66
A short time before the end he was asked: “What orders have you to give about your burial?” and replied: “Don’t borrow trouble! The stench will get me buried!” The man said: “Why, isn’t it disgraceful that the body of such a man should be exposed for birds and dogs to devour?” “I see nothing out of the way in it,” said he, “if even in death I am going to be of service to living things.”
67
But the Athenians gave him a magnificent public funeral and mourned him Jong. To honour him, they did obeisance to the stone bench on which he used to rest when he was tired, and they put garlands on it; for they felt that even the stone on which he had been wont to sit was sacred. Everybody attended his burial, especially the philosophers; indeed, it was they who took him on their shoulders and carried him to the tomb.
67
These are a very few things out of many which I might have mentioned, but they will suffice to give my readers a notion of the sort of man he was.
