Friends weep; Xanthippe is sent away; Socrates calmly bathes so that the women will not have to wash his corpse. The jailer, weeping, brings the cup. Socrates drinks it “quite readily and cheerfully”, walks until his legs are heavy, lies down, covers his face. Then he uncovers it: “Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Pay it and do not neglect it.” “Such was the end,” says Phaedo, “of our friend — the best, the wisest and most just of all men we have known.”
Jacques-Louis David’s painting The Death of Socrates (1787) is the image everyone remembers.
Lines to Remember
1 quotationsCrito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Pay it and do not neglect it.
Context & when to use it
Socrates’ last words. Asclepius was the god of healing — was death the cure for life?
For an enigmatic ending; Nietzsche read it as Socrates’ secret pessimism.
Explore Next
related by shared connectionsNaciketas at the House of Death
Given away by his angry father, the boy Naciketas waits three days at Death’s door, and refuses all the riches Yama offers until Death tells him what lies beyond.
Maitreyī
Yājñavalkya’s wife, “a discourser on Brahman”, who asked whether all the wealth in the world could make her immortal — and, refusing her share of his property, received instead his teaching that all love is love of the Self.
The Questions of King Milinda
A dialogue between the Indo-Greek king Menander and the Buddhist monk Nāgasena — the chariot argument for no-self, the flame of rebirth, and a Greek king’s sharp questions answered with Indian wit. A meeting of Greece and India in the 2nd century BCE.
Ramana Maharshi
The silent sage of Arunachala (1879–1950), who at sixteen experienced his own death and the deathless Self, and taught one practice above all — self-inquiry, “Who am I?” — the simplest and most direct path of Advaita.
Kaṭha Upaniṣad
The story of the boy Naciketas, who goes to the house of Death and asks what happens after death — receiving the teaching of the immortal Self.
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad
The “Great Forest” Upanishad, oldest and longest, home of Yājñavalkya’s debates, the teaching to Maitreyī, and “neti neti”.