy, and then drank off the poison readily and calmly. His friends, who had hitherto with difficulty restrained themselves, could no longer control the outward expressions of grief, to which Socrates said, “What are you doing, my friends? I, for this reason chiefly, sent away the women, that they might not commit any folly of this kind. For I have heard that it is right to die with good omens. Be quiet, therefore, and bear up.”

When he had walked about for a while his legs began to grow heavy, so he laid down on his back, and his body, from the feet upwards, gradually grew cold and stiff. His last words were, “Crito, we owe a cock to Æsculapius: pay it, therefore, and do not neglect it.”

“This,” concludes Phædo, “was the end of our friend, a man, as we may say, the best of all his time that we have known, and moreover, the most wise and just.”

PHÆDO,

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

FIRST ECHECRATES, PHÆDO.

THEN SOCRATES, APOLLODORUS, CEBES, SIMMIAS, AND CRITO.

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Ech. Were you personally present, Phædo, with Socrates on that day when he drank the poison in prison? or did you hear an account of it from some one else?

Phæd. I was there myself, Echecrates.

Ech. What then did he say before his death? and how did he die? for I should be glad to hear: for scarcely any citizen of Phlius ever visits Athens now, nor has any stranger for a long time come from thence, who was able to give us a clear account of the particulars, except that he died from drinking poison; but he was unable to tell us any thing more.

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Footnote 25:

Phlius, to which Echecrates belonged, was a town of Sicyonia in Peloponnesus.

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2. Phæd. And did you not hear about the trial how it went off?

Ech. Yes; some one told me this; and I wondered, that as it took place so long ago, he appears to have died long afterwards. What was the reason of this, Phædo?

Phæd. An accidental circumstance happened in his favour, Echecrates: for the poop of the ship which the Athenians send to Delos, chanced to be crowned on the day before the trial.

Ech. But what is this ship?

Phæd. It is the ship, as the Athenians say, in which Theseus formerly conveyed the fourteen boys and girls to Crete, and saved both them and himself. They, therefore, made a vow to Apollo on that occasion, as it is said, that if they were saved they would every year despatch a solemn embassy to Delos; which from that time to the present, they send yearly to the god. 3. When they begin the preparations for this solemn embassy, they have a law that the city shall be purified during this period, and that no public execution shall take place until the ship has reached Delos, and returned to Athens: and this occasionally takes a long time, when the winds happen to impede their passage. The commencement of the embassy is when the priest of Apollo has crowned the poop of the ship. And this was done, as I said, on the day before the trial: on this account Socrates had a long interval in prison between the trial and his death.

4. Ech. And what, Phædo, were the circumstances of his death? what was said and done? and who of his friends were with him? or would not the magistrates allow them to be present, but did he die destitute of friends?

Phæd. By no means; but some, indeed several, were present.