'Socrates alone retained his calmness. What is this strange outcry? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience. When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel, and he said, No; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said, When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words)--he said, Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there anything else? There was no answer to this question: but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth.' We will make bold to observe on this celebrated passage, that it bears the impress of a dramatic scene rather than of a history. That Plato himself was not present as an eye-witness is expressly told us at the beginning of the dialogue (p. 59, B.) The narrative, to say nothing of the improbability of the execution of a distinguished criminal taking place before a company of friends at a social meeting, seems to us framed in ignorance of the medical nature of either narcotic or alkaloid poisons, and to have been compiled to suit the popular notions of the effects of κώνειον (whether the word means 'hemlock' or some other compound drug). The idea was, as is clear from the verse in the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes-- εὐθὺς γὰρ ἀποπήγνυσι τἀντικνήμια,-- that death by this poison was caused by a gradual _freezing up_, or suspension of vital power, beginning at the lower extremities, and creeping up to the heart. Whether a vigorous old man would die in this easy, gradual, and painless way by any known poison, is a medical question we should like to see answered. It may be observed, too, that if the poison were a narcotic, like laudanum, the 'walking about' was precisely the wrong course to take. _That_ is the method specially adopted to prevent and counteract the numbness caused by an overdose of morphia or laudanum. That Socrates was really poisoned, there can be no doubt; but the deed was probably done, as we think, in the darkness of a prison, and the Platonic scene was invented to give a vivid picture of the grand old man's calmness and dignity to the last.