Phaedo. According to Athenian legend, it's the ship in which 10 Theseus once sailed to Crete, taking the famous 'seven pairs', when he saved their lives and his own as well. It is said that at that time the b Athenians had made a vow to Apollo that if they were saved, they would, in return, dispatch a mission to Delos every year; and this they have sent annually ever since, down to this day, in honour of the god. Once they've started the mission, it is their law that the city 5 shall be pure during that period, which means that the state shall put no one to death, till the ship has reached Delos and returned; and this sometimes takes a long time, when winds happen to hold them c back. The mission starts as soon as the priest of Apollo has wreathed the stern of the ship; and, as I say, this chanced to have taken place on the day before the trial. That's why Socrates spent a long time in prison between his trial and death. 5
Echecrates. And what about the circumstances of the death itself,
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Phaedo? What was it that was said and done, and which of his intimates were there with him? Or would the authorities allow no one to be present, so that he met his end isolated from his friends? d Phaedo. By no means: some were present, in fact quite a number.
Echecrates. Please do try, then, to give us as definite a report as you can of the whole thing, unless you happen to be otherwise engaged.
Phaedo. No, I am free, and I'll try to describe it for you; indeed 5 it's always the greatest of pleasures for me to recall Socrates, whether speaking myself or listening to someone else.
Echecrates. Well, Phaedo, you certainly have an audience of the same mind; so try to recount everything as minutely as you can. e Phaedo. Very well then. I myself was curiously affected while I was there: it wasn't pity that visited me, as might have been expected for someone present at the death of an intimate friend; because the man seemed to me happy, Echecrates, both in his manner and his words, so fearlessly and nobly was he meeting his end; and so I felt 5 assured that even while on his way to Hades he would not go without divine providence, and that when he arrived there he would fare 59 well, if ever any man did. That's why I wasn't visited at all by the pity that would seem natural for someone present at a scene of sorrow, nor again by the pleasure from our being occupied, as usual, with philosophy—because the discussion was, in fact, of that sort— 5 but a simply extraordinary feeling was upon me, a sort of strange mixture of pleasure and pain combined, as I reflected that Socrates was shortly going to die. All of us there were affected in much the same way, now laughing, now in tears, one of us quite exceptionally b so, Apollodorus—I think you know the man and his manner.
Echecrates. Of course.
Phaedo. Well, he was completely overcome by this state; and I myself was much upset, as were the others. 5 Echecrates. And just who were there, Phaedo?
Phaedo. Of the local people there was this Apollodorus, and Critobulus and his father, and then there were Hermogenes, Epigenes, Aeschines, and Antisthenes; Ctesippus of the Paeanian deme was there too, and Menexenus and some other local people. Plato, I 10 believe, was sick.
Echecrates. Were there any visitors there?
Phaedo. Yes: Simmias of Thebes, and Cebes and Phaedondes; and c Euclides and Terpsion from Megara.
Echecrates. What about Aristippus and Cleombrotus? Were they there?
Phaedo. No, they weren't; they were said to be in Aegina.
Echecrates. Was anyone else there? 5
Phaedo. I think those were about all.
Echecrates. Well then, what discussion do you say took place?
Phaedo. I'll try to describe everything for you from the beginning. Regularly, you see, and especially on the preceding days, I myself d and Socrates' other companions had been in the habit of visiting him; we would meet at daybreak at the court-house, where the trial was held, as it was close to the prison. We used to wait each day till the prison opened, talking with one another, as it didn't open 5 very early. When it did, we would go in to Socrates and generally spent the day with him. On that particular day we'd met earlier still; because when we left the prison the evening before, we learnt e that the ship had arrived from Delos. So we passed the word to one another to come to our usual place as early as possible. When we arrived, the door-keeper who usually admitted us came out and told us to wait, and not to go in till he gave the word; 'because', he said, 5 'the Eleven are releasing Socrates, and giving orders that he's to die today.' But after a short interval he came back and told us to go in. On entering we found Socrates, just released, and Xanthippe—you 60 know her—holding his little boy and sitting beside him. When she saw us, Xanthippe broke out and said just the kinds of thing that women are given to saying: 'So this is the very last time, Socrates, that your 5 good friends will speak to you and you to them.' At which Socrates looked at Crito and said: 'Crito, someone had better take her home.'
So she was taken away by some of Crito's people, calling out and lamenting; Socrates, meanwhile, sat up on the bed, bent his leg, and b rubbed it down with his hand. As he rubbed it, he said: 'What an odd thing it seems, friends, this state that men call "pleasant"; and how curiously it's related to its supposed opposite, "painful": to think 5 that the pair of them refuse to visit a man together, yet if anybody
pursues one of them and catches it, he's always pretty well bound to catch the other as well, as if the two of them were attached to a c single head. I do believe that if Aesop had thought of them, he'd have made up a story telling how God wanted to reconcile them in their quarrelling, but when he couldn't he fastened their heads together, and that's why anybody visited by one of them is later 5 attended by the other as well. This is just what seems to be happening in my own case: there was discomfort in my leg because of the fetter, and now the pleasant seems to have come to succeed it.'
Here Cebes joined in and said: 'Goodness yes, Socrates,-thanks for reminding me. Several people, you know, including Evenus just d the other day, have been asking me about the poems you've made up, putting the tales of Aesop into verse, and the hymn to Apollo: what had you in mind, they asked, in making them up after you'd come here, when you'd never made up anything before? So if you'd 5 like me to have an answer for Evenus when he asks me again—and I'm quite sure he will—tell me what I should say.'
'Tell him the truth, then, Cebes,' he said: 'I made them, not e because I wanted to compete with him or his verses—I knew that wouldn't be easy—but because I was trying to find out the meaning of certain dreams and fulfil a sacred duty, in case perhaps it was that kind of art they were ordering me to make. They were like this, you 5 see: often in my past life the same dream had visited me, now in one guise, now in another, but always saying the same thing: "Socrates," it said, "make art and practise it." Now in earlier times I used to assume that the dream was urging and telling me to do exactly what 61 I was doing: as people shout encouragement to runners, so the dream was telling me to do the very thing that I was doing, to make art, since philosophy is a very high art form, and that was what I was 5 making. But now that the trial was over and the festival of the god was preventing my death, I thought that in case it was art in the popular sense that the dream was commanding me to make, I ought not to disobey it, but should make it; as it was safer not to go off b before I'd fulfilled a sacred duty, by making verses and thus obeying the dream. And so I first made them for the god in whose honour the present feast was kept. Then, after addressing the god, I reflected that a poet should, if he were really going to be a poet, make tales