“But if he saw perchance, some common man
Blinded with panic, clamorous of tongue,
With staff he smote him, adding blow to blame.”
[86] The priestess of Apollo at Delphi.
[87] It was the curious custom in the Athenian courts of criminal justice that the accused, if found guilty, was required to name a counter penalty to that proposed by the prosecutor. The prosecutor, as has been seen, had proposed death. Socrates, under the circumstances, could hardly have proposed anything less than banishment, if he had any wish that it should be accepted by the court.
[88] Rather more than $600.
[89] The Eleven were the executioners of the law rather taking the place of the sheriff and the under-sheriff than that of the hangman. The vagueness of its name is an interesting example of the Greek distaste for naming anything terrible.
[90] A young Greek wore his hair long till he reached the age of eighteen. This little detail is a proof of Phaedo’s extreme youth at this time.
[91] The Greek philo-lacon. The word had been applied to Cimon, son of Miltiades, who had always been a popular statesman and so might be used in a friendly way. If Callias had spoken of Xenophon as disposed to laconismus it would have been almost an affront, this word meaning not so much admiration of Spartan ways of life as devotion to Spartan interests.