Birth of Socrates. He applies at first to sculpture; then to the study of the sciences: his wonderful progress in them. His taste for moral philosophy: his manner of living, and sufferings from the ill humour of his wife.
Socrates was born at Athens, in the fourth year of Ant. J. C. 471. the seventy-seventh Olympiad.* His father Sophroniscus was a sculptor, and his mother Phænarete a midwife. Hence we may observe, that meanness of birth is no obstacle to true merit, in which alone solid glory and real nobility consists. It appears from the comparisons which Socrates often used in his discourses, that he was neither ashamed of his father's nor mother's profession. He was surprised that a sculptor should employ his whole attention to fashion an insensible stone into the likeness of a man,† and that a man should take so little pains not to resemble an insensible stone. He would often say, that he exercised the function of midwife with regard to the mind, in making it bring forth all its thoughts; and this was indeed the peculiar talent of Socrates. He treated subjects in so simple, natural, and clear an order, that he made those with whom he disputed say what he wished, and find an answer themselves to all the questions he proposed to them. He at first learned his father's trade, in which he made himself very expert. In the time of Pausanias, there was a Mercury and the Graces still to be seen at Athens of his workmanship; and it is to be presumed, these statues would not have found a place among those of the greatest masters in the art, if they had not been thought worthy of it.
Crito is reported to have taken him out of his father's shop,|| from admiration of his fine genius, and the opinion he entertained that it was inconsistent for a young man, capable of the greatest things, to continue perpetually employed upon stone with a chisel in his hand. He was the disciple of Archelaus, who conceived a great affection for him. Archelaus had been pupil to Anaxagoras, a very celebrated philosopher. His first study was physics, the works of nature, and the motions of the heavens, stars, and planets, according to the custom of those times, wherein only that part of philosophy was known; and Xenophon assures us that he was very well acquainted with it. But after having found, by his own experience,** how difficult, abstruse, and intricate, and, at the same
*Diog. Lsert. in Socrat. p. 100. † Ibid. p. 110. Plat. in Theatet. p. 149, &c Paus. 1. ix. p. 596. || Diog. p. 101. T Lib. iv Memorab. p. 710. **Socrates primus philosophiam devocavit è cœlo, ut in urbibus collocavit, et in domos etiam introduxit, et coëgit de vitâ et moribus, rebusque bunis et malis quærere. Tusc. Quæst.1. v. n. 10.
Socrates mihi videtur, id quod constat inter omnes, primus à rebus occultis, et ab ipsâ naturâ involutis, in quibus omnes ante eum philosophi occupati fuerunt, avocavisse philosophiam, et ad vitam communem adduxisse; ut de virtutibus et vitiis, omninoque de bonis rebus et malis quereret; cœlestia autem vel procul esse à nostrà cognitione cense ret, vel si maximè cognita essent, nihil tamen ad bene vivendum conferre. Cic. Acad. Quæst. 1. i. n 15.