On the third day you’ll come to lovely Phthia.
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 are boxing you may all cry out, ‘Well done, Socrates, well done, Xanthippe.’” And he used to say, that one ought to live with a restive woman, just as horsemen manage violent-tempered horses; “and as they,” said he, “when they have once mastered them, are easily able to manage all others; so I, after managing Xanthippe, can easily live with any one else whatever.”
XVIII. And it was in consequence of such sayings and actions as these, that the priestess at Delphi was witness in his favour, when she gave Chærephon this answer, which is so universally known:—
In consequence of which answer, he incurred great envy; and he brought envy also on himself, by convicting men who gave themselves airs of folly and ignorance, as undoubtedly he did to Anytus; and as is shown in Plato’s Meno. For he, not being able to bear Socrates’ jesting, first of all set Aristophanes to attack him, and then persuaded Meletus to institute a prosecution against him, on the ground of impiety and of corrupting the youth of the city. Accordingly Meletus did institute the prosecution; and Polyeuctus pronounced the sentence, as Phavorinus records in his Universal History. And Polycrates, the sophist, wrote the speech which was delivered, as Hermippus says, not Anytus, as others say. And Lycon, the demagogue, prepared everything necessary to support the impeachment; but Antisthenes in his Successions of the Philosophers, and Plato in his Apology, say that these men brought the accusation:—Anytus, and Lycon, and Meletus; Anytus, acting against him on behalf of the magistrates, and because of his political principles; Lycon, on behalf of the orators; and Meletus on behalf of the poets, all of whom Socrates used to pull to pieces. But Phavorinus, in the first book of his Commentaries, says, that the speech of Polycrates against Socrates is not the genuine one; for in it there is mention made of the walls having been restored by Conon, which took place six years after the death of Socrates; and certainly this is true.