Who is the Attendant?

This individual, essentially Socrates' jailer, appears briefly in "Phaedo." He is portrayed by Plato as being relatively gentle and sympathetic, reluctant to do what he has been ordered to do (supervise Socrates' death) and relieved when Socrates seems not only willing to die, but gracious and peaceful. He can perhaps be seen as a metaphor for the transforming power of grace. Socrates' encounter with him seems to suggest that when grace is as apparent and as alive as it seems to be in Socrates, it can be passed on to others and can therefore transform them into a human being more in touch, at least to a point, with the spiritual awareness sought, and connected to, by the enlightened.