Note 96 — Chapter XXV · PHÆDON.

Plato, Phædon, p. 118. ἤδη οὖν σχεδόν τι αὐτοῦ ἦν τὰ περὶ τὸ ἦτρον ψυχόμενα, καὶ ἐκκαλυψάμενος (ἐνεκεκάλυπτο γὰρ) εἶπεν, ὃ δὴ τελευταῖον ἐφθέγξατο, Ὦ Κρίτων, ἔφη, τῷ Ἀσκληπιῷ ὀφείλομεν ἀλεκτρύονα· ἀλλ’ ἀπόδοτε καὶ μὴ ἀμελήσητε.

Cicero, after recovering from a bilious attack, writes to his wife Terentia (Epist. Famil. xiv. 7): “Omnes molestias et solicitudines deposui et ejeci. Quid causæ autem fuerit, postridié intellexi quam à vobis discessi. Χολὴν ἄκρατον noctu ejeci: statim ita sum levatus, ut mihi Deus aliquis medicinam fecisse videatur. Cui quidem Deo, quemadmodum tu soles, pié et casté satisfacies: id est, Apollini et Æsculapio.” Compare the rhetor Aristeides, Orat. xlv. pp. 22-23-155, ed. Dindorf. About the habit of sacrificing a cock to Æsculapius, see also a passage in the Ἱερῶν Λόγοι of the rhetor Aristeides (Orat. xxvii. p. 545, ed. Dindorf, at the top of the page). I will add that the five Ἱερῶν Λόγοι of that Rhetor (Oratt. xxiii.-xxvii.) are curious as testifying the multitude of dreams and revelations vouchsafed to him by Æsculapius; also the implicit faith with which he acted upon them in his maladies, and the success which attended the curative prescriptions thus made known to him. Aristeides declares himself to place more confidence in these revelations than in the advice of physicians, and to have often acted on them in preference to such advice (Orat. xlv. pp. 20-22, Dind.).

The direction here given by Sokrates to Kriton (though some critics, even the most recent, see Krische, Lehren der Griechischen Denker, p. 227, interpret it in a mystical sense) is to be understood simply and literally, in my judgment. On what occasion, or for what, he had made the vow of the cock, we are not told. Sokrates was a very religious man, much influenced by prophecies, oracles, dreams, and special revelations (Plato, Apol. Sokr. pp. 21-29-33; also Phædon, p. 60).