Death usually followed close upon condemnation: but the death of Socrates was delayed by an Athenian usage of great antiquity, said to have been instituted in commemoration of the deliverance of Attica by Theseus from the tyranny of Minos. Every year the sacred ship in which Theseus had sailed to Crete, was despatched with offerings to the sacred island of Delos; and in the interim between its departure and return no criminals were ever put to death. Socrates was condemned the evening before its departure, and consequently he was respited until its return—a period of thirty days. During this time his friends had access to him; and the dialogues of Plato, entitled Criton and Phædon, purport to be the substance of conversations held by him towards the close of this time. If he had been willing to escape, the gaoler was bribed and the means of escape prepared; but this was a breach of the laws which he refused to countenance, and he still thought, as he had said in his speech, exile to be worse than death. On the last day of his life, when his friends were admitted at sunrise, they found him with his wife and one child. These where soon dismissed, lest their lamentations should disturb his last interview with his friends and pupils: and he commenced a conversation which speedily turned on the immortality of the soul, the arguments for which, as they could best be developed by one of the acutest of human intellects, without the assistance of revelation, are summed up in that celebrated dialogue, the Phædon, which professes to relate all the events of this last day of the philosopher’s life. It concludes as follows:—