Recalling philosophy's task of delivering the soul from its bodily prison, Socrates maintains that the greatest evil of attachment to the body is a false estimate of reality. Once the deliverance is begun, the true philosopher will not slip back, but will continue in contemplation of divine truth until death releases him from all human afflictions.

A long silence ensues, after which it appears that Cebes and Simmias still harbour doubts, but are reluctant to trouble Socrates further in his ‘sad situation’. For this expression he gently rebukes them, adding that just as the dying swan sings not, as men suppose, for sorrow but for joy, so he who, like the swan, is a servant of Apollo and endowed by him with prophetic power, joyously foresees a happy deliverance from this life.

‘How so, Socrates?’

‘I will tell you’, he replied. 'The lover of knowledge recognises that when philosophy takes over his soul it is a veritable prisoner fast bound within his body and cemented thereto; and that instead of investigating reality by itself and through itself it is compelled to peer through the bars of its prison, wallowing in utter ignorance; moreover the philosopher's eye discerns the ingenuity of a prison in which the prisoner's desire can be the means of ensuring that he will co-operate in his own incarceration.