The period when Socrates first began to devote himself to the education of youth, can be determined only approximately from the time of the first representation of the Clouds of Aristophanes, which was in the year 423. The date of the Delphic oracle, which pronounced him the wisest of men, is not known. But in the traditions of his followers, he is almost uniformly represented as an old, or as a gray-headed man. His mode of instruction, wholly different from the pedantry and boastful ostentation of the Sophists, was altogether unconstrained, conversational, popular, starting from objects lying nearest at hand and the most insignificant, and deriving the necessary illustrations and proofs from the most common matters of every day life; in fact, he was reproached by his cotemporaries for speaking ever only of drudges, smiths, cobblers and tanners. So we find him at the market, in the gymnasia, in the workshops, busy early and late, talking with youth, with young men, and with old men, on the proper aim and business of life, convincing them of their ignorance, and wakening up in them the slumbering desires after knowledge. In every human effort, whether directed to the interests of the commonwealth, or to the private individual and the gains of trade, to science or to art, this master of helps to spiritual births could find fit points of contact for the awakening of a true self-knowledge, and a moral and religions consciousness. However often his attempts failed, or were rejected with bitter scorn, or requited with hatred and unthankfulness, yet, led on by the clear conviction that a real improvement in the condition of the state could come only from a proper education of its youth, he remained to the last true to his chosen vocation. Purely Greek in these relations to the rising generation, he designated himself, by preference, as the most ardent lover; Greek too in this, that with him, notwithstanding these free relations of friendship, his own domestic life fell quite into the background. He nowhere shows much regard for his wife and children; the notorious, though altogether too much exaggerated ill-nature of Xantippe, leads us to suspect, however, that his domestic relations were not the most happy.