Key Arguments

• When the jailer arrives and tearfully announces that ‘you know my errand,’ Socrates answers, ‘I return your good wishes, and will do as you bid,’ and praises the man’s kindness, showing gratitude rather than resentment toward the agent of his death.
• Crito urges delay, noting that others ‘has taken the draught late, and after the announcement has been made to him, he has eaten and drunk, and enjoyed the society of his beloved; do not hurry—there is time enough,’ but Socrates replies that such people ‘think that they will be gainers by the delay; but I am right in not following their example,’ since he ‘should only be ridiculous in my own eyes for sparing and saving a life which is already forfeit.’
• He asks the attendant for instructions, then, ‘in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of colour or feature,’ takes the cup, inquires about making a libation, utters a brief prayer ‘to prosper my journey from this to the other world,’ and ‘quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison,’ embodying the fearless attitude toward death he had argued for earlier.
• When his friends begin to weep and cry out, Socrates alone ‘retained his calmness’ and rebukes them: ‘What is this strange outcry?… I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not misbehave in this way, for I have been told that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience,’ thus reaffirming his ideal of a tranquil, orderly death.
• His behaviour concretely enacts his thesis that the true philosopher has long been practicing for death and therefore meets it without fear.

Source Quotes

Then bursting into tears he turned away and went out. Socrates looked at him and said: I return your good wishes, and will do as you bid. Then turning to us, he said, How charming the man is: since I have been in prison he has always been coming to see me, and at times he would talk to me, and was as good to me as could be, and now see how generously he sorrows on my account.

Yet, said Crito, the sun is still upon the hill-tops, and I know that many a one has taken the draught late, and after the announcement has been made to him, he has eaten and drunk, and enjoyed the society of his beloved; do not hurry—there is time enough. Socrates said: Yes, Crito, and they of whom you speak are right in so acting, for they think that they will be gainers by the delay; but I am right in not following their example, for I do not think that I should gain anything by drinking the poison a little later; I should only be ridiculous in my own eyes for sparing and saving a life which is already forfeit. Please then to do as I say, and not to refuse me.

The man answered: You have only to walk about until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will act. At the same time he handed the cup to Socrates, who in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of colour or feature, looking at the man with all his eyes, Echecrates, as his manner was, took the cup and said: What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god? May I, or not?

I understand, he said: but I may and must ask the gods to prosper my journey from this to the other world—even so—and so be it according to my prayer. Then raising the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept, not for him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having to part from such a friend.

Socrates alone retained his calmness: What is this strange outcry? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not misbehave in this way, for I have been told that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience. When we heard his words 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 pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel; and he said, No; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff.

Key Concepts

• I return your good wishes, and will do as you bid.
• but I am right in not following their example, for I do not think that I should gain anything by drinking the poison a little later; I should only be ridiculous in my own eyes for sparing and saving a life which is already forfeit.
• who in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of colour or feature, looking at the man with all his eyes, Echecrates, as his manner was, took the cup
• Then raising the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison.
• I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not misbehave in this way, for I have been told that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience.

Context

In Phaedo’s narration of the final moments, Socrates’ composure, refusal to delay, and gentle rebuke of his friends dramatize the practical consequence of his earlier philosophical teaching about the soul and death.