Page:How to Get Strong (1899).pdf/284

 midst of a luxurious and sensual generation. Second, because he believed he had a special religious mission. Third, his great intellectual originality; the novelty of his talk; the unusualness of his method; the oddity of his subject; his power of stirring and quickening the thought. No great poet, historian, ox statesman of Greece equalled in influence the talking 'tramp' Socrates; who simply talked, talked, ever divinely; and left not a line behind him. Yet talk that called into existence the great philosophical school of Plato, Euclid, Aristippus, and Diogenes."

And had he, with this rare power of mind and character, a good body also? Read and see.

"He could bear the longest fasts; and the soldier's plain fare. Cold and heat were alike to him. Against the extremes of both the same clothing was a sufficient defence; and with bare feet he trod the ice of Thrace. In battle he quitted himself as a true Athenian should; and, even amid the wreck of a routed army, he bore himself so nobly, that the pursuers did not venture to attack him. He surpassed all men in physical endurance.

So Plato makes his tent-mate, Alcibiades, describe him. And he well might; for when wounded at the battle of Potidæa, Socrates took him up on his shoulders, and carried him to a place of safety. He also rescued Xenophon at the battle of Delium.

"He had immense strength and health."—Harrison's Story of Greece, p. 433.

Page 67: "Socrates was forty when he fought at Potidæa and rescued Alcibiades. At this period he was most distinguished for his physical strength and endurance. A brave, patriotic soldier, insensible to heat and cold, and temperate. His powerful physique and sensual nature inclined him to indulgence; but he early learned to restrain both appetites and passions."