Note 41 — Chapter II · ON PEDICATION

Socrates, as is well known, has not been in want of warm defenders; Brucker (Critical History of Philosophy, I., pp. 539, 540), may stand for all of them. Undoubtedly Plato, in Symposium, brought in Alcibiades, who says he recollects, to use the expression of Cornelius Nepos (Alcibiades, ch. 2.) “to have passed a night with Socrates, but not otherwise than a son might with his father.” But Xantippe, and it is not surprising, was indignant that her husband should be on such familiar terms with a good-looking youth like Alcibiades; and Aelian (Varide Historiae, XI., 12), relates that she stamped upon a cake sent by Alcibiades, which made Socrates laugh and cry out: “What are you doing? You cannot eat it now. I do not care for it at all!” But, Socrates! good morals and such friends are incompatible. Enough to name amongst the disciples of Socrates Plato, whom Diogenes Laërtius (III., 23), declares to have loved Aster, Phaedrus, Alexis, and before all Dion; he quotes an epigram of Plato on Dion, ending thus:

“O you, who have so fiercely burnt my heart with love, you Dion!”