Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/195

LIFE OF SOCRATES 171 slaves'; sometimes inimitably humorous, sometimes in- explicably solemn ; only, always original and utterly un- self-conscious. The parentage of Socrates was a joke. He was the son of a midwife and a stone-mason; evidently not a success- ful stone-mason, or his wife would not have continued her profession. He could not manage such little property as he had, and was apt to drop into destitution without minding it. He had no profession. If he ever learned sculpture, he did not practise it. He took no fees for teaching ; indeed he could not see that he taught any- thing. He sometimes, for no visible reason, refused, sometimes accepted, presents from his rich friends. Naturally he drove his wife, Xanthippe, a woman of higher station, to despair ; he was reputed henpecked. In the centre of education he was ill educated ; in a hot- bed of political aspirations he was averse to politics. He never travelled ; he did not care for any fine art ; he knew poetry well, but insisted on treating it as bald prose. In his military service he showed iron courage, though he had a way of falling into profound reveries, which might have led to unpleasant results. In his later years, when we first know him, he is notorious for his utter indifference to bodily pleasures or pains. But w€ have evidence to show that this was not always so ; that the old man who scarcely knew whether it was freezing or whether he had breakfasted, who could drink all night without noticing it, had passed a stormy and passionate youth. Spintharus, the father of Aristoxenus, one of the few non-disciples who knew him in his early days, says that Socrates was a man of terrible passions, his anger ungovernable and his bodily desires violent, "though," he adds, " he never did anything unfair."