Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: How did Socrates die?
Socrates's death is described at the end of Plato's Phaedo, although Plato was not himself present at the execution. As to the veracity of Plato's account it seems possible he made choice of a number of certain factors perhaps omitting others in the description of the death, as the Phaedo description does not describe progress of the action of the poison (Gill 1973) in concurrence with modern descriptions.[92] Phaedo states, after drinking the poison, he was instructed to walk around until his legs felt numb. After he lay down, the man who administered the poison pinched his foot; Socrates could no longer feel his legs. The numbness slowly crept up his body until it reached his heart.
Socratic Citizenship is a philosophy book by Dana Villa that proposes how contemporary citizenship can draw from Socrates' dissident citizenship in Athens. He follows the references to Socrates in the works of Hannah Arendt, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leo Strauss, and Max Weber.
Socrates addresses Clitophon and confronts him on the rumor of Clitophon censuring spending time with Socrates while praising time with Thrasymachus (406a1-a4). Clitophon claims that he heard incorrectly and that while he did not praise some things of Socrates, he did praise others (406a5-a7). Socrates agrees to listen to Clitophon's side so that he might learn how to better himself by allowing himself be subject to Clitophon's criticism (407a1-a5).
Hermann Diels popularized the term "pre-Socratic" in "Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker" ("The Fragments of the Pre-Socratics") in 1903. However, the term "pre-Sokratic" was in use as early as George Grote's "Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates" in 1865. Edouard Zeller was also important in dividing thought before and after Socrates. Major analyses of pre-Socratic thought have been made by Gregory Vlastos, Jonathan Barnes, and Friedrich Nietzsche in his "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks".
In his book HimEros written as a dialogue, Socrates’ wife Xanthippe relates to the Helsinkian what happened to Socrates in Hades, how Socrates decided to escape from Hades and go to study philosophy at the University of Helsinki, and how he was arrested, sentenced to death and executed as a result of a three-day conversation with the philosophers of the University. Xanthippe also transmits Socrates’ dialogue with the university teachers of philosophy Cyborg (Stephen Hawking), Pope (John Paul II), Unabomber (Theodore Kaczynski) and Madonna (Madonna Ciccone).
Xenophon's portrayal of Socrates was influential in antiquity, and helps us understand how various schools of ancient thought made use of Socrates. The self-control of Xenophon's Socrates is in keeping with his role in inspiring ancient cynicism, which was traditionally said to be founded by Socrates' follower Antisthenes. It is clear that the Stoics made considerable use of Xenophon's version of the argument from design, and their account of natural law also owed something to Socrates, if not only to Xenophon's Socrates.
The regress problem is the problem of providing a complete logical foundation for human knowledge. The traditional way of supporting a rational argument is to appeal to other rational arguments, typically using chains of reason and rules of logic. A classic example that goes back to Aristotle is deducing that Socrates is mortal. We have a logical rule that says All humans are mortal and an assertion that Socrates is human and we deduce that Socrates is mortal. In this example how do we know that Socrates is human? Presumably we apply other rules such as: All born from human females are human. Which then leaves open the question how do we know that all born from humans are human? This is the regress problem: how can we eventually terminate a logical argument with some statement(s) that do not require further justification but can still be considered rational and justified? As John Pollock stated:
The dialogue depicts Clitophon complaining to Socrates that Socrates' speeches are merely exhortative; they create a desire for justice and virtue, but do not instruct how one becomes just or what justice is. Throughout the dialogue Clitophon seems to narrate his changes towards justice and the protreptic from seeing Socrates as a god upon a stage with hopes and beliefs in attaining justice and virtue to thoughts of doubt and disappointment and eventual defiance of Socrates. "Clitophon" addresses Clitophon's contempt for protreptic, or exhortative, speeches. It showcases the ignorance of Socrates and depicts, as Mark Kremer puts it, the conflict of philosophy of Socrates and Clitophon's irrationality.
Aristomenes goes on business for cheese and he runs into his friend Socrates, who is disheveled and emaciated. Aristomenes clothes Socrates and takes him to the bathhouse. Aristomenes berates Socrates for leaving his family. While they're eating lunch, Socrates tells about his affair with Meroë. Socrates tells Aristomenes that Meroë is an ugly witch who turns her ex-lovers into rather unfortunate animals. Aristomenes doesn't believe Socrates' tale but is nevertheless afraid. Aristomenes barricades the door and they both go to bed. In the middle of the night, Meroë and Panthia break in, cut open Socrates, drain his blood, rip out his heart, and replace it with a sponge. Before leaving, they urinate on Aristomenes. The witches spare Aristomenes because they want him to bury Socrates in the land. Aristomenes fears that he will be blamed for the death of his friend and attempts to hang himself, but is comically stopped when the rope is revealed to be too rotten to support his weight. In the morning, Socrates wakes up and everything seems to be normal. They continue travelling and reach a stream, where Socrates bends to take a drink, which causes the sponge to fall out and him to die. Aristomenes buries Socrates in the ground, and then proceeds on his way.
As with many of the issues surrounding Socrates’ conviction, the nature of his affiliation with the Thirty Tyrants is far from straightforward. During the reign of the Thirty, many prominent Athenians who were opposed to the new government left Athens. Robin Waterfield asserts that “Socrates would have been welcome in oligarchic Thebes, where he had close associates among the Pythagoreans who flourished there, and which had already taken in other exiles.” Given the availability of a hospitable host outside of Athens, Socrates, at least in a limited way, chose to remain in Athens. Thus, Waterfield suggests, Socrates’ contemporaries probably thought his remaining in Athens, even without participating in the Thirty’s bloodthirsty schemes, demonstrated his sympathy for the Thirty’s cause, not neutrality towards it. This is proved, Waterfield argues, by the fact that after the Thirty were no longer in power, anyone who had remained in Athens during their rule was encouraged to move to Eleusis, the new home of the expatriate Thirty. Socrates did oppose the will of the Thirty on one documented occasion. Plato’s "Apology" has the character of Socrates describe that the Thirty ordered him, along with four other men, to fetch a man named Leon from Salamis so that the Thirty could execute him. Socrates simply did not answer this order, nor had he Leon warned, while the other four men did go to Salamis to get Leon.
For example, the inference ""Socrates is a human, and each human must eventually die, therefore Socrates must eventually die"" is a formally valid inference; it remains valid if the nonlogical vocabulary ""Socrates"", ""is human"", and ""must eventually die"" is arbitrarily, but consistently replaced.
Their genetic fitness is to be monitored by the physicians: "... he (Asclepius, a culture hero) did not want to lengthen out good-for-nothing lives, or have weak fathers begetting weaker sons – if a man was not able to live in the ordinary way he had no business to cure him ..." Physicians minister to the healthy rather than cure the sick: "... (Physicians) will minister to better natures, giving health both of soul and of body; but those who are diseased in their bodies they will leave to die, and the corrupt and incurable souls they will put an end to themselves." Nothing at all in Greek medicine so far as can be known supports the airy (in the Athenian view) propositions of Socrates. Yet it is hard to be sure of Socrates' real views considering that there are no works written by Socrates himself. There are two common ideas pertaining to the beliefs and character of Socrates: the first being the Mouthpiece Theory where writers use Socrates in dialogue as a mouthpiece to get their own views across. However, since most of what we know about Socrates comes from plays, most of the Platonic plays are accepted as the more accurate Socrates since Plato was a direct student of Socrates.
Socrates offers four arguments for the soul's immortality:The scene is set in Phlius where Echecrates who, meeting Phaedo, asks for news about the last days of Socrates. Phaedo explains why a delay occurred between his trial and his death, and describes the scene in a prison at Athens on the final day, naming those present. He tells how he had visited Socrates early in the morning with the others. Socrates' wife Xanthippe was there, but was very distressed and Socrates asked that she be taken away. Socrates' relates how, bidden by a recurring dream to "make and cultivate music", he wrote a hymn and then began writing poetry based on Aesop's Fables.
By drawing geometric figures in the ground Socrates demonstrates that the slave is initially unaware of how to find twice the area of a square. 
Socrates notes that before he questioned the slave, who had been picked haphazardly from Meno's entourage, the boy would have thought himself able to speak "well and fluently" on the subject of a square double the size of a given square. Without Socratic questioning, the slave boy would have remained confident in his ignorance and not have "attempted to look for, or learn, what he thought he knew (though he did not [know])." Socrates comments that this "numbing" he caused in the slave did him no harm. 
Aristotle encountered the theory of forms when he studied at the Academy, which he joined at the age of about 19 in the 360s B.C. Aristotle soon expanded on the concept of forms in his "Metaphysics". He believed that in every change there is something which persists through the change (for example, Socrates), and something else which did not exist before, but comes into existence as a result of the change (musical Socrates). To explain how Socrates comes to be born (since he did not exist before he was born) Aristotle says that it is ‘matter’ ("hyle") that underlies the change. The matter has the ‘form’ of Socrates imposed on it to become Socrates himself. Thus all the things around us, "all substances", are composites of two radically different things: form and matter. This doctrine is sometimes known as Hylomorphism (from the Greek words for "matter" and "form").
But Sozomen did not simply copy Socrates. He went back to the principal sources used by Socrates and other sources, often including more from them than Socrates did.
Most of Plato's philosophical ideas were communicated through his beloved teacher Socrates as a presence in the dialogues. Though there are no extant writings of Socrates known, it is evident through Plato's works that Socrates had an incredible ability to explore the most intense analytical discussions. However, for some there is controversy regarding how much historical fact can be derived from Plato's Socrates (Russell). Some doubt Socrates ever existed. Others are skeptical as to the accuracy of some of Plato's dialogues but nonetheless maintain that we can learn a substantial amount of historical information about Socrates from the dialogues. Still others take practically everything Plato wrote about Socrates as veridical history. Regardless, it may be safe to say that Plato never meant to record Socrates verbatim and it may plausibly be concluded that his general ideas were communicated in the dialogues.
Through not understanding his speeches, Clitophon does not understand Socrates' methods. Clitophon tries to make the protreptic speeches of Socrates effectual while in their nature they are solely meant to encourage and cause people to have a desire for justice. Clitophon misunderstands the Socratic method of elenchus, the cross-examination statements of interlocutors. Clitophon attempts to employ elenchus when he had questioned Socrates' companions, but the portrayal of his method when relating the conversation to Socrates is too one-sided with concern only for his answers and paraphrasing that of the others. This leads Bryan to label "Clitophon" as a pseudo-dialogue through his use of pseudo-elenchus. Having spoken with Socrates on the topic of justice it is clear that either Clitophon was not a receiver of Socrates' elenchus or he did not realize that he had been given the answer to how to achieve justice. Due to Clitophon's desire to be told what to think, this does not make him a proper interlocutor for elenchus.
Xenophon’s works includes a selection of Socratic dialogues; these writings are completely preserved. Except for the dialogues of Plato, they are the only surviving representatives of the genre of Socratic dialogue. These works include Xenophon's "Apology, Memorabilia, Symposium," and "Oeconomicus". The "Symposium" outlines the character of Socrates as he and his companions discuss what attribute they take pride in. In "Oeconomicus", Socrates explains how to manage a household. Both the "Apology" and "Memorabilia" defend Socrates’ character and teachings. The former is set during the trial of Socrates, essentially defending Socrates’ loss and death, while the latter is a defence of Socrates, explaining his moral principles and that he was not a corrupter of the youth.
Socrates's opposition to democracy is often denied, and the question is one of the biggest philosophical debates when trying to determine exactly what Socrates believed. The strongest argument of those who claim Socrates did not actually believe in the idea of philosopher kings is that the view is expressed no earlier than Plato's Republic, which is widely considered one of Plato's "Middle" dialogues and not representative of the historical Socrates's views. Furthermore, according to Plato's Apology of Socrates, an "early" dialogue, Socrates refused to pursue conventional politics; he often stated he could not look into other's matters or tell people how to live their lives when he did not yet understand how to live his own. He believed he was a philosopher engaged in the pursuit of Truth, and did not claim to know it fully. Socrates's acceptance of his death sentence after his conviction can also be seen to support this view. It is often claimed much of the anti-democratic leanings are from Plato, who was never able to overcome his disgust at what was done to his teacher. In any case, it is clear Socrates thought the rule of the Thirty Tyrants was also objectionable; when called before them to assist in the arrest of a fellow Athenian, Socrates refused and narrowly escaped death before the Tyrants were overthrown. He did, however, fulfill his duty to serve as Prytanis when a trial of a group of Generals who presided over a disastrous naval campaign were judged; even then, he maintained an uncompromising attitude, being one of those who refused to proceed in a manner not supported by the laws, despite intense pressure.[130] Judging by his actions, he considered the rule of the Thirty Tyrants less legitimate than the Democratic Senate that sentenced him to death.
Another example in Book 8 Chapter 8 is about the philosopher Socrates. He writes of him showing an intimate side which did not distract from his stature because, as Valerius puts it, "no part of wisdom was hidden from him." He tells how Socrates one time made a hobbyhorse out of reed for his sons. He would then play with the hobbyhorse with them showing Socrates' personal parental side.
Without Hookbeard or Perry, Melbourne acknowledges that he can't live in the past or dream about the future, but must focus on "the now" (The Present Tense). But all alone, he quickly falls into Socrates’ tainted cheese trap Ain’t That Just the Whiff?). He takes the bait and eats the tainted cheese and is shortly thereafter overwhelmed by a guilt spawned hallucination (Bumblescratch Nightmare). His worst fears manifest, Melbourne must now face the Widow MacGregor's ghoulish spirit and admit culpability for his crimes against her. Amazingly, when he faces her and admits his regret, Melbourne discovers that the Widow holds no grudge against him, indeed she is grateful to him (Long Long Road). However, as Melbourne's delirium subsides, and Socrates shows his once zealous minions the defiled state in which Melbourne has stooped. Squabbler and the others become disillusioned with Melbourne but instead of returning to Socrates' fold, they decide to go leaderless. Anarchy ensues (We Will Live To Be Free). Without any allies left to assist him, Melbourne tries to get away from Socrates and the others unnoticed (S'ppose I Should Have Seen It Coming). But Socrates, Fats and Charmer stop him. Melbourne tells Socrates that he can die, satisfied in the knowledge that while he may have lost control of the rats, so has Socrates (Kill Me Now). Socrates reveals that he never wanted to kill Melbourne. Rather, he wants Melbourne to use his great thieving talents in order to execute a heist on his behalf – to steal the crown jewel from King Charles II. Socrates details how the heist will be accomplished (Farynor).
His enemies, led by a young man named Meletus, accuse him in court, arguing that the philosopher preaches crazy doctrines to the youth, and does not believe in the gods, but demons. Socrates makes his "apology" (i.e., legal defense), but the citizens are against him; so Socrates is sentenced to death, and held in prison, awaiting execution. His disciples are desperate, and one of them, Crito, tries to help him by encouraging him to flee. Socrates rejects this idea, saying he must obey the rulers of the city. Socrates then resolves to die, and dies as soon as he is forced to drink hemlock.
Xenophon was a student of Socrates, and their personal relationship is evident through a conversation between the two in Xenophon’s "Anabasis". In his "Lives of Eminent Philosophers", the Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius reports how Xenophon met Socrates. "They say that Socrates met [Xenophon] in a narrow lane, and put his stick across it and prevented him from passing by, asking him where all kinds of necessary things were sold. And when he had answered him, he asked him again where men were made good and virtuous. And as he did not know, he said, ‘Follow me, then, and learn.’ And from this time forth, Xenophon became a follower of Socrates." Diogenes Laertius also relates an incident "when in the battle of Delium Xenophon had fallen from his horse" and Socrates reputedly "stepped in and saved his life."
As Moore points out, Clitophon does not understand Socrates' speeches. He paraphrases them, takes them out of context, and implies there was a much larger audience for the speeches than there actually would have been. There is a misrepresentation and misunderstanding of Socrates' definition of justice and the differing means through which Socrates and Clitophon view virtue and justice as being achieved, by speech and deed, respectively. It is possible that Socrates uses protreptic speeches because he sees being just as being the same as having a desire to be just; therefore justice is achieved through speech. Clitophon holds that deeds and actions need to bring about change and make one just. This clear misunderstanding of justice is an example of how Clitophon misunderstands Socrates' speeches, for Clitophon has already been given the answer for how to achieve justice.