great teacher's last hours, and
the last words his followers were to hear from his lips, the additional
force and dramatic value of a personal narrative in the mouth of a
loving pupil and an actual eyewitness of his death.)

Echecrates. Were you personally present, Phaedo, with Socrates on that
day when he drank the poison in prison? or did you hear an account of it
from someone else?

_Phaed._ I was there myself, Echecrates.

_Ech._ What then did he say before his death? and how did he die? for I
should be glad to hear; for scarcely any citizen of Phlius[39] ever
visits Athens now, nor has any stranger for a long time come from
thence, who was able to give us a clear account of the particulars,
except that he died from drinking poison; but he was unable to tell us
anything more.

[Footnote 39: Phlius, to which Echecrates belonged, was a town of
Sicyonia in Peloponnesus.]

_Phaed._ And did you not hear about the trial how it went off?

_Ech._ Yes; some one told me this; and I wondered, that as it took place
so long ago, he appears to have died long afterward. What was the reason
of this, Phaedo?

_Phaed._ An accidental circumstance happened in his favor, Echecrates:
for the poop of the ship which the Athenians send to Delos, chanced to
be crowned on the day before the trial.

_Ech._ But what is this ship?

_Phaed._ It is the ship, as the Athenians say, in which Theseus formerly
conveyed the fourteen boys and girls to Crete and saved both them and
himself. They, therefore, made a vow to Apollo on that occasion, as it
is said, that if they were saved they would every year despatch a solemn
embassy to Delos; which, from that time to the present, they send yearly
to the god. When they begin the preparations for this solemn embassy,
they have a law that the city shall be purified during this period, and
that no public execution shall take place until the ship has reached
Delos, and returned to Athens: and this occasionally takes a long time,
when the winds happen to impede their passage. The commencement of the
embassy is when the priest of Apollo has crowned the poop of the ship.
And this was done, as I said, on the day before the trial: on this
account Socrates had a long interval in prison between the trial and his
death.

_Ech._ And what, Phaedo, were the circumstances of his death? what was
said and done? and who of his friends were with him? or would not the
magistrates allow them to be present, but did