The Last Morning

Echecrates: Well then, what were the discussions, would you say?

Phaedo: I will try to tell you everything from the beginning. On the days before as well, the others and I had been in the habit of visiting Socrates. We used to gather at daybreak at the court where the trial had taken place, for it was near the prison. Each day we waited, talking with one another, until the prison was opened, for it did not open early; and when it was opened we went in to Socrates and usually spent the whole day with him. On that day we gathered earlier than usual, because the day before, 59e when we left the prison in the evening, we learned that the ship had arrived from Delos. So we told one another to come to the usual place as early as possible. We came, and the doorkeeper who usually let us in came out and told us to wait and not to go in until he gave the word. "The Eleven,"¹ he said, "are taking off Socrates' fetters and giving orders that he is to die today."

After a short while he came back and told us to go in. Going in, 60a we found Socrates just released from his fetters, and Xanthippe — you know her — sitting beside him with his little son in her arms. When Xanthippe saw us, she cried out and said the sort of things women usually say: "Socrates, this is the last time your friends will speak to you, and you to them." Socrates looked at Crito and said, "Crito, let someone take her home."

So some of Crito's people led her away, crying aloud 60b and beating her breast. Socrates sat up on the bed, bent his leg and rubbed it with his hand, and as he rubbed it he said: "What a strange thing, my friends, this seems to be that people call pleasure! How wonderfully it is related to what seems to be its opposite, pain! The two will not come to a man at the same time; yet if he pursues one of them and catches it, he is almost always bound to catch the other as well, as though they were two creatures joined to 60c a single head. I think," he said, "that if Aesop had noticed this, he would have made up a fable: the god wanted to reconcile them in their quarrel, and when he could not, he fastened their heads together; and that is why, when one of them comes to anyone, the other follows after. That is just what seems to have happened to me: there was pain in my leg from the fetter, and now pleasure seems to have come following after it."

Cebes broke in: "By Zeus, Socrates, I am glad you reminded me. Several people have been asking me about the 60d poems you have composed — putting the tales of Aesop into verse, and the hymn to Apollo — and Evenus² asked me only the other day: what were you thinking of, to write poetry after you came here, when you had never written any before? So if you care at all that I should have an answer for Evenus when he asks me again — and I am sure he will — tell me what I should say."

"Then tell him the truth, Cebes," he said. "I did not compose them because I wanted to rival him or his poems — 60e I knew that would not be easy — but to find out what certain dreams meant, and to clear my conscience, in case this was the kind of music they kept telling me to make. It was like this. The same dream often came to me in my past life, appearing now in one form, now in another, but always saying the same thing: 'Socrates,' it said, 'make music and work at it.'³

"In the past I took it to be urging and encouraging me 61a to do what I was already doing. Just as people cheer on runners, so the dream was cheering me on in what I was doing — making music — since philosophy is the greatest music, and that was what I was doing. But now, after the trial, while the festival of the god kept me from dying, I thought that if the dream was in fact telling me to make music of the popular kind, I ought not to disobey it but to make it; for it was safer not to depart before I had cleared my conscience 61b by composing poems in obedience to the dream. So first I composed a hymn to the god whose festival it was. After the god, I reflected that a poet, if he is to be a poet, must make stories, not arguments, and I was no storyteller myself; so I took the stories I had at hand and knew — the fables of Aesop — and put into verse the first of them I came upon. So tell Evenus this, Cebes; bid him farewell, and tell him, if he is wise, to follow me as soon as he can. 61c I am leaving today, it seems, since the Athenians order it."

Simmias said: "What advice to give Evenus, Socrates! I have met the man often, and from what I have seen of him he will not take it willingly in the least."

"Why?" said he. "Is Evenus not a philosopher?"

"I think he is," said Simmias.

"Then Evenus will be willing, and so will everyone who takes part in philosophy as it deserves. Yet perhaps he will not do violence to himself; for they say that is not permitted." And as he spoke he lowered 61d his legs to the ground, and he remained sitting like that for the rest of the conversation.

1. The board of officials in charge of the prison and of executions. ↩
2. Evenus of Paros, a sophist and minor poet who taught for a fee; he is mentioned in the Apology. ↩
3. The Greek mousike covered all the arts of the Muses, poetry above all. The dream's command could therefore mean philosophy, or poetry in the ordinary sense. ↩