Prison

We were all thrown into one prison.

After that the inmates of the prison passed a resolution not to share fire or light, food or drink with him, not to receive anything from him, not to give him anything.

Not content with abandoning his father in prison when he quitted Eretria, as you have heard from Phaedrus, this unnatural ruffian refused to bury him when he died, and would not refund the expenses to those who did bury him, but actually brought a law-suit against them.

Before Aristogeiton was released, a man of Tanagra was thrown into the prison until he could find bail.

And yet, by the gods, if I had led you off to prison as a thief caught in the act, piling upon your back—if this had been in any way possible—the wealth which you now possess, and had then demanded of you, if you denied having got this wealth by thievery, to refer me to the source from which you got it, to whom would you have referred me?

For of what use are either courts or prisons, if persons sentenced to imprisonment are set free, and if you are to get no benefit from any such sentence henceforward?

Suppose that in a moment’s time you were to hear an outcry hard by this court, and suppose that you were told that the jail had been thrown open and that the prisoners were escaping, there is not a man, however old or however apathetic, who would not rally to the rescue to the utmost of his power.

It would not have been lawful for you, gentlemen of the jury, to assess any penalty, corporal or pecuniary,for imprisonment is a corporal punishment, and therefore you could not have inflicted it as a penalty, nor could it have been provided by statute, in cases where information is laid or summary arrest is allowed, that the Eleven shall put in the stocks any man against whom information is laid, …

We used to meet at daybreak in the court where the trial took place, for it was near the prison;

We went in then and found Socrates just released from his fetters and Xanthippe—you know her—with his little son in her arms, sitting beside him.

In prison Socrates held a disputation and, when there were those who promised him flight, refused to go out, and remained, that he might take from men the fear of two most grievous things, death and prison.

And so, blessed ones, count yourselves transferred, should the case arise, from a prison into a place of safekeeping.

We, who are to obtain an eternal one, take the prison to be our wrestling-school, that we may be led out to the stadium of the tribunal well exercised in every hardship;

Among the nourishments of the flesh, blessed martyrs elect, which our lady mother the Church furnishes you in prison from her breasts, and which the brethren one by one supply from their own resources, accept also something from us that may serve to nourish the spirit as well.