Crito
The dialogue takes place in Socrates' prison cell, where he awaits execution. He is visited before dawn by his old friend Crito, who has made arrangements to smuggle Socrates out of prison to the safety of exile. Socrates seems quite willing to await his imminent execution, and so Crito presents as many arguments as he can in order to persuade Socrates to escape. On a practical level, Socrates' death will reflect badly on his friends--people will think they did nothing to try to save him. Also, Socrates should not worry about the risk or the financial cost to his friends; these they are willing to pay, and they have also arranged to find Socrates a pleasant life in exile. On a more ethical level, Crito presents two more pressing arguments: first, if he stayed, he would be aiding his enemies in wronging him unjustly, and would thus be acting unjustly himself; and second, that he would be abandoning his sons and leaving them without a father.
Socrates
Socrates frequently says his ideas are not his own, but his teachers'. He mentions several influences: Prodicus the rhetor and Anaxagoras the philosopher. Perhaps surprisingly, Socrates claims to have been deeply influenced by two women besides his mother: he says that Diotima (cf. Plato's "Symposium"), a witch and priestess from Mantinea, taught him all he knows about "eros", or love; and that Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, taught him the art of rhetoric. John Burnet argued that his principal teacher was the Anaxagorean Archelaus but his ideas were as Plato described them; Eric A. Havelock, on the other hand, did not accept the view that Socrates's view was identical with that of Archelaus, in large part due to the reason of such anomalies "and" contradictions that have surfaced and "post-dated his death."