The son of Sophroniscus, a stonecutter, and, as his mother, of Phaenarete, a midwife. First he became a stonecutter, so that they say that his task was the Graces embedded in Athens; then, he took up philosophy after hearing the lectures of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, then of Damon, and then of Archelaus. Aristoxenus however says that he first listened to Archelaos. He also said that he [sc.Socrates] became his [sc.Archelaos’s] beloved and was intensely erotic but without any wrong-doing, as Porphyry says in the Philosophic History.[1] When he had arrived at manhood he joined a campaign against Amphipolis and Potidaea and [sc. he fought] at Delion. He was married twice, to Xanthippe, from whom he begot a son Lamprocles, and then as a second wife, to Myrto, the daughter of Aristides the Just, by whom were born Sophroniscus and Menedemus or Menexenus, as some think.[2] And he lived approximately in the time of the Peloponnesian War, in the 77th Olympiad,[3] and he lived 80 years, then because of the irrationality - or rather the madness - of the Athenians, was forced to drink hemlock and died, having left nothing in writing or, as some claim, a hymn to Apollo and Artemis and an Aesopic fable in epic verse. Among the philosophers he trained was Plato, who left the Lyceum, a place in Athens, and transferred the school in a suburb, called the Academy, and those who followed were called the Academics until Aristotle. Now he [sc.Aristotle] had been a disciple of Plato and passed his time in a certain garden outside the city. From his strolling around he gave the name Peripatetics to his followers. Amongst them was Aristippus the Cyrenaean, who introduced his own sect and established a school called the Cyrenaic; Phaedo the Elean, who established his school called after him the Eleatic, but later it was called the Eretrian - since Menedemus taught in Eretria - and from this teacher Pyrrhus too arose; Antisthenes, who introduced the Cynic sect; Euclides of Megara, who established his own school, which is named Megarian after him, but from Clinomachus the disciple of Euclides it was [sc. also] called the Dialectic [school]; Xenophon the son of Gryllus; Aeschines; Lysanias of Sphettos;[4] Cebes of Thebes, Glaucon of Athens; Bryson of Heraclea - [it was he] who introduced eristic dialectic after Euclides, whereas Clinomachus augmented it, and whereas many came on account of it, it came to an end with Zeno of Citium, for he gave it the name Stoic, after its location [a stoa], this having occurred in the 105th Olympiad (but some [say that] Bryson was a student not of Socrates but of Euclides; Pyrrho was also a student of his, from whom the Pyrrhics get their name); Alcibiades, Critobulus, Xenomedon, and Apollodorus, [all of them] Athenians; in addition Crito and Simo(n), Emares the Philasian (Phliasian?), Simmias the Theban, Terpsion the Megarian, Chaerephon. And Theodorus, who was called “the atheist,” also was a disciple of his; holding an opinion about moral indifference and teaching it, he founded his own sect, which is called the Theodoran.
[It is said] that[5] when Socrates took up philosophy, he became a student of Archelaus the natural philosopher. But he advocated the ethical philosophy and had well-known citizens [sc.as students]: Plato, Xenophon, Alcibiades, Critias, Antisthenes; the Thebans Simmias and Cebes; the Cyrenaean Aristippus, Phaedon, and Euclides the Megarian. He said that a guardian spirit associated with him. He even learned to play the kithara from Conon, although he was already elderly.[6] When he was teased by Solon,[7] he said, “Better a late learner than ignorant.” By Xanthippe he fathered Sophroniscus and Lamprocles. He was envied because most of the young men were erotically attracted to him. And first Aristophanes wrote a comedy, the Clouds, against him, charging that he corrupted the youth and was an atheist, because he swore by “the Dog” and “the Plane Tree”[8] in an exaggeration of religiosity. Finally Anytus and Meletus indicted him on these charges and won their case. In the assessing of punishments he proposed dinners in the Prytaneum whereas they proposed death.[9] Moreover he was confined for some time until the delegation of official observers should return from Delos. And it was not allowed, once the ship had set sail until it returned to port, for anyone to be judicially executed. Although Crito proposed exile for him, he rejected the idea, for he said that one ought not to violate the laws. When he had drunk the hemlock, he recalled a vow he had made and said, “Sacrifice to Asclepius.” A man by the name of Cyrsas,[10] of Chian stock, came to associate with Socrates. As he slept by the tomb, [Socrates] appeared in a dream and conversed with him. So he straightway sailed home having only this profit from the philosopher.