who had been weeping all the time, broke out
into a loud and passionate cry which made cowards of us all. Socrates
alone retained his calmness: "What is this strange outcry?" he said.
"I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in
this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet
then, and have patience." When we heard that, we were ashamed, and
refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs
began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the
directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at
his feet and legs; and after a while he prest his foot hard and asked
him if he could feel; and he said, "No"; and then his leg, and so
upward and upward, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he
felt them himself, and said: "When the poison reaches the heart, that
will be the end." He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when
he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they
were his last words)--"Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you
remember to pay the debt?" "The debt shall be paid," said Crito; "is
there anything else?" There was no answer to this question; but in a
minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him;
his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth.

Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call the
wisest, and justest, and best of all the men whom I have ever known.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 72: From the "Phaedo." Translated by Benjamin Jowett.
Probably the "Phaedo" is, of all Plato's writings, the most famous. Its
importance is ascribed by Mahaffy not only to what is said of
immortality, in passages which have "fascinated the thoughtful men of
all ages," but to the touching story of the last hours of Socrates.]

[Footnote 73: Echecrates seems to have been the Locrian philosopher to
whom Plato is believed to have gone for some of his early
instruction.]

ARISTOTLE

Born in Stagira in 384 B.C.; died at Chalcis in Euboea in 322; the
most famous of Greek philosophers; went to Athens in his eighteenth
year as a pupil of Plato and remained there for twenty years; in 343
went to the Court of Macedon, where he undertook the education of
Alexander the Great, then thirteen years old; in 335 returned to
Athens and produced the greater part of his writings; afterward forced
to flee from Athens to Chalcis during an uprising against the