lves,
whatever you do, though you should not now promise it; but 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." 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 burnt or buried, may not be
afflicted for me, as if I suffered some dreadful thing, nor say at my
interment that Socrates is laid out, or is carried out, or is buried.

"For be well assured," he said, "most excellent Crito, that to speak
improperly is not only culpable as to the thing itself, but likewise
occasions some injury to our souls. You must have a good courage, then,
and say that you bury my body, and bury it in such a manner as is
pleasing to you, and as you think is most agreeable to our laws."

When he had said thus he rose and went into a chamber to bathe, and
Crito followed him, but he directed us to wait for him. We waited,
therefore, conversing among ourselves about what had been said, and
considering it again, and sometimes speaking about our calamity, how
severe it would be to us, sincerely thinking that, like those who are
deprived of a father, we should pass the rest of our life as orphans.
When he had bathed, and his children were brought to him, for he had two
little sons, and one grown up; and the women belonging to his family
were come, having conversed with them in the presence of Crito and given
them s