CodalSearch this book — or all of Codal…⌘K
nydus/The Lives and Opinions of Eminent PhilosophersPublic
Page 92 of 735
Table of Contents

BOOK II.

“have had me deserve death?” He thought once that some one appeared to him in a dream, and said:—

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

92