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Updated: June 17, 2025
There was another occasion on which he was very noticeable; this was in the flight of the army after the battle of Delium, and I had a better opportunity of seeing him than at Potidæa, as I was myself on horseback, and therefore comparatively out of danger.
He learnt easily, and, when he was with Socrates, would talk as well and wisely as any philosopher of them all; and Socrates really seems to have loved the bright, beautiful youth even more than his two graver and worthier pupils, Plato and Xenophon, perhaps because in one of Alkibiades’ first battles, at Delium, he had been very badly wounded, and Socrates had carried him safely out of the battle on his broad shoulders.
Being cautioned to bridle his tongue, he replied, "When your generals at Potidæa and Amphipolis and Delium assigned my place in the battle I remained there, did my work, and faced the peril, and think you that when Deity has assigned me my duty at this pass in life I should, through fear of death, evade it, and shirk my post?"
Alcibiades, the drunkard, gave witness that night to the courage and hardihood of Socrates how he had carried him and his armor from the battlefield of Potidæa, and outfaced the enemy at Delium; how he marched barefoot through the ice while the others, well shod, froze; and endured famine without complaining; yet again, in the feasts at the military table, he was the only person that appeared to enjoy them.
But Sulla, cool and clear as ever, while urgently desiring a speedy settlement of Asiatic affairs on account of the position of things in Italy, estimated the advantages of the Cappadocian alliance for the war impending over him in Italy as very slight, and was altogether too much of a Roman to consent to so disgraceful and so injurious a concession. Preliminaries of Delium
This battle and that of Delium were the two most important engagements that had yet been fought in the Peloponnesian war. Although the Athenians had fought on the side of the Argives at Mantinea, the peace between Sparta and Athens continued to be nominally observed.
Socrates, who was in the right wing, distinguished himself still more than in his lifetime at Delium, standing firm and showing no sign of trepidation as the enemy came on; he was afterwards given as a reward of valour a large and beautiful park in the outskirts, to which he invited his friends for conversation, naming it the Post-mortem Academy.
I then should be acting strangely, O Athenians! if, when the generals whom you chose to command me assigned me my post at Potidæa, at Amphipolis, and at Delium, I then remained where they posted me, like any other person, and encountered the danger of death; but when the deity, as I thought and believed, assigned it as my duty to pass my life in the study of philosophy, and examining myself and others, I should on that occasion, through fear of death or any thing else whatsoever, desert my post, strange indeed would it be; and then, in truth, any one might justly bring me to trial, and accuse me of not believing in the gods, from disobeying the oracle, fearing death, and thinking myself to be wise when I am not.
The Boeotians set up a trophy, took up their own dead, and stripped those of the enemy, and leaving a guard over them retired to Tanagra, there to take measures for attacking Delium.
Some made for Delium and the sea, some for Oropus, others for Mount Parnes, or wherever they had hopes of safety, pursued and cut down by the Boeotians, and in particular by the cavalry, composed partly of Boeotians and partly of Locrians, who had come up just as the rout began.
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