has been some time pestering me."

"Never mind him," he rejoined.

"But now I wish to render an account to you, my judges, of the reason
why a man who has really devoted his life to philosophy, when he is
about to die, appears to me, on good grounds, to have confidence, and to
entertain a firm hope that the greatest good will befall him in the
other world when he has departed this life. How, then, this comes to
pass, Simmias and Cebes, I will endeavor to explain."

"For as many as rightly apply themselves to philosophy seem to have left
all others in ignorance, that they aim at nothing else than to die and
be dead. If this, then, is true, it would surely be absurd to be anxious
about nothing else than this during their whole life, but, when it
arrives, to be grieved at what they have been long anxious about and
aimed at."

22. Upon this, Simmias, smiling, said, "By Jupiter! Socrates, though I
am not now at all inclined to smile, you have made me do so; for I think
that the multitude, if they heard this, would think it was very well
said in reference to philosophers, and that our countrymen particularly
would agree with you, that true philosophers do desire death, and that
they are by no means ignorant that they deserve to suffer it."

"And, indeed, Simmias, they would speak the truth, except in asserting
that they are not ignorant; for they are ignorant of the sense in which
true philosophers desire to die, and in what sense they deserve death,
and what kind of death. But," he said, "let us take leave of them, and
speak to one another. Do we think that death is any thing?"