Phaedo (Greek: Phaidon, IPA: [pʰaɪdɔːn]) is a dialogue written by Plato. Phaedo is the fifth and last dialogue detailing the final days of Socrates and contains the death scene (the first four being Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Meno).

Quotes

• Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away... A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.
  • 62

• τίς μηχανὴ μὴ οὐχὶ πάντα καταναλωθῆναι εἰς τὸ τεθνάναι;
  • Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
  • 72d

• Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are going to the god they serve.
  • 85

• ...but first there is a certain experience we must be careful to avoid...That we must not become misologues, as people become misanthropes. There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse. Misology and misanthropy arise in the same way. Misanthropy comes when a man without knowledge or skill has placed great trust in someone and believes him to be altogether truthful, sound and trustworthy; then, a short time afterwards he finds him to be wicked and unreliable, and then this happens in another case; when one has frequently had that experience, especially with those whom one believed to be one's closest friends, then, in the end, after many blows, one comes to hate all men and to believe that no one is sound in any way at all...This is a shameful state of affairs...and obviously due to an attempt to have human relations without any skill in human affairs.
  • 89d–e

• False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
  • 91

• His words made us ashamed, and we checked our tears. He walked around, and when he said his legs were heavy he lay on his back as he had been told to do, and the man who had given him the poison touched his body, and after a while tested his feet and legs, pressed hard upon his foot, and asked him if he felt this, and Socrates said no. Then he pressed his calves, and made his way up his body and showed us that it was cold and stiff. He felt it himself and said that when the cold reached his heart he would be gone. As his belly was getting cold Socrates uncovered his head—he had covered it—and said—these were his last words—“Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; make this offering to him and do not forget.” — “It shall be done,” said Crito, “tell us if there is anything else.” But there was no answer. Shortly afterwards Socrates made a movement; the man uncovered him and his eyes were fixed. Seeing this Crito closed his mouth and his eyes.
  Such was the end of our comrade, Echecrates, a man who, we would say, was of all those we have known the best, and also the wisest and the most upright.
  • 117e-118a

External links

• Works related to Phaedo at Wikisource