roper ornament--temperance, justice, fortitude, freedom, and
truth--thus waits for his passage to Hades, as one who is ready to
depart whenever destiny shall summon him. You, then," he continued,
"Simmias and Cebes, and the rest, will each of you depart at some future
time, but now destiny summons me, as a tragic writer would say, and it
is nearly time for me to betake myself to the bath, for it appears to me
to be better to drink the poison after I have bathed myself, and not to
trouble the women with washing my dead body."

147. When he had thus spoken, Crito said, "So be it, Socrates, but what
commands have you to give to these or to me, either respecting your
children, or any other matter, in attending to which we can most oblige
you?"

"What I always say, Crito," he replied, "nothing new that by taking care
of yourselves you will oblige both me and mine, and yourselves, whatever
you do, though you should not now promise it, and if you neglect
yourselves, and will not live, as it were, in the footsteps of what has
been now and formerly said, even though you should promise much at
present, and that earnestly, you will do no good at all."

"We will endeavor, then, so to do," he said. "But how shall we bury
you?"

"Just as you please," he said, "if only you can catch me, and I do not
escape from you." 148. And, at the same time smiling gently, and looking
round on us, he said, "I cannot persuade Crito, my friends, that I am
that Socrates who is now conversing with you, and who methodizes each
part of the discourse; but he thinks that I am he whom he will shortly
behold dead, and asks how he should bury me. But that which I some time
since argued at length, that when I have drunk the poison I shall no
longer remain with you, but shall depart to some happy state of the
blessed, this I seem to have urged to him in vain, though I meant at the
same time to console both you and myself. Be ye, then, my sureties to
Crito," he said, "in an obligation contrary to that which he made to the
judges (for he undertook that I should remain); but do you be sureties
that, when I die, I shall not remain, but shall depart, that Crito may
more easily bear it; and, when he sees my body either burned or buried,
may not be afflicted for me, as if I suffered from some dreadful thing;
nor say at my interment that Socrates is laid out, or is carried out, or
is buried. 149. For be well assured," he said, "most excellent Crito,
that to speak i