TWO DIALOGUES OF PLATO FOLLOW, TRANSLATED BY OTHERS: AXIOCHUS AND ALCYON. AXIOCHUS TRANSLATED BY RODOLPHUS AGRICOLA THE FRISIAN. ALCYON BY AGOSTINO DATI OF SIENA.

THE AXIOCHUS OF PLATO, ON THE CONTEMPT OF DEATH.

Decorative woodcut initial letter E, depicting a figure in a garden or landscape.

As I was going out toward Cynosarges A public gymnasium outside the walls of Athens, and had come to the river Ilissus, the voice of someone shouting reached me: "Socrates! Socrates!" As I turned and looked around to see where it came from, I saw Clinias, the son of Axiochus, running toward the fountain of Callirhoe with Damon the musician and Charmides, the son of Glaucon. One of these was teaching him music, while the other loved him out of intimacy and was loved in return. It seemed best to me, therefore, to turn aside and meet them so that we might gather as soon as possible. Clinias, bathed in tears, said: "Now is the time, Socrates, to show that wisdom so widely spoken of regarding you. For my father has for some time now been suddenly deprived of his strength and is near the end of his life; he takes it hard that his end is upon him, even though previously he used to despise those who portrayed death with a horrific image, and he would mock them kindly. Go then, and according to your custom, strengthen him, so that he may follow willingly where necessity leads, and so that he may be piously honored by me for this very act as well as the rest." SOCRATES: "Clinias, you have never asked any moderate thing of me in vain; how much more so now when you call me to these duties of piety. Let us hurry, then. For if the matter stands thus, there is need for haste." CLINIAS: "As soon as he sees you, Socrates, he will feel better. For it has often happened to him that, having lost heart, he was restored again." SOCRATES: "So that we might arrive more quickly, we went by the path called 'Around the Wall.' For he lived near the gate by the Amazonian Pillar. We found him, then, having regained his senses and strong in body, but failing in mind and utterly in need of consolation; he was frequently turning over, raising sighs with tears and the wringing of his hands. Looking at him, I said: 'What is this matter, Axiochus? Where are those magnificent words of yours from before, and your constant praises of virtue, and that strength of spirit in you that was greater than could be described? For like a timid athlete, though you showed yourself distinguished to the boys in the gymnasium, you have failed at the contest itself. Will you not consider the nature of virtue with meditation and be obedient to reason? And if nothing else, Athenian, consider this common saying tossed about by everyone: life is a kind of pilgrimage, which those who complete it briskly—almost singing a paean A song of triumph or thanksgiving—approach the final necessity; but for you to behave so softly and to be torn away so reluctantly like a child does not at all reflect an age of deeper wisdom.'" AXIOCHUS: "You seem to me to speak rightly, Socrates; but I know not how it is that when danger draws nearer, those brave and grand words secretly fly away and are neglected. A certain fear arises, distracting the mind in many ways: if I am deprived of this light and these goods, and shall lie senseless and without feeling wherever I may rot, turned into dust and worms." SOCRATES: "You join things imperfectly, Axiochus, because of your inexperience, linking the loss of senses with the presence of feeling, and you do and say things contrary to yourself. You do not realize that you simultaneously weep for the fact that you will lack senses, and yet you grieve over putrefaction and the loss of life's pleasures as if you were going to pass into another life after death, rather than into a total abolition of the senses—the same state you were in before you were born. For just as when Draco and Cleisthenes were governing the Republic Famous early Athenian lawmakers, nothing was wrong with you (for you had not yet begun to exist so that anything bad could happen to you), so it will be after death. For you will not exist, so that anything could be bad for you. Why then do you not shake off all this silliness and consider this: that once this frame is dissolved and the soul is restored to its own proper place, this abandoned body, being earthly and void of reason, is no longer the man."

For we are the soul, an immortal living being, enclosed in a mortal fortress. Nature has surrounded us with this tabernacle not without evil; its joys are hidden and fleeting, mixed with many pains, while its sorrows are unexpected, long-lasting, and utterly void of joy. These include illnesses, ulcers of the feeling limbs, and internal diseases. Because of these, the soul—since it is spread through the passages of the body—necessarily suffers with it, and it longs for its kindred heaven and thirsts eagerly for the company and joys of that higher life. Therefore, departure from life is a change from a certain evil into a good. AXIOCHUS: "Since you consider life an evil, Socrates, why do you persist in living? You who are an investigator of things and excel us—that is, the multitude—in intelligence!" SOCRATES: "You give a testimony of me that is not at all true, Axiochus. For you think, as the Athenian commoners do, that because I investigate things, I also have knowledge of something. But I am so far from knowing hidden things that I would even wish to have known those common things. These things I say were handed down by the wise Prodicus. Some were bought for two obols, some for two, some for four drachmas. For this man teaches no one for free, and it is his custom to always have that saying of Epicharmus in his mouth: 'Hand rubs hand; give something and take something.' Recently, therefore, when he was declaiming at the house of Callias, son of Hipponicus, he spoke so much against life that I have written it down as being of no importance. From that time on, Axiochus, my mind has leaned toward death." AXIOCHUS: "What did he say, then?" SOCRATES: "I will tell you those things that come to my mind. Which part in..."