INTRODUCTIOI.
 

LIFE OP SOCEATES.
 

PARENTAaE   AND   EARLY   LIFE.

Socrates was of genuine Attic extraction. He spoke of him¬
self, sportively, perhaps, as belonging to the family of the Dseda-
lidse of mythical renown, since his father Sophroniscus, by his
devotion to the profession of a statuary, proved himself a loyal suc¬
cessor of the founder of the family, Dsedalus.* His mother, Phse-
narete, was a midwife, as her son reminds us, by comparing his
own relation to the mind with hers to the body.f She seems,
however, to have been a woman of excellent character, and of
many noble qualities.^ The quiet, unostentatious home of these
parents was in the suburbs of Athens, northwest of the Acropo¬
lis, in the borough Alopece, near Cynosarges (White-dog-town),
where the school of the Cynics was held, and not very far from
Mount Lycabettus, probably identical with the present hill of St.

* Plato. Euthyph. 11. B, C.: Tod rjfxerepov TrpoySi/ov, 5 'E>v^{)<ppoy,
ioiK^v eivai Aai^dXov tcl vnh (Tov XeySfieva.    Cf. also Alcib. I. 121. A.

f Cf. Plato, Theaetetus, p. 149. A. and 151. A. In the latter passage
he says: TLdcrxovCL 8e S^ •   ol e^ol ^vyyLyvSficvoL koI tovto raMy ra7s

TlKro6(TaiSf   K.T.A.

X Theaetetus, p. 149. A.