e passing in review the great achievements of his
life, and the nine trophies which he had erected at different times for
so many victories. The dying patriot quietly interrupted with the
characteristic sentence: "What you praise in my life belongs partly to
good fortune, and is, at best, common to me with many generals. But that
of which I am proudest, you have left unnoticed--no Athenian has ever
put on mourning through any act of mine."

SOCRATES

From the French of FENELON

(468-399 B.C.)

[Illustration: Socrates. [TN]]

Socrates, who, by the consent of all antiquity, has been considered as
the most virtuous and enlightened of Pagan philosophers, was a citizen
of Athens, and belonged to the town of Alopece.

He was born in the fourth year of the 77th Olympiad. His father,
Sophroniscus, was a sculptor; and his mother, Phanarete, a midwife.

He first studied philosophy under Anaxagoras, and next under Archelaus,
the natural philosopher. But finding that all these vain speculations
concerning natural objects served no useful purpose, and had no
influence in rendering the philosopher a better man, he devoted himself
to the study of ethics; and (as Cicero, in the third book of his
Tusculan Questions, observes) may be said to be the founder of moral
philosophy among the Greeks. In the first book, speaking of him still
more particularly and more extensively, he expresses himself thus: "It
is my opinion (and it is an opinion in which all are agreed) that
Socrates was the first who, calling off the attention of philosophy from
the investigation of secrets which nature has concealed (but to which
alone all preceding philosophers had attached themselves), engaged her
in those things which concern the duties of common life; his object was
to investigate the nature of virtue and vice; and to point out the
characteristics of good and evil; saying, that the investigation of
celestial phenomena was a subject far above the reach of our powers;
and that even were they more within the reach of our faculties, it could
have no influence in regulating our conduct."

That part of philosophy, then, whose province is the cultivation of
morals, and which embraces every age and condition of life, he made his
only study. This new mode of philosophizing was the better received on
this account, that he who was the founder of it, fulfilling with the
most scrupulous care all the duties of a good citizen, whether in peace
or in wa