Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, a stonemason, and of Phaenarete, a midwife, as Plato also says in the Theaetetus; he was an Athenian, belonging to the deme of Alopece. He was thought to help Euripides in composing plays; whence Mnesimachus speaks as follows: "The Phrygians is this new play by Euripides, ...for which Socrates too lays the kindling-wood." And again: "Euripidean verses pegged together by Socrates." And Callias in The Men in Shackles: "A: Why, pray, are you so haughty and thinking so big? B: Because I am permitted to; for Socrates is the reason." Aristophanes in The Clouds: "This is he who writes for Euripides those gossiping, clever tragedies."

​Having heard Anaxagoras according to some, and also Damon, as Alexander states in the Successions of Philosophers, after the condemnation of the former he attended the lectures of Archelaus the natural philosopher; Aristoxenus also says that he became the minion of the latter. Duris says that he was also a slave and worked with stones; and some assert that the draped Graces on the Acropolis are his work. Whence Timon also says in the Silloi: "From these things, then, turned away the stonecutter, that chatterer on law, the enchanter of the Greeks, who produced hair-splitting quibblers, a sneerer mocked by rhetoricians, a sub-Attic ironist." For he was also skilled in rhetoric, as Idomeneus likewise says; and moreover the Thirty forbade him to teach the art of speech, as Xenophon states.

​And Aristophanes caricatures him in comedy as making the worse argument appear the better. For indeed he was the first, as Favorinus says in his Miscellaneous History, who together with his pupil Aeschines taught rhetoric; Idomeneus says this as well in his work On the Socratics. He was also the first who discoursed upon life, and the first of the philosophers who died by condemnation. Aristoxenus the son of Spintharus says that he also engaged in business; at any rate, that he collected the money contributed and put it out, and then, having spent it, put it out again. On the other hand, Demetrius of Byzantium says that Crito, falling in love with the grace of his soul, took him up from the workshop and educated him.

​And realizing that natural contemplation was nothing to us, he philosophized on ethics in the workshops and in the market-place, and used to say that he inquired into those matters, "Whatever of evil and of good has been wrought in the halls." He was often struck with fists and had his hair pulled when he conversed too aggressively in his inquiries, and was for the most part laughed at and despised; yet he bore all these things patiently. Whence, when he was kicked and endured it, someone having expressed surprise, he is said to have replied: "If a donkey had kicked me, would I have brought a lawsuit against it?" Thus far Demetrius.

​He had no need for travel abroad, like the majority of men, except when he had to go on military service. For the rest of the time, staying right there, he would dispute rather contentious-like with those who engaged him in conversation, not in order to strip them of their opinions, but so as to endeavor to learn the truth. They say that when Euripides gave him the treatise of Heraclitus and asked, "What do you think?" he replied: "What I understood is noble; and I believe what I did not understand is so too; except that it needs some Delian diver." He also paid attention to physical exercise and was in good physical condition. At all events, he served on the expedition to Amphipolis; and in the battle of Delium he took up Xenophon, who had fallen from his horse, and saved him;

​where, when all the Athenians were fleeing, he himself retreated slowly, turning his head quietly about and watching to defend himself if anyone should attack him. He also took part in the expedition to Potidaea by sea, for it was not possible to go on foot because the war prevented it. There they say he even remained standing through an entire night in a single posture, and that having won the prize for valor there, he yielded it to Alcibiades; of whom Aristippus says that he was enamored, in the fourth book of On Ancient Luxury. Ion of Chios says that while he was still a young man he went abroad to Samos with Archelaus; and Aristotle says that he went to Pytho, and he also went to the Isthmus, as Favorinus states in the first book of the Memorabilia.