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by men; but should you escape, having thus disgracefully re- turned injury for injury, and evil for evil, having violated your own compacts and conventions which you made with us, and having done evil to those to whom you least of all should have done it, namely, yourself, your friends, your country, and us, both we sshall be indignant with you as long as you live, and there our brothers, the laws in Hades, will not receive you fa- vourably, knowing that you attempted, as far as you were able, to destroy us.

Let not Crito, then, persuade you to do what he advises, rather than we.” 17, These things, my dear friend Crito, be assured I seem to hear, as the votaries of Cybele’ seem to hear the flutes. And the sound of these words booms in my ear, and makes me in- capable of hearing any thing else.

Be sure, then, so long as I f The Corybantes, priests of Cybele, who in their solemn festivals made euch a noise with flutes that the hearers could hear ne other sound. CRITO. 45 retain my present opinions, if you should say anything con- trary to these, you will speak in vain.

If, however, you think that you can prevail at all, say on. But, Socrates, I have nothing to say. Desist, then, Crito, and let us pursue this course, since this way the deity leads us, INTRODUCTION TO THE PHADO, Tuis dialogue presents us with an account of the mauner in which Socrates spent the last day of his life, and how he met his death.

The main subject is that of the soul’s immor- talitv, which Socrates takes upon himself to prove with as much certainty as it is possible for the human mind to arrive at. The question itself, though none could be better suited to the occasion, arises simply and naturally from the general con- versation that precedes it.

When his friends visit him in the morning for the purpose of spending this his last day with him, they find him sitting up in bed and rubbing his leg, which had just been freed from bonds. He remarks on the unaccountable alternation and connexion between pleasure and pain, and adds that A&sop, had he ob- served it, would have made a fable from it.

This remark reminds Cebes of Socrates’ having put some of Atsop’s fa- bles into metre since his imprisonment, and he asks, for the satisfaction of the poet Evenus, what had induced him to de so. Socrates explains his reason, and concludes by bidding him tell Evenus to follow him as soon as he can.

Simmias expresses his surprise at this message, on which Socrates asks, ‘Is not Evenus a philosopher ?” and on the question being answered in the affirmative, he suys, that he or any philoso- pher would be willing to die, though perhaps he would not commit violence on himself.

This, again, seems a contradic- tion to Simmias, but Socrates explains it by shewing that our souls are placed in the body by God, and may not leave it without His permission. Whereupon Cebes objects, that in that case foolish men only would wish to die and qnit the ser- vice of the best of masters, to which Simmias agrees, Socra- INTRODUCTION. 47 tes, therefore, proposes to plead his cause before them, and to shew that there is a great probability that after this life he shall go into the presence of God and good men, and be happy in proportion to the purity of his own mind.

He begins® by stating that philosophy itself is nothing else than a preparation for and meditation on death. Death and philosophy have this in common: death separates the soul from the body, philosophy draws off the mind from bodily things to the contemplation of truth and virtue: for he is not a true philosopher who is led away by bodily pleasures, since the senses are the source of ignorance and all evil; the mind, therefore, is entirely occupied in meditating on death, and freeing itself as much as possible from the body.