drops, he said, with a smile, "I drink this to the most excellent
Critias," who had been his most bitter enemy; for it is customary among
the Greeks, at their banquets, to name the person to whom they intend
to deliver the cup. This celebrated man was pleasant to the last, even
when he had received the poison into his bowels, and truly foretold the
death of that man whom he named when he drank the poison, and that
death soon followed. Who that thinks death an evil could approve of the
evenness of temper in this great man at the instant of dying? Socrates
came, a few years after, to the same prison and the same cup by as
great iniquity on the part of his judges as the tyrants displayed when
they executed Theramenes. What a speech is that which Plato makes him
deliver before his judges, after they had condemned him to death!

XLI. "I am not without hopes, O judges, that it is a favorable
circumstance for me that I am condemned to die; for one of these two
things must necessarily happen--either that death will deprive me
entirely of all sense, or else that, by dying, I shall go from hence
into some other place; wherefore, if all sense is utterly extinguished,
and if death is like that sleep which sometimes is so undisturbed as to
be even without the visions of dreams--in that case, O ye good Gods!
what gain is it to die? or what length of days can be imagined which
would be preferable to such a night? And if the constant course of
future time is to resemble that night, who is happier than I am? But if
on the other hand, what is said be true, namely, that death is but a
removal to those regions where the souls of the departed dwell, then
that state must be more happy still to have escaped from those who call
themselves judges, and to appear before such as are truly so--Minos,
Rhadamanthus, AEacus, Triptolemus--and to meet with those who have lived
with justice and probity![23] Can this change of abode appear otherwise
than great to you? What bounds can you set to the value of conversing
with Orpheus, and Musaeus, and Homer, and Hesiod? I would even, were it
possible, willingly die often, in order to prove the certainty of what
I speak of. What delight must it be to meet with Palamedes, and Ajax,
and others, who have been betrayed by the iniquity of their judges!
Then, also, should I experience the wisdom of even that king of kings,
who led his vast troops to Troy, and the prudence of Ulysses and
Sisyphus: nor should I then b