He had invited some rich men and, when Xanthippe said she felt ashamed of the dinner, Never mind, said he, for if they are reasonable they will put up with it, and if they are good for nothing, we shall not trouble ourselves about them. He would say that the rest of the world lived to eat, while he himself ate to live. Of the mass of men who do not count he said it was as if some one should object to a single tetradrachm as counterfeit and at the same time let a whole heap made up of just such pieces pass as genuine. Aeschines said to him, I am a poor man and have nothing else to give, but I offer you myself, and Socrates answered, Nay, do you not see that you are offering me the greatest gift of all? To one who complained that he was overlooked when the Thirty rose to power, he said, You are not sorry for that, are you?

To one who said, You are condemned by the Athenians to die, he made answer, So are they, by nature. But some ascribe this to Anaxagoras. When his wife said, You suffer unjustly, he retorted, Why, would you have me suffer justly? He had a dream that some one said to himHom. ix. 363.: On the third day thou shalt come to the fertile fields of Phthia; and he told Aeschines, On the third day I shall die.The proposal that Socrates should escape from prison was attributed to Aeschines as well as to Crito (see below, 60). The Homeric citation occurs in Plato’s , 44 b. When he was about to drink the hemlock, Apollodorus offered him a beautiful garment to die in: What, said he, is my own good enough to live in but not to die in? When he was told that So-and-so spoke ill of him, he replied, True, for he has never learnt to speak well.

When Antisthenes turned his cloak so that the tear in it came into view, I see, said he, your vanity through your cloak. To one who said, Don’t you find so-and-so very offensive? his reply was, No, for it takes two to make a quarrel. We ought not to object, he used to say, to be subjects for the Comic poets, for if they satirize our faults they will do us good, and if not they do not touch us. When Xanthippe first scolded him and then drenched him with water, his rejoinder was, Did I not say that Xanthippe’s thunder would end in rain? When Alcibiades declared that the scolding of Xanthippe was intolerable, Nay, I have got used to it, said he, as to the continued rattle of a windlass. And you do not mind the cackle of geese.

No, replied Alcibiades, but they furnish me with eggs and goslings. And Xanthippe, said Socrates, is the mother of my children. When she tore his coat off his back in the market-place and his acquaintances advised him to hit back, Yes, by Zeus, said he, in order that while we are sparring each of you may join in with Go it, Socrates! Well done, Xanthippe! He said he lived with a shrew, as horsemen are fond of spirited horses, but just as, when they have mastered these, they can easily cope with the rest, so I in the society of Xanthippe shall learn to adapt myself to the rest of the world.

These and the like were his words and deeds, to which the Pythian priestess bore testimony when she gave Chaerephon the famous response: Of all men living Socrates most wise.

For this he was most envied; and especially because he would take to task those who thought highly of themselves, proving them to be fools, as to be sure he treated Anytus, according to Plato’s .95 a. For Anytus could not endure to be ridiculed by Socrates, and so in the first place stirred up against him Aristophanes and his friends; then afterwards he helped to persuade Meletus to indict him on a charge of impiety and corrupting the youth.

The indictment was brought by Meletus, and the speech was delivered by Polyeuctus, according to Favorinus in his The speech was written by Polycrates the sophist, according to Hermippus; but some say that it was by Anytus. Lycon the demagogue had made all the needful preparations.The confusion in the last sentence of 38 is due to the insertion in the wrong place of two extracts, one from Favorinus and the other from Hermippus. When these are removed, the parts assigned to the three accusers, Meletus, Anytus and Lycon, become clear: ἀπηνέγκατο μὲν οὖν τὴν γραφὴν ὁ Μέλητος, εἶπε δὲ τὴν δίκην Ἄνυτος, προητοίμασε δὲ πάντα Λύκων ὁ δημαγωγός.