No less surprising to my mind is the belief that Socrates corrupted
the young. This man, who, beyond what has been already stated, kept
his appetites and passions under strict control, who was pre-eminently
capable of enduring winter's cold and summer's heat and every kind of
toil, who was so schooled to curtail his needs that with the scantiest
of means he never lacked sufficiency--is it credible that such a man
could have made others irreverent or lawless, or licentious, or
effeminate in face of toil? Was he not rather the saving of many
through the passion for virtue which he roused in them, and the hope
he infused that through careful management of themselves they might
grow to be truly beautiful and good--not indeed that he ever undertook
to be a teacher of virtue, but being evidently virtuous himself he
made those who associated with him hope that by imitating they might
at last resemble him.

But let it not be inferred that he was negligent of his own body or
approved of those who neglected theirs. If excess of eating,
counteracted by excess of toil, was a dietary of which he
disapproved,[1] to gratify the natural claim of appetite in
conjunction with moderate exercise was a system he favoured, as
tending to a healthy condition of the body without trammelling the
cultivation of the spirit. On the other hand, there was nothing
dandified or pretentious about him; he indulged in no foppery of shawl
or shoes, or other effeminacy of living.

[1] See [Plat.] "Erast." 132 C.

Least of all did he tend to make his companions greedy of money. He
would not, while restraining passion generally, make capital out of
the one passion which attached others to himself; and by this