A Life of Socrates by Dr. G. Wiggers [pp. 236-265]

Birth and Parentage.
laboured, and the heathenism in which he lived. It is, therefore, well for each generation to form some accurate idea of this
Corypheus of reasoning, and to see at least something of his
thoughts on philosophical and moral subjects. The swarms of
little creatures, who often mention his name, and wish to be
esteemed his imitators, commonly resemble him in nothing
except their gross ignorance of the principles of revelation, with
this difference, that they have the Bible before them and reject
it; whereas he had it not, but seems greatly to have desired such
a guide, as would make the dark places light and the rough
places smooth, in his journey to immortality.
Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus and of Phaenarete.
His father was a sculptor, and his mother a midwife. He was
born at Athens, in the year 469 before Christ, the exact day of
his birth being a disputed point. He was entirely destitute at
any period of his life of personal beauty. Indeed his enemies
compared him to the Sileni, and to- Marsyas the Satyr. In
Xenophon's Symposium, Socrates admits that his eyes were
prominent, his nose depressed, and his mouth large. His body
seems to have been as much out of good proportion as his head
and face. In early life he was taught music, and poetry, and
gymnastic exercises, according to the custom of his country.
He also became a sculptor of considerable distinction, but was
subsequently induced by Crito, a wealthy Athenian, to renounce
that profession, and give his attenition to the higher intellectual
pursuits of the age. In the Phaedo he says: "I had an
astonishing longing for that kind of knowledge which they call
physics." This remark relates to the early part of his life.
Some say that he was not over seventeen when he first began
to attend the schools of men reputed eminent, such as Archelaus, Parmenides, Zeno, and Anaxagoras, who were called philosophers, and Evenus, Prodicus, and others, who were called
sophists; a name, in fact, more suited to them in the modern
than in the ancient sense. He also studied the writings of men
of former ages, by no means slighting Homer, as his dialogues
show.
Although at the schools' he advanced rapidly in a knowledge
of the prevailing systems of physics, mathematics, and astronomy, yet in subsequent life he esteemed these acquirements as
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