Socrates

Yes, by Zeus, Socrates, said Polemarchus, nothing could be more conclusive.

As soon as he saw me Cephalus greeted me and said, You are not a very frequent visitor, Socrates.

Whereupon Polemarchus said, Socrates, you appear to have turned your faces townward and to be going to leave us.

When someone asked Socrates—an old man at Athens, and a poor one, whom you too know by report, since he lived very many years ago—whether he considered the king of the Persians happy, he replied, "Perhaps he is happy";

For they say that Hippias of Elis, once, after listening for a long while to Socrates speaking of justice and virtue,

"Socrates," he said, "this at least you know better than anything—that of men under the sun he is the mightiest, holding power not less than the gods themselves, since it is in his power even to make possible things that seem impossible, should he wish:

"From these he turned aside, the stone-cutter, the babbler about laws, the enchanter of the Greeks," says Timon in the Silloi, because he turned aside from natural philosophy to ethics.

and to Socrates the divine sign was a cause not by not preventing, but by turning away, even if it did not urge on.

"For there are, as those concerned with the rites say, many bearers of the thyrsus, but few bacchants" — hinting that the called are many, but the chosen few.

Plato and Aristotle and the whole throng of sages destined to go their separate ways drew more from Socrates' character than from his words.

A multitude unlike themselves could have shaken even Socrates, Cato, and Laelius out of their character;

And if you take delight in living with Greeks too, keep company with Socrates, with Zeno;

For this, as you know, is the old and Socratic method of disputing against another's opinion;

For the whole life of philosophers, as the same Socrates says, is a meditation upon death.

From this arose that reasoning of Plato's, which was explained by Socrates in the Phaedrus, and which I set down in the sixth book of my Republic:

This remark was reported to Critias and Charicles, who sent for Socrates, showed him the law and forbade him to hold conversation with the young.

So much, then, for the connexion of Critias with Socrates and their relation to each other.

But you see, Socrates, explained Critias, you will have to avoid your favourite topic, — the cobblers, builders and metal workers;

This method in philosophy, of arguing against all positions and pronouncing openly upon none, set going by Socrates, taken up again by Arcesilas and confirmed by Carneades, has flourished down to our own day;

for in the sayings which he reported as spoken by Socrates he makes Socrates argue that we ought not to inquire into the shape of god, and the same Socrates call both the sun and the soul a god, and speak now of one god, now of several — which fall into nearly the same mistakes as those we lay to Plato's charge.

Zeno, indeed, not only stung with abuse those of his own time — Apollodorus, Sillis, and the rest — but even said that Socrates himself, the parent of philosophy, was, using a Latin word, an Attic buffoon, and never called Chrysippus anything but Chrysippa.

But if nothing shows itself better than the very divinity seated within you, which has brought your own impulses under its sway, which scrutinizes your impressions, which has withdrawn itself, as Socrates said, from the persuasions of the senses, and has made itself subject to the gods and careful of men — if you find all else smaller and cheaper than this, then give place to nothing else;

What is recorded of Socrates would fit him too:

Vermin destroyed Democritus, and other vermin Socrates.

And what will so many and so great souls of mountain-folk and barbarians do, who lack the nourishments of wisdom, and yet are strong in untaught prudence, and — without academies and Attic porticoes, and indeed the prison of Socrates — nonetheless live while fasting from philosophy?

The state of the soul was already skirmished over in the prison of Socrates.

But more, both philosophers — against Dicaearchus, Plato, Strato, Epicurus, Democritus, Empedocles, Socrates, Aristotle — and physicians against Andreas and Asclepiades, Herophilus, Erasistratus, Diocles, Hippocrates, and Soranus himself;

hence arose Socrates’ notion that Courage is Knowledge.

These also mostly disown qualities held in high esteem, as Socrates used to do.

Socrates then thought that the virtues are principles, for he said that they are all of them forms of knowledge.

Were you with Socrates yourself, Phaedo, on the day when he drank the poison in prison, or did you hear about it from someone else?

And besides, Cebes rejoined, if it is true, Socrates, as you are fond of saying, that our learning is nothing else than recollection, then this would be an additional argument that we must necessarily have learned in some previous time what we now remember.

Socrates, I agree to the other things you say, but in regard to the soul men are very prone to disbelief.

After this, it seems, when Socrates had taken his place and had dined with the rest, they made libation and sang a chant to the god and so forth, as custom bids, till they betook them to drinking.

But all the same, I have since questioned Socrates on some details of the story I had from his friend, and he acknowledged them to be in accordance with his account.

So the attendant washed him and made him ready for reclining, when another of the servants came in with the news that our good Socrates had retreated into their neighbors’ porch;

Yes, Socrates, and our argument runs consistently, since we have said that what is profitable is wealth.

Well, said Socrates in reply, I thought you knew, Critobulus, that the operations of husbandry no less than those of war are in the hands of the gods.

Well, Socrates, replied Critobulus to this, I think you are right so far.

The door of the thinking-shop opens and the pupils of Socrates are seen all with their heads fixed on the ground, while Socrates himself is seen suspended in the air in a basket.

Tell me, O Socrates, I beseech you, by Jupiter, who are these that have uttered this grand song?

Dramatis Personae Strepsiades Phidippides Servant of Strepsiades Disciples of Socrates Socrates Chorus of Clouds Just Cause Unjust Cause Pasias Amynias Witness Chaerephon Hermes

while Socrates, disparaging himself in argument, conceded more to those whom he wished to refute;

'In like manner you, when, as those men would throw the commonwealth into confusion, so you would throw into confusion philosophy already well established, bring forward Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Parmenides, Xenophanes, and even Plato and Socrates.

For my part I seem to have lived with them, so many discourses have been written down, from which it cannot be doubted that to Socrates nothing seemed capable of being known;

But both the man I have named, and the other sophists, we see, as may be understood from Plato, made sport of by Socrates.

For when did Socrates, who may rightly be called the parent of philosophy, ever do anything of the sort?

and Socrates, who reckons pleasure at no point, I hear saying that the seasoning of food is hunger, of drink, thirst.

This is why Socrates said to a slave:

Will that Socrates cease to be able to carry back home the same face he had brought from home?

In Socrates a sign of anger was to lower his voice, to speak more sparingly.

1 When all were offering Socrates many gifts, each according to his means, Aeschines, a poor disciple, said:

Socrates is reported to have said that he was unwilling to come to one from whom he would receive benefits, when he could not return him equal ones.

I shall not bring forward to you Socrates, Chrysippus, Zeno and the rest, great men indeed, indeed the greater because in the praise of the ancients envy does not stand in the way.

Socrates, in the end, was condemned on that side where he had come closer to the truth, by destroying your gods.

In short, Socrates too, to their contumely, swears by an oak, a dog, and a goat.

" Socrates himself denied those gods, as if certain.

But for this very reason Socrates was condemned, because he was destroying the gods.

Yet when the Athenians afterward, repenting of their sentence, both punished the accusers of Socrates and set up a golden image of him in a temple, the rescinding of the condemnation rendered testimony to Socrates.

How many better men, nevertheless, have you left in the lower world!

Shipwrecked on a desert island well tenanted by wild beasts, who would be the fittest in the following crew—Socrates, Seneca, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sykes (the world-renowned Bill)?

This was the mode employed by Socrates in opposition to that used by the Sophists.

” Socrates pointed out a couple of thousand years ago that so far from proportioning the exercise of the sexual function to the requirements of population, the reverse process had been followed by man.

and Socrates, suspecting that his becoming a friend of Cyrus might be a cause for accusation against Xenophon on the part of the Athenian government, for the reason that Cyrus was thought to have given the Lacedaemonians zealous aid in their war against Athens, advised Xenophon to go to Delphi and consult the god in regard to this journey.

When Xenophon came back from Delphi, he reported the oracle to Socrates;

So Xenophon went and asked Apollo to what one of the gods he should sacrifice and pray in order best and most successfully to perform the journey which he had in mind and, after meeting with good fortune, to return home in safety;

If that is your view, Socrates, asked Antisthenes, how does it come that you don’t practise what you preach by yourself educating Xanthippe, but live with a wife who is the hardest to get along with of all the women there are—yes, or all that ever were, I suspect, or ever will be?

But on catching sight of a group comprising Socrates, Critobulus, Hermogenes, Antisthenes, and Charmides, Callias bade one of his servants escort Autolycus and the others, and himself going over to Socrates and his companions, said,

Well, answered Socrates, no one objects to telling what he considers the most valuable knowledge in his possession.

long hair and fasting were held in honor, men went dirty like Socrates and carried staves.

Socrates evokes the souls of men.