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."

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; but if you
neglect yourselves, and will not live as it were in the footprints 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 can not 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 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