ey to do, so
they may but hope for some amendment of their beauty? To become slender
in waist, and to have a straight spagnolised body, what pinching, what
girding, what cingling will they not endure! Yea, sometimes with iron
plates, with whalebones, and other such trashy implements, that their
very skin and quick flesh is eaten in and consumed to the bones, whereby
they sometimes work their own death.

There is a certain effeminate and light opinion, and that no more in
sorrow than it is in pleasure, whereby we are so dainty tender that we
cannot abide to be stung of a bee, but must roar and cry out. This is
the total sum of all, that you be master of yourself.

PLATO

The Apology, or Defence of Socrates

Aristocles, the son of Ariston, whose birth name is almost
forgotten because the whole world knows him as Plato, was born at
Athens about the year 427 B.C. As he grew up he became a devoted
disciple of Socrates, and when the Athenian people had put the
master to death, the disciple gave up his life to expounding the
wisdom of his teacher. How much of that teaching was really
implicitly contained in the doctrines of Socrates, it is difficult
to say, since very definite developments evidently took place in
Plato's own views. Plato himself lived to the age of eighty, and
died, as he had for the most part lived, at Athens, in 347. When
Socrates was indicted for "corrupting the youth" of Athens and on
other corresponding charges, Plato was himself present at the
trial. We may believe that the "Apology" is substantially a
reproduction of the actual defence made by Socrates. The "judges"
in the Athenian court were practically the assembled body of free
Athenian citizens. When an adverse verdict was given, the accused
could propose a penalty as an alternative to that which had been
named by the accuser, and the court could choose between the two
penalties. Socrates was found guilty by a small majority of votes,
and sentence of death was passed, as set forth in the last section
of the "Apology."

_I.--The Official Indictment, and the Real Charges_

What my accusers have said, Athenians, has been most specious, but none
of it is true. The falsehood which most astonished me was that you must
beware of being beguiled by my consummate eloquence; for I am not
eloquent at all, unless speaking pure truth be eloquenc