Quote:
Originally Posted by starkind
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No one has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for someone to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which they're body is capable.
You may QUOTE me on this.
Also can I get a source for the Socrates quote? I would very much like proof he actually said such a thing. Also I doubt very much he spoke English. So can we please get it in original coptic, or Greek, or whatever?
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All I could find was this, from some Reddit philosophy nerd:
“ Sokrates never wrote anything down, so all we know about him is how he is described by others. These accounts offer limited information about his life and don't always agree on his philosophies. Apart from the contemporary parody of Sokrates in Aristophanes' Clouds, we mostly rely on the philosophical dialogues written by two of Sokrates' students, Xenophon and Plato. Whether these authors represented Sokrates' views accurately or merely used him as a mouthpiece for their own ideas is debated. Whether their image of Sokrates as an ugly, poorly dressed, ostentatiously poor old man matched the reality is up for grabs.
So, when we get a quote like this, how can we know whether Sokrates really said it, let alone whether he lived by it? Unfortunately, we can't really know for sure. What we can do, though, is work out how likely it is that he held this view, and if so, how likely it is that he held himself to it. To do this, we need to consider the context of the quote.
This context is, in fact, a very short Sokratic dialogue by Xenophon (Memorabilia 3.12). According to the text, Sokrates ran into a young acquaintance of his named Epigenes, who was out of shape. Sokrates told him he ought to go do some exercise. Epigenes replied, "But I'm not an athlete." At this point Sokrates chewed him out.
The main point of Sokrates' argument, however, is not that men owe it to themselves to train their bodies so they can look their best. The quote you cited (3.12.8) is little more than the cherry on the cake, a closing line meant to convince Epigenes by appealing to his vanity. The entire rest of the argument is that Epigenes owes it to the state to train his body, because otherwise he will be useless in war. Epigenes should think of himself as an athlete, Sokrates argues (3.12.1), because he will have to fight for his city, and the only way to be a good fighter is to get fit”
There’s more to the post but this is the part that best explains the quote