CICUTA is also used, chiefly among the ancients, for the juice or liquor expressed from the above plant, being the common poison wherewith the state criminals at Athens were put to death: Though some have suggested, that the poisonous draught to which the Athenians doomed their criminals was an inspissated
juice compounded of the juice of cicuta and some other corrosive herbs.
Socrates drank the cicuta.—Plato, in his dialogue on the immortality of the soul, observes, that "The executioner advised Socrates not to talk, for fear of causing the cicuta to operate too slowly." M. Petit, in his Observations Miscellanees, remarks, that this advice was not given by the executioner out of humanity, but to save the cicuta; for he was only allowed so much poison per ann. which, if he exceeded, he was to furnish at his own expence. This construction is confirmed by a passage in Plutarch: the executioner who administered the cicuta to Phocion, not having enough, Phocion gave him money to buy more; observing by the way, "that it was odd enough, that at Athens a man must pay for every thing, even for his own death."