pestering me."

"Never mind him," he rejoined.

"But now I wish to render an account to you, my judges, of the reason
why a man who has really devoted his life to philosophy, when he is
about to die, appears to me, on good grounds, to have confidence, and to
entertain a firm hope that the greatest good will befall him in the
other world when he has departed this life. How, then, this comes to
pass, Simmias and Cebes, I will endeavor to explain."

"For as many as rightly apply themselves to philosophy seem to have left
all others in ignorance, that they aim at nothing else than to die and
be dead. If this, then, is true, it would surely be absurd to be anxious
about nothing else than this during their whole life, but, when it
arrives, to be grieved at what they have been long anxious about and
aimed at."

22. Upon this, Simmias, smiling, said, "By Jupiter! Socrates, though I
am not now at all inclined to smile, you have made me do so; for I think
that the multitude, if they heard this, would think it was very well
said in reference to philosophers, and that our countrymen particularly
would agree with you, that true philosophers do desire death, and that
they are by no means ignorant that they deserve to suffer it."

"And, indeed, Simmias, they would speak the truth, except in asserting
that they are not ignorant; for they are ignorant of the sense in which
true philosophers desire to die, and in what sense they deserve death,
and what kind of death. But," he said, "let us take leave of them, and
speak to one another. Do we think that death is any thing?"

"Certainly," replied Simmias.

23. "Is it any thing else than the separation of the soul from the
body? And is not this to die, for the body to be apart by itself
separated from the soul, and for the soul to subsist apart by itself
separated from the body? Is death any thing else than this?"

"No, but this," he replied.

"Consider, then, my good friend, whether you are of the same opinion as
I; for thus, I think, we shall understand better the subject we are
considering. Does it appear to you to be becoming in a philosopher to be
anxious about pleasures, as they are called, such as meats and drinks?"

"By no means, Socrates," said Simmias.

"But what? about the pleasures of love?"

"Not at all."

24. "What, then? Does such a man appear to you to think other bodily
indulgences of value? For instance, does he seem to you to value or
despise the possession