Phaedo. So after a little delay he came and
told us to
go in. We went in then and found Socrates just released from his fetters and
Xanthippe—you know her—with his little son in her arms, sitting
beside him. Now when Xanthippe saw us, she cried out and said the kind of thing
that women always do say: Oh Socrates, this is the last time now that
your friends will speak to you or you to them.
And Socrates glanced at
Crito and said, Crito, let somebody take her home.
And some of Crito’s people took her away wailing and beating her breast. But Socrates sat
up on his couch and bent his leg and rubbed it with his hand, and while he was
rubbing it, he said, What a strange thing, my friends, that seems to be
which men call pleasure! How wonderfully it is related to that which seems to be
its opposite, pain, in that they will not both come to a man at the same time,
and yet if he pursues the one and captures it he is generally obliged to take
the other also, as if the two were joined together in one head. And I
think,
he said, if Aesop had thought of them, he would have made a fable telling how they were at war and god
wished to reconcile them, and when he could not do that, he fastened their heads
together, and for that reason, when one of them comes to anyone, the other
follows after. Just so it seems that in my case, after pain was in my leg on
account of the fetter, pleasure appears to have come following
after.
Here Cebes interrupted and said,
By Zeus, Socrates, I am glad you reminded me.
Several others have asked about the poems you have composed,
the metrical versions of Aesop’s fables and the hymn to Apollo, and Evenus asked
me the day before yesterday why you never wrote any poetry before, composed
these verses after you came to prison. Now, if you care that I should be able to
answer Evenus when he asks me again—and I know he will ask me—tell
me what to say.
Then tell him,
Cebes,
said he, the truth, that I composed these verses not
because I wished to rival him or his poems,
for I knew that would not be easy, but because I wished to test the meaning of
certain dreams, and to make sure that I was neglecting no duty in case their
repeated commands meant that I must cultivate the Muses in this way. They were
something like this. The same dream came to me often in my past life, sometimes
in one form and sometimes in another, but always saying the same thing:
Socrates,
it said, make music and work at it.