Being called upon for his defense, Socrates replied that, so far from violating the state religion, he had constantly admonished his disciples not to depart from the established customs. He refused to be released on terms which required him to desist from teaching. To develop wisdom and virtue in the young had been the passion of his life. He claimed no wisdom of his own, but sought to draw out the thoughts of others to just conclusions. And if he could persuade any that the care of becoming every day wiser and better must take precedence of all other cares, he was sure that he had conferred the greatest possible benefit. The high tone of his defense only irritated his judges, and he was condemned to death by poison. The Paralus had now gone on its sacred yearly mission to the isle of Delos, and no execution could take place until its return. The thirty days thus spent by Socrates in prison were filled with inspiring converse with his friends. He spoke cheerfully of the past and the future, and expressed his immovable conviction of the immortality of the soul. His last request was that a cock should be sacrificed in his name to Æscula´pius,[54] an offering which persons were accustomed to make on their recovery from illness—by this common symbol testifying to all the people that he considered death as a joyful release from a state of imperfection and disease. When the appointed moment arrived, he drank the hemlock and calmly expired. [Sidenote: B. C. 402.] [Sidenote: B. C. 401.] =215.= INVASION OF ELIS. The Eleans were among the first to feel the unchecked power of Sparta. As guardians of the sacred grove at Olympia, they had excluded the Spartans from the games at the time when the Athenians appeared, with such magnificence, under the direction of Alcibiades, and they had borne arms against them, in alliance with the Argives and Mantineans (B. C. 420-416). They had crowned their insults by ejecting King Agis from their temple, when he had come with sacrifices to consult the oracle. Agis now demanded satisfaction, which the Eleans refused to give, and he crossed their borders with a considerable force. An earthquake alarmed his superstition, and he retired without any active hostility. But the next year renewed his courage. With a large number of allies, among whom even the Athenians appeared, he overran and plundered the sacred land, and performed by force the sacrifice which he had been prevented from offering peaceably. Thus victorious in his first expedition, the Spartan turned his vengeance upon the Messenians, who had been settled in his territory or upon the neighboring islands, and expelled or enslaved them all. [Sidenote: B. C. 398.]