The friends of Socrates endeavoured to persuade him to make his escape, or at least to allow them to carry him off from his enemies. He rejected, how ever, the proposal as a violation of the law, and resolv ed to submit himself to its decrees.
His friends and disciples repaired to his prison, to hear the last words of their great master, and on this occasion the conversation turned principally on the immortality of the soul. Socrates condemned the practice of suicide, and assured his friends that his chief support was the expectation,not free from doubts, of a happy existence after death. "It would," he said, " be inexcusable to despise death, were I not persuaded that it would lead me into the presence of the gods, who are the most righteous governors, and into the society of just and good men; but I confide in the hope that something of men remains after death, and that the condition of good men will then be better than that of the bad." When Crito asked him how he wished to be buried, Socrates replied with a smile. "According to your pleasure,provided I do not escape out of your hands." Then addressing himself to the rest of the party, he said, "Is it not strange, after all that! have said to convince you, that I am going to the society of the happy, that Crito still thinks this body, which will soon be a lifeless corpse, to be Socrates? Let him dispose of my body as he pleases; but let him not at its interment mourn over it as if it were So crates."
After retiring to an adjoining apartment to bathe, he took his last leave of his friends, and then having prayed for a prosperous passage into the invisible world, he drank the fatal poison without the least change of countenance or apparent discomposure. His friends around him burst into tears. Socrates alone was unmoved. He upbraided their weakness, and implored them to exercise a manly fortitude wor thy of the friends of virtue. He continued walking till the influence of the hemlock forced him to lie down upon his bed. After remaining silent for a short time, he requested Crito not to neglect the offering of a cock, which he had vowed to Esculapius. Then covering himself with his cloak he expired. This event, the account of which Cicero assures us he never read without tears, took place in the year 399 B. C.
The Athenians were roused to a sense of their shame, in having destroyed one of the greatest of their citizens. Melitus was condemned to death, and Anyles escaped the same fate only by voluntary ex ile. The Athenians recalled the friends of Socrates from exile, decreed a general mourning, and erected a statue to his memory. See Pczusanias 1, cap. 42. Plutarch, De Op. Phil. 8cc. Cicero, Scc. Cret. 1, c. 24. Tusc. Quest. 1, c. 41, ralerius Maximus, 3, c. 4, and Brucher's History of Philosophy, by Enfield, vol. i. See also our articles ATHENS, and GREECE.