“It shall be done,” said Crito; “but consider whether you have any thing else to say.”

To this question he gave no reply; but, shortly after, he gave a convulsive movement, and the man covered him, and his eyes were fixed; and Crito, perceiving it, closed his mouth and eyes.

This, Echecrates, was the end of our friend,—­a man, as we may say, the best of all of his time that we have known, and, moreover, the most wise and just.

FOOTNOTES

  [25] Phlius, to which Echecrates belonged, was a town of Sicyonia, in
    Peloponnesus.

  [26] A Pythagorean of Crotona.

  [27] Namely, “that it is better to die than to live.”

  [28] Hitto, Boetian for hioto.

  [29] Of Pythagoras.

  [30] Some boyish spirit.

  [31] That is, at a time of life when the body is in full vigor.

  [32] In the original there is a play on the words Haides and
    haeides, which I can only attempt to retain by departing from
    the usual rendering of the former word.

  [33] By this I understand him to mean that the soul alone can perceive
    the truth, but the senses, as they are different, receive and convey
    different impressions of the same thing; thus, the eye receives one
    impression of an object, the ear a totally different one.

  [34] kai ahythis eteros kai eteros, that is, “with one argument
    after another” Though Cousin translates it et successivement tout
    different de luimeme and Ast, et rursus alia atque alia, which
    may be taken in either sense, yet it appears to me to mean that,
    when a man repeatedly discovers the fallacy of arguments which he
    before believed to be true, he distrusts reasoning altogether, just
    as one who meets with friend after friend who proves unfaithful
    becomes a misanthrope.

  [35] Lib. xx, v. 7.

  [36] Harmony was the wife of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes; Socrates,
    therefore, compares his two Theban friends, Simmias and Cebes, with
    them, and says that, having overcome Simmias, the advocate of
    Harmony, he must now deal with Cebes, who is represented by Cadmus.

  [37] einai ti, literally, “is something.”

  [38] That is, to single.

  [39] Sec. 113.

  [40] It is difficult to express the distinction between osia
    and nomima.  The former word seems to have reference to the souls of
    the dead; the latter, to their bodies.

  [41] Its place of interment.

  [42] A proverb meaning “a matter of great difficulty.”

  [43] “Iliad,” lib. viii., v. 14.

  [44] A metallic substance of a deep-blue color, frequently mentioned by
    the earliest Grecian writers, but of which the nature is unknown.