Meditations 7:66

How do we know that Telauges wasn't a better man than

Socrates?

It's not enough to ask whether Socrates' death was nobler, whether he debated with the sophists more adeptly, whether he showed greater endurance by spending the night out in the cold, and when he was ordered to arrest the man from

Salamis decided it was preferable to refuse, and "swaggered about the streets" (which one could reasonably doubt).

What matters is what kind of soul he had.

Whether he was satisfied to treat men with justice and the gods with reverence and didn't lose his temper unpredictably at evil done by others, didn't make himself the slave of other people's ignorance, didn't treat anything that nature did as abnormal, or put up with it as an unbearable imposition, didn't put his mind in his body's keeping.