he was himself free, because he had cast off all the handles of
slavery, and it was not possible for any man to approach him, nor
had any man the means of laying hold of him to enslave him. He had
everything easily loosed, everything only hanging to him. If you
laid hold of his property, he would rather have let it go and be yours
than he would have followed you for it: if you had laid hold of his
leg, he would have let go his leg; if of all his body, all his poor
body; his intimates, friends, country, just the same. For he knew from
whence he had them, and from whom, and on what conditions. His true
parents indeed, the Gods, and his real country he would never have
deserted, nor would he have yielded to any man in obedience to them or
to their orders, nor would any man have died for his country more
readily. For he was not used to inquire when he should be considered
to have done anything on behalf of the whole of things, but he
remembered that everything which is done comes from thence and is done
on behalf of that country and is commanded by him who administers
it. Therefore see what Diogenes himself says and writes: "For this
reason," he says, "Diogenes, it is in your power to speak both with
the King of the Persians and with Archidamus the king of the
Lacedaemonians, as you please." Was it because he was born of free
parents? I suppose all the Athenians and all the Lacedaemonians,
because they were born of slaves, could not talk with them as they
wished, but feared and paid court to them. Why then does he say that
it is in his power? "Because I do not consider the poor body to be
my own, because I want nothing, because law is everything to me, and
nothing else is." These were the things which permitted him to be
free.
And that you may not think that I show you the example of a man
who is a solitary person, who has neither wife nor children, nor
country, nor friends nor kinsmen, by whom he could be bent and drawn
in various directions, take Socrates and observe that he had a wife
and children, but he did not consider them as his own; that he had a
country, so long as it was fit to have one, and in such a manner as
was fit; friends and kinsmen also, but he held all in subjection to
law and to the obedience due to it. For this reason he was the first
to go out as a soldier, when it was necessary; and in war he exposed
himself to danger most unsparingly, and when he was sent by the
tyrants to seize Leon, he did not even deliberate about the matter,
because he thought that it was a base action, and he knew that he must
die, if it so happened. And what difference did that make to him?
for he intended to preserve something else, not his poor flesh, but
his fidelity, his honourable character. These are things which could
not be assailed nor brought into subjection. Then, when he was obliged
to speak in defense of his life, did he behave like a man who had
children, who had a wife? No, but he behaved like a man who has
neither. And what did he do when he was to drink the poison, and
when he had the power of escaping from prison, and when Crito said
to him, "Escape for the sake of your children," what did Socrates say?
Did he consider the power of escape as an unexpected gain? By no
means: he considered what was fit and proper; but the rest he did