Phaedo.
You, Simmias and Cebes and the rest,
he said, will go hereafter, each
in his own time; but I am now already, as a tragedian would say, called by fate,
and it is about time for me to go to the bath; for I think it is better to bathe
before drinking the poison, that the women may not have the trouble of bathing
the corpse.
When he had finished speaking,
Crito said:
Well, Socrates, do you
wish to leave any directions with us about your children or anything
else—anything we can do to serve you?
What I always say, Crito,
he replied, nothing new. If you
take care of yourselves you will serve me and mine and yourselves, whatever you
do, even if you make no promises now; but if you neglect yourselves and are not
willing to live following step by step, as it were, in the path marked out by
our present and past discussions, you will accomplish nothing,
no matter how much or how eagerly you promise at
present.
We will certainly try
hard to do as you say,
he replied. But how shall we bury
you?
However you please,
he replied, if you can catch me and I do not get away from you.
And he laughed gently, and looking towards us, said: I cannot persuade
Crito, my friends, that the Socrates who is now conversing and arranging the
details of his argument is really I; he thinks I am the one whom he will
presently see as a corpse,
and he asks how
to bury me. And though I have been saying at great length that after I drink the
poison I shall no longer be with you, but shall go away to the joys of the
blessed you know of, he seems to think that was idle talk uttered to encourage
you and myself. So,
he said, give security for me to Crito, the
opposite of that which he gave the judges at my trial; for he gave security that
I would remain, but you must give security that I shall not remain when I die,
but shall go away, so that Crito may
bear it more easily, and may not be troubled when he sees my body being burnt or
buried, or think I am undergoing terrible treatment, and may not say at the
funeral that he is laying out Socrates, or following him to the grave, or
burying him. For, dear Crito, you may be sure that such wrong words are not only
undesirable in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.