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Section 60

Socrates sat up on the bed, bent his leg, rubbed it with his hand, and while rubbing it said: "What a strange thing this seems to be, gentlemen, this thing men call pleasure! How remarkably it is related to what seems its opposite, pain! The two are never willing to be present in a human being at the same time, yet if someone pursues one of them and catches it, he is almost always compelled to catch the other as well, as if the two were joined together at one head. I think," he said, "that if Aesop had noticed them, he would have composed a fable about how the god, wishing to settle their quarrel and being unable to do so, fastened their heads together. And so, wherever one goes, the other follows. That is exactly what seems to have happened to me just now. The pain in my leg from the fetter has departed, and the pleasure has apparently followed right behind it." Cebes interrupted and said, "By Zeus, Socrates, it was good you reminded me. Several people have been asking me about the poems you recently composed—turning Aesop's fables into verse and composing the prelude to Apollo. Evenus asked me just the other day what your intention was in composing them now that you are here in prison, when you had never composed poetry before. So if you care that I have an answer for Evenus when he asks me again—and I know he will—tell me what I should say." "Tell him the truth, Cebes," said Socrates. "I did not compose them because I wanted to rival him or his poems, for I knew that would not be easy. Rather, I was trying to discover the meaning of certain dreams, and fulfilling a sacred duty in case these dreams were commanding me to make this kind of music. The dreams were like this: often in my past life the same dream visited me, appearing in different forms but always saying the same thing: 'Socrates, make music and work at it.' Previously, I assumed that the dream was simply encouraging and urging me on in what I was already doing—just as people cheer on runners in a race. I thought it was urging me to continue making music, believing that philosophy is the greatest music and that this was what I was practicing. But now, after the trial occurred and the festival of the god delayed my death, I thought that if perhaps the dream was ordering me to make popular music, I must not disobey, but compose. For it seemed safer not to depart before I had absolved myself and purified my conscience by composing poems in obedience to the dream."