Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/110

100 violent death, to be endured. In privacy, amid a circle of friends and admirers, the cup of hemlock was to be drunk which would painlessly extinguish the vital powers, and that too at a period of life when of themselves they might soon have ceased. Such were the mitigating external circumstances; while inwardly there was "the royal heart of innocence," the high enthusiasm which has enabled so many to meet with cheerfulness a martyr's death, and the philosophic reason which entirely triumphed over the animal instincts, which saw things as a whole, and which counted the loss a gain. When Apollodorus, one of his disciples, said, "I grieve most for this, Socrates, that I see you about to die undeservedly." He answered, stroking the head of his pupil with a smile, "My dearest Apollodorus, would you rather see me die deservedly?" When some of his friends suggested a plan for his escape, at which the Athenians would probably have connived, he said, "I am willing to fly if you can tell me of any country to fly to where death does not await me." Seeing Anytus pass by, he remarked, "This man is elated as if he had done something great and noble in causing my death, because, when I saw him occupying the highest offices in the state, I said that he ought not to bring up his son among the ox-hides. How foolish he is not to know that whichever of us has done what is best and noblest for all time, he is the superior." When his friends asked what he wished done with his body, he said, "You may do with it what you like, provided you do not imagine it to be me."