BOOK IV. XI. 19-24
forms and features.[1] He might have neither bathed nor washed,[2] had he so desired; yet even his infrequent bathings were effective.[† 1]20—But Aristophanes says,
The pallid men I mean, who shoeless go.[3]—
Oh, yes, but then he says also that Socrates "trod the air," and stole people's clothes from the wrestling school.[4] And yet all who have written about Socrates unite in bearing testimony to the precise opposite of this; that he was not merely pleasant to hear, but also to see. Again, men write the same thing about Diogenes. For a man ought not to drive away the multitude from philosophy, even by the appearance of his body, but as in everything else, so also on the side of the body, he ought to show himself cheerful and free from perturbation. "See, O men, that I have nothing, and need nothing. See how, although I am without a house, and without a city, and an exile, if it so chance, and without a hearth, I still live a life more tranquil and serene than that of all the noble and the rich. Yes, and you see that even my paltry body is not disfigured by my hard way of living." But if I am told this by a person who has the bearing and face of a condemned man, what one of all the gods shall persuade me to approach philosophy, if she makes people like that? Far be it from me! I shouldn't be willing to do so, not even if it would make me a wise man.
- ↑ Ibid., 217-18.
- ↑ λούεσθαι is properly of "bathing," as in the public baths, especially, in this passage, the warm baths of Roman times, which are clearly in mind; πλύνεσθαι is properly of cleaning clothes, as in a laundry, which was generally done in ancient Greece, as in modern, and in the Orient, with cold water. All that is meant, as far as Socrates is concerned, is that he generally washed at home in cold water, and very seldom used public baths or hot baths.
- ↑ Clouds, 103, slightly modified.
- ↑ Ibid., 179 and 225. The argument is that the evidence of Aristophanes is worthless anyway, because he also made these two preposterously false statements about Socrates.
- ↑ The words κἂν θερμῷ μὴ θέλῃς, ψυχρῷ, here, I have transferred to § 32, where, as Schweighäuser saw, they clearly belong.
