The climate of Athens is about like that of Southern California--one does not need to bank food and fuel against the coming of Winter. Life can be adjusted to its simplest forms. From his fortieth to his fiftieth year, Socrates worked every other Thursday; then he retired from active life, and Xantippe took in plain sewing. Socrates was surely not a good provider, but if he had provided more for his family, he would have provided less for the world. The wealthy Crito would have turned his pockets inside out for Socrates, but Socrates had all he wished, and explained that as it was he had to dance at home in order to keep down the adipose. Aristides, who was objectionable because he so shaped his conduct that he was called "The Just" and got himself ostracized, was one of his dear friends. Antisthenes, the original Cynic, used to walk six miles and back every day to hear Socrates talk. The Cynic was a rich man, but so captivated was he with the preaching of Socrates that he adopted the life of simplicity and dressed in rags and boycotted both the barber and the bath. On one occasion Socrates looked sharply at a rent in the cloak of his friend and said, "Ah, Antisthenes, through that hole in your cloak I see your vanity!" Xenophon sat at the feet of Socrates for a score of years, and then wrote his recollections of him as a vindication of his character. Euclid of Megara was nearly eighty when he came to Socrates as a pupil, trying to get rid of his ill-temper and habit of ironical reply. Cebes and Simmias left their native country and became Greek citizens for his sake. Charmides, the pampered son of wealthy parents, learned pedagogics by being shown that, in households where there were many servants, the children got cheated out of their rightful education because others did all the work, and to deprive a child of the privilege of being useful was to rob him of so much life. AEschines, the ambitious son of a sausage-maker, was advised by Socrates to borrow money of himself on long time without interest, by reducing his wants. So pleased was the recipient with this advice, that he went to publishing Socratic dialogues as a business and had the felicity to fail with tidy liabilities. But the two men who loom largest in the life of Socrates are Alcibiades and Plato--characters very much unlike.