And very often, while arguing and discussing points that arose, he was treated with great violence and beaten, and pulled about, and laughed at and ridiculed by the multitude. But he bore all this with great equanimity. So that once, when he had been kicked and buffeted about, and had borne it all patiently, and someone expressed his surprise, he said: “Suppose an ass had kicked me, would you have had me bring an action against him?” And this is the account of Demetrius.
But he had no need of travelling (though most philosophers did travel), except when he was bound to serve in the army. But all the rest of his life he remained in the same place, and in an argumentative spirit he used to dispute with all who would converse with him, not with the purpose of taking away their opinions from them, so much as of learning the truth, as far as he could do so, himself. And they say that Euripides gave him a small work of Heraclitus to read, and asked him afterwards what he thought of it, and he replied: “What I have understood is good; and so, I think, what I have not understood is; only the book requires a Delian diver to get at the meaning of it.” He paid great attention also to the training of the body, and was always in excellent condition himself. Accordingly, he joined in the expedition to Amphipolis, and he it was who took up and saved Xenophon in the battle of Delium, when he had fallen from his horse; for when all the Athenians had fled, he retreated quietly, turning round slowly, and watching to repel anyone who attacked him. He also joined in the expedition to Potidaea, which was undertaken by sea; for it was impossible to get there by land, as the war impeded the communication. And they say that on this occasion he remained the whole night in one place; and that though he had deserved the prize of preeminent valor, he yielded it to Alcibiades, to whom Aristippus, in the fourth book of his treatise on the Luxury of the Ancients, says that he was greatly attached. But Ion, of Chios, says that while he was a very young man he left Athens, and went to Samos with Archelaus. And Aristotle says that he went to Delphi; and Phavorinus also, in the first book of his Commentaries, says that he went to the Isthmus.
He was a man of great firmness of mind, and very much attached to the democracy, as was plain from his not submitting to Critias, when he ordered him to bring Leon of Salamis, a very rich man, before the thirty for the purpose of being murdered. And he alone voted for the acquittal of the ten generals; and when it was in his power to escape out of prison he would not do it; and he reproved those who bewailed his fate, and even while in prison he delivered those beautiful discourses which we still possess.
He was a contented and venerable man. And once, as Pamphila says, in the seventh book of her Commentaries, when Alcibiades offered him a large piece of ground to build a house upon, he said: “But if I wanted shoes, and you had given me a piece of leather to make myself shoes, I should be laughed at if I took it.” And often, when he beheld the multitude of things which were being sold, he would say to himself: “How many things are there which I do not want.” And he was continually repeating these iambics:
For silver plate and purple useful are For actors on the stage, but not for men.
And he showed his scorn of Archelaus the Macedonian, and Scopas the Cranonian, and Eurylochus of Larissa, when he refused to accept their money and to go and visit them. And he was so regular in his way of living, that it happened more than once when there was a plague at Athens that he was the only person who did not catch it.
Aristotle says that he had two wives. The first was Xanthippe, by whom he had a son named Lamprocles; the second was Myrto, the daughter of Aristides the Just, and he took her without any dowry and by her he had two sons: Sophroniscus and Menexenus. But some say that Myrto was his first wife. And some, among whom are Satyrus, and Hieronymus, of Rhodes, say that he had them both at the same time. For they say that the Athenians, on account of the scarcity of men, passed a vote, with the view of increasing the population, that a man might marry one citizen and might also have children by another who should be legitimate; on which account Socrates did so.
And he was a man able to look down upon any who mocked him. And he prided himself upon the simplicity of his way of life, and never exacted any pay from his pupils. And he used to say that the man who ate with the greatest appetite had the least need of delicacies; and that he who drank with the greatest appetite was the least inclined to look for a draught which is not at hand; and that those who want fewest things are nearest to the Gods. And thus much, indeed, one may learn from the comic poets; who, without perceiving it, praise him in the very matters for which they ridicule him. Aristophanes speaks thus:
Prudent man, who thus with justice long for mighty wisdom, Happiness will be your lot in Athens, and all Greece too; For you’ve a noble memory, and plenty of invention, And patience dwells within your mind, and you are never tired, Whether you’re standing still or walking; and you care not for cold, Nor do you long for breakfast time, nor e’er give in to hunger; But wine and gluttony you shun, and all such kind of follies.
And Ameipsias introduces him on the stage in a cloak, and speaks thus of him:
O Socrates, among few men the best, And among many vainest; here at last You come to us courageously—but where, Where did you get that cloak? so strange a garment, Some leather cutter must have given you By way of joke: and yet this worthy man, Though ne’er so hungry, never flatters anyone.
Aristophanes too, exposes his contemptuous and arrogant disposition, speaking thus:
You strut along the streets, and look around you proudly, And barefoot many ills endure, and hold your head above us.
And yet, sometimes he adapted himself to the occasion and dressed handsomely. As, for instance, in the banquet of Plato, where he is represented as going to find Agathon.
He was a man of great ability, both in exhorting men to, and dissuading them from, any course; as for instance having discoursed with Theaetetus on the subject of knowledge, he sent him away almost inspired, as Plato says. And when Euthyphron had commenced a prosecution against his father for having killed a foreigner, he conversed with him on the subject of piety, and turned him from his purpose; and by his exhortations he made Lysis a most moral man. For he was very ingenious at deriving arguments from existing circumstances. And so he mollified his son Lamprocles when he was very angry with his mother, as Xenophon mentions somewhere in his works; and he wrought upon Glaucon, the brother of Plato, who was desirous to meddle with affairs of state, and induced him to abandon his purpose, because of his want of experience in such matters, as Xenophon relates. And on the contrary, he persuaded Charmidas to devote himself to politics, because he was a man very well calculated for such business. He also inspired Iphicrates, the general, with courage, by showing him the gamecocks of Midias the barber, pluming themselves against those of Callias; and Glauconides said that the state ought to keep him carefully, as if he were a pheasant or a peacock. He used also to say that it was a strange thing that everyone could easily tell what property he had, but was not able to name all his friends, or even to tell their number, so careless were men on that subject. Once when he saw Euclid exceedingly anxious about some dialectic arguments, he said to him: “O Euclid, you will acquire a power of managing sophists, but not of governing men.” For he thought that subtle hairsplitting on those subjects was quite useless; as Plato also records in the Euthydemus.
And when Charmidas offered him some slaves, with the view to his making a profit of them, he would not have them; and, as some people say, he paid no regard to the beauty of Alcibiades.
He used to praise leisure as the most valuable of possessions, as Xenophon tells us in his Banquet. And it was a saying of his that there was one only good, namely, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance; that riches and high birth had nothing estimable in them, but that on the contrary they were wholly evil. Accordingly, when someone told him that the mother of Antisthenes was a Thracian woman: “Did you suppose,” said he, “that so noble a man must be born of two Athenians?” And when Phaedo was reduced to a state of slavery, he ordered Crito to ransom him, and taught him, and made him a philosopher.
And, moreover, he used to learn to play on the lyre when he had time, saying that it was not absurd to learn anything that one did not know; and further, he used frequently to dance, thinking such an exercise good for the health of the body, as Xenophon relates in his Banquet.
He used also to say that the daemon foretold the future to him; and that to begin well was not a trifling thing, but yet not far from a trifling thing; and that he knew nothing, except the fact of his ignorance. Another saying of his was that those who bought things out of season, at an extravagant price, expected never to live till the proper season for them. Once, when he was asked what was the virtue of a young man, he said: “To avoid excess in everything.” And he used to say that it was necessary to learn geometry only so far as might enable a man to measure land for the purposes of buying and selling. And when Euripides, in his Auge, had spoken thus of virtue:
’Tis best to leave these subjects undisturbed;
he rose up and left the theatre, saying that it was an absurdity to think it right to seek for a slave if one could not find him, but to let virtue be altogether disregarded. The question was once put to him by a man whether he would advise him to marry or not? And he replied: “Whichever you do, you will repent it.” He often said that he wondered at those who made stone statues, when he saw how careful they were that the stone should be like the man it was intended to represent, but how careless they were of themselves as to guarding against being like the stone. He used also to recommend young men to be constantly looking in the glass, in order that, if they were handsome they might be worthy of their beauty, and if they were ugly they might conceal their unsightly appearance by their accomplishments. He once invited some rich men to dinner, and when Xanthippe was ashamed of their insufficient appointments, he said: “Be of good cheer; for if our guests are sensible men, they will bear with us; and if they are not, we need not care about them.” He used to say: “That other men lived to eat, but that he ate to live.” Another saying of his was: “That to have a regard for the worthless multitude, was like the case of a man who refused to take one piece of money of four drachmas as if it were bad, and then took a heap of such coins and admitted them to be good.” When Aeschines said: “I am a poor man, and have nothing else, but I give you myself;”—“Do you not,” he replied, “perceive that you are giving me what is of the greatest value?” He said to someone, who was expressing indignation at being overlooked when the thirty had seized on the supreme power: “Do you, then, repent of not being a tyrant too?” A man said to him: “The Athenians have condemned you to death.”—“And nature,” he replied, “has condemned them.” But some attribute this answer to Anaxagoras. When his wife said to him: “You die undeservedly.”—“Would you, then,” he rejoined, “have had me deserve death?” He thought once that someone appeared to him in a dream, and said:
On the third day you’ll come to lovely Phthia.
And so he said to Aeschines, “In three days I shall die.” And when he was about to drink the hemlock, Apollodorus presented him with a handsome robe, that he might expire in it; and he said: “Why was my own dress good enough to live in, and not good enough to die in?” When a person said to him: “Such an one speaks ill of you;”—“To be sure,” said he, “for he has never learnt to speak well.” When Antisthenes turned the ragged side of his cloak to the light, he said: “I see your silly vanity through the holes in your cloak.” When someone said to him: “Does not that man abuse you?”—“No,” said he, “for that does not apply to me.” It was a saying of his, too: “That it is a good thing for a man to offer himself cheerfully to the attacks of the comic writers; for then, if they say anything worth hearing, one will be able to mend; and if they do not, then all they say is unimportant.”
He said once to Xanthippe, who first abused him and then threw water at him: “Did I not say that Xanthippe was thundering now, and would soon rain?” When Alcibiades said to him: “The abusive temper of Xanthippe is intolerable;”—“But I,” he rejoined, “am used to it, just as I should be if I were always hearing the noise of a pulley; and you yourself endure to hear geese cackling.” To which Alcibiades answered: “Yes, but they bring me eggs and goslings.”—“Well,” rejoined Socrates, “and Xanthippe brings me children.” Once, she attacked him in the marketplace and tore his cloak off; his friends advised him to keep her off with his hands; “Yes, by Jove,” said he, “that while we are boxing you may all cry out, ‘Well done, Socrates, well done, Xanthippe.’ ” And he used to say that one ought to live with a restive woman, just as horsemen manage violent-tempered horses; “and as they,” said he, “when they have once mastered them, are easily able to manage all others; so I, after managing Xanthippe, can easily live with anyone else whatever.”
And it was in consequence of such sayings and actions as these that the priestess at Delphi was witness in his favor, when she gave Chaerephon this answer, which is so universally known: