Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates 6

No less surprising to my mind is the belief that Socrates corrupted the young. This man, who, beyond what has been already stated, kept his appetites and passions under strict control, who was preeminently capable of enduring winter's cold and summer's heat and every kind of toil, who was so schooled to curtail his needs that with the scantiest of means he never lacked sufficiency—is it credible that such a man could have made others irreverent or lawless, or licentious, or effeminate in face of toil? 

Was he not rather the saving of many through the passion for virtue which he roused in them, and the hope he infused that through careful management of themselves they might grow to be truly beautiful and good—not indeed that he ever undertook to be a teacher of virtue, but being evidently virtuous himself he made those who associated with him hope that by imitating they might at last resemble him. 

But let it not be inferred that he was negligent of his own body or approved of those who neglected theirs. If excess of eating, counteracted by excess of toil, was a dietary of which he disapproved, to gratify the natural claim of appetite in conjunction with moderate exercise was a system he favored, as tending to a healthy condition of the body without trammeling the cultivation of the spirit. 

On the other hand, there was nothing dandified or pretentious about him; he indulged in no foppery of shawl or shoes, or other effeminacy of living. 

—from Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2 

IMAGE: Palma il Vecchio, Temperance (c. 1520)