Book 2
5.24
His strength of will and attachment to the democracy are evident from his refusal to yield to Critias and his colleagues when they ordered him to bring the wealthy Leon of Salamis before them for execution, and further from the fact that he alone voted for the acquittal of the ten generals; and again from the facts that when he had the opportunity to escape from the prison he declined to do so, and that he rebuked his friends for weeping over his fate, and addressed to them his most memorable discourses in the prison.
5.24
He was a man of great independence and dignity of character. Pamphila in the seventh book of her Commentaries tells how Alcibiades once offered him a large site on which to build a house; but he replied, Suppose, then, I wanted shoes and you offered me a whole hide to make a pair with, would it not be ridiculous in me to take it?
5.25
Often when he looked at the multitude of wares exposed for sale, he would say to himself, How many things I can do without! And he would continually recite the lines: The purple robe and silver’s shine More fits an actor’s need than mine.Stobaeus, Florilegium, lvi. 15, attributes these and three preceding lines to Philemon, the well-known poet of the New Comedy. If Philemon wrote them, Socrates cannot have recited them, however well they express his temper.
