Meditations VII.66
How do we know that Telauges82 may not have excelled Socrates in character? For it is not enough that Socrates died a more glorious death, and disputed more deftly with the Sophists, and with more hardihood braved whole nights in the frost, and, when called upon to fetch the Salaminian,83 deemed it more spirited84 to disobey, and that he carried his head high as he walked85—and about the truth of this one can easily judge—; but the point to elucidate is this: what sort of soul had Socrates,86 and could he rest satisfied with being just in his dealings with men and religious in his attitude towards the Gods, neither resentful at the wickedness of others nor yet lackeying the ignorance of anyone, nor regarding as alien to himself anything allotted to him from the Whole, nor bearing it as a burden intolerable, nor letting his intelligence be swayed sympathetically by the affections of the flesh ?
- 82.Son of Pythagoras. See Diogenes Laertius, Life of Pythagoras 22. 26.
- 83.Plato’s Apology 20 C; Epictetus’s Discourses iv. 7 § 30.
The Salaminian is Leon of Salamis, whom the Thirty Tyrants in 404 BC ordered Socrates and four others to arrest for execution; Socrates refused and went home. His endurance of frost is described by Alcibiades in Plato’s Symposium, from the campaign at Potidaea.
- 84.Or γενναιότερον, more honourable.
- 85.Aristophanes’ Clouds 363; Plato’s Symposium 221 B. The meaning of the parenthesis is not clear.
In the Clouds Aristophanes mocks Socrates for swaggering through the streets; in Plato’s Symposium Alcibiades quotes the line, describing Socrates during the retreat from Delium.
- 86.Compare Dio Chrysostom’s Orations iii, near the beginning.