Poison

And the sweetness of your world is poisoned — you eat no honeycomb but with venom;

four things that none mounts but a rash fool, and out of which few come safe — joining battle, going to sea, drinking poison by way of experiment, and entrusting women with a secret.

Beware of mingling with him, for it is more pervasive than poison and more piercing than the arrow.

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?

Only, Socrates, said Crito, that the man who is to administer the poison to you has been telling me for some time to warn you to talk as little as possible.

I was pretty sure that was what you would say, said Crito, but he has been bothering me for a long time.

But Philoneos’ mistress, who poured the wine for the libation, while they offered their prayers—prayers never to be answered, gentlemen—poured in the poison with it.

In the first place, I was ready to torture the defendants’ slaves, who knew that this woman, my opponents’ mother, had planned to poison our father on a previous occasion as well, that our father had caught her in the act, and that she had admitted everything— save that it was not to kill him, but to restore his love that she alleged herself to be giving him the potion.

and my father was seized with an illness which resulted in his death twenty days later.

However, I said, there would be no difficulty in proving his monstrous accusation a lie, as there were plenty of witnesses, slave and free, young and old, in fact, over fifty in all, who knew how the drinking of the poison had been accounted for and were in complete possession of the facts and circumstances.

Philocrates yonder presented himself before the Heliaea of the Thesmothetae on the very day of the boy’s burial, and declared that I had murdered his brother, a member of the chorus, by forcing him to drink poison.

In the first place, then, I will prove to you that I did not tell the boy to drink the poison, compel him to drink it, give it to him to drink, or even witness him drinking it.

Now it may happen (4) that his cook prepares dishes delicious to eat and puts into them (5) a deadly poison;

Never shall he see again alive the children I bore to him, nor from his new bride shall he beget issue, for she must die a hideous death, slain by my drugs.

’Twere best to take the shortest way—the way we women are most skilled in—by poison to destroy them.

Thrice seven viṣpuliṅkā birds have sucked up the flower of the poison.

The little iyattika bird, together with the śakuntikā bird, has eaten your poison.

Thrice seven peahens, the seven unmarried sisters — they have carried off your poison like water-carrying women carrying pots.

Someone gave me poison, but mixed with food it lost its force;

"O Poison, you are the son of Brahmā, established in the `*dharma*` of truth.

Having spoken thus, he should eat the Śārṅga poison from the Himalayan mountains;

The boys of that time used also to learn the properties of the products of the earth, so as to avail themselves of the useful ones and keep away from those that were harmful.