Note 631 — Chapter LXVIII · SOKRATES.

See the Symposion of Plato as well as that of Xenophon, both of which profess to depict Sokratês at one of these jovial moments. Plato, Symposion, c. 31, p. 214, A; c. 35, etc., 39, ad finem; Xenoph. Symp. ii, 26, where Sokratês requests that the wine may he handed round in small glasses, but that they may succeed each other quickly, like drops of rain in a shower.

The view which Plato takes of indulgence in wine, as affording a sort of test of the comparative self-command of individuals, and measuring the facility with which any man may be betrayed into folly and extravagance, and the regulation to which he proposes to submit the practice, may be seen in his treatise De Legibus, i, p. 649; ii, pp. 671-674. Compare Xenoph. Memorab. i, 2, 1; i, 6, 10.