The Lives and Opinions of Eminent PhilosophersDiogenes Laertius
Philosophy
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Diogenes Laertius
Philosophers, Ancient -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient
And so he said to Æschines, “In three days I shall die.” And when he was
about to drink the hemlock, Apollodorus presented him with a handsome
robe, that he might expire in it; and he said, “Why was my own dress good
enough to live in, and not good enough to die in?” When a person said to
him, “Such an one speaks ill of you;” “To be sure,” said he, “for he has
never learnt to speak well.” When Antisthenes turned the ragged side of
his cloak to the light, he said, “I see your silly vanity through the
holes in your cloak.” When some one said to him, “Does not that man abuse
you?” “No,” said he, “for that does not apply to me.” It was a saying of
his, too, “That it is a good thing for a man to offer himself cheerfully
to the attacks of the comic writers; for then, if they say anything worth
hearing, one will be able to mend; and if they do not, then all they say
is unimportant.”
XVII. He said once to Xanthippe, who first abused him and then threw
water at him, “Did I not say that Xanthippe was thundering now, and
would soon rain?” When Alcibiades said to him, “The abusive temper of
Xanthippe is intolerable;” “But I,” he rejoined, “am used to it, just
as I should be if I were always hearing the noise of a pulley; and you
yourself endure to hear geese cackling.” To which Alcibiades answered,
“Yes, but they bring me eggs and goslings.” “Well,” rejoined Socrates,
“and Xanthippe brings me children.” Once, she attacked him in the
market-place, and tore his cloak off; his friends advised him to keep her
off with his hands; “Yes, by Jove,” said he, “that while we are boxing
you may all cry out, ‘Well done, Socrates, well done, Xanthippe.’” And
he used to say, that one ought to live with a restive woman, just as
horsemen manage violent-tempered horses; “and as they,” said he, “when
they have once mastered them, are easily able to manage all others; so I,
after managing Xanthippe, can easily live with any one else whatever.”
XVIII. And it was in consequence of such sayings and actions as these,
that the priestess at Delphi was witness in his favour, when she gave
Chærephon this answer, which is so universally known:—
Socrates of all mortals is the wisest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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