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APOLOGY
by Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
INTRODUCTION.
In what relation the Apology of Plato stands
to the real defence of Socrates, there are no means of
determining. It certainly agrees in tone and character with
the description of Xenophon, who says in the Memorabilia
that Socrates might have been acquitted 'if in any moderate
degree he would have conciliated the favour of the
dicasts;' and who informs us in another passage, on the
testimony of Hermogenes, the friend of Socrates, that he
had no wish to live; and that the divine sign refused to
allow him to prepare a defence, and also that Socrates
himself declared this to be unnecessary, on the ground that
all his life long he had been preparing against that hour.
For the speech breathes throughout a spirit of defiance,
(ut non supplex aut reus sed magister aut dominus videretur
esse judicum' (Cic. de Orat.); and the loose and desultory
style is an imitation of the 'accustomed manner' in which
Socrates spoke in 'the agora and among the tables of the
money-changers.' The allusion in the Crito may, perhaps, be
adduced as a further evidence of the literal accuracy of
some parts. But in the main it must be regarded as
the ideal of Socrates, according to Plato's conception of
him, appearing in the greatest and most public scene of his
life, and in the height of his triumph, when he is weakest,
and yet his mastery over mankind is greatest, and his
habitual irony acquires a new meaning and a sort of tragic
pathos in the face of death. The facts of his life are
summed up, and the features of his character are brought
out as if by accident in the course of the defence. The
conversational manner, the seeming want of arrangement, the
ironical simplicity, are found to result in a perfect work
of art, which is the portrait of Socrates.
Yet some of the topics may have been actually
used by Socrates; and therecollection of his very words may
have rung in the ears of his disciple. The Apology of Plato
may be compared generally with those speeches ofThucydides
in which he has embodied his conception of the lofty
character and policy of the great Pericles, and which at
the same time furnish acommentary on the situation of
affairs from the point of view of the historian. So in the
Apology there is an ideal rather than a literaltruth; much
is said which was not said, and is only Plato's view of the
situation. Plato was not, like Xenophon, a chronicler of
facts; he does not appear in any of his writings to have
aimed at literal accuracy. He is not therefore to be
supplemented from the Memorabilia and Symposium ofXenophon,
who belongs to an entirely different class of writers. The
Apology of Plato is not the report of what Socrates said,
but an elaborate composition, quite as much so in fact as
one of the Dialogues. And we may perhaps even indulge in
the fancy that the actual defence of Socrates was as much
greater than the Platonic defence as the master was greater
than the disciple. But in any case, some of the words used
by him must have been remembered, and some of the facts
recorded must have actually occurred.
It is significant that Plato is said to have been present
at the defence (Apol.), as he is also said to have been
absent at the last scene in the Phaedo. Is it fanciful to
suppose that he meant to give the stamp of authenticity to
the one and not to the other?--especially when we consider
that these two passages are the only ones in which Plato
makes mention of himself. The circumstance that Plato was
to be one of his sureties for the payment of the fine which
he proposed has the appearance of truth. More suspicious is
the statement that Socrates received the first impulse to
his favourite calling of cross-examining the world from
the Oracle of Delphi; for he must already have been famous
before Chaerephon went to consult the Oracle (Riddell), and
the story is of a kindwhich is very likely to have been
invented. On the whole we arrive at the conclusion that the
Apology is true to the character of Socrates, but we cannot
show that any single sentence in it was actually spoken by
him. It breathes the spirit of Socrates, but has been cast
anew in the mould of Plato.
There is not much in the other Dialogues which
can be compared with the Apology. The same recollection of
his master may have been present to the mind of Plato when
depicting the sufferings of the Just in the Republic. The
Crito may also be regarded as a sort of appendage to the
Apology, in which Socrates, who has defied the judges, is
nevertheless represented as scrupulously obedient to the
laws. The idealization of the sufferer is carried still
further in the Gorgias, in which the thesis is maintained,
that 'to suffer is better than to do evil;' and the art of
rhetoric is described as only useful for the purpose of
self-accusation. The parallelisms which occur in the
so-called Apology of Xenophon are not worth noticing,
because the writing in which they are contained is
manifestly spurious. The statements of the Memorabilia
respecting the trial and death of Socrates agree generally
with Plato; but they have lost the flavour of Socratic
irony in the narrative of Xenophon.
The Apology or Platonic defence of Socrates is
divided into three parts: 1st. The defence properly so
called; 2nd. The shorter address in mitigation of the
penalty; 3rd. The last words of prophetic rebuke and
exhortation.
The first part commences with an apology for
his colloquial style; he is, as he has always been, the
enemy of rhetoric, and knows of no rhetoric but truth; he
will not falsify his character by making a speech. Then he
proceeds to divide his accusers into two classes; first,
there is the nameless accuser--public opinion. All the
world from their earliest years had heard that he was a
corrupter of youth, and had seen him caricatured in the
Clouds of Aristophanes. Secondly, there are the professed
accusers, who are but the mouth-piece of the others. The
accusations of both might be summed up in a formula. The
first say, 'Socrates is an evil-doer and a curious person,
searching into things under the earth and above the heaven;
and making the worse appear the better cause, and teaching
all this to others.' The second, 'Socrates is an evil-doer
and corrupter of the youth, who does not receive the gods
whom the state receives, but introduces other new
divinities.' These last words appear to have been the
actual indictment (compare Xen. Mem.); and the previous
formula, which is a summary of public opinion, assumes the
same legal style.
The answer begins by clearing up a confusion.
In the representations of the Comic poets, and in the
opinion of the multitude, he had been identified with the
teachers of physical science and with the Sophists. But
this was an error. For both of them he professes a respect
in the open court, which contrasts with his manner of
speaking about them in other places. (Compare for
Anaxagoras, Phaedo, Laws; for the Sophists, Meno, Republic,
Tim., Theaet., Soph., etc.) But at the same time he shows
that he is not one of them. Of natural philosophy he knows
nothing; not that he despises such pursuits, but the fact
is that he is ignorant of them, and
never says a word about them. Nor is he paid for giving
instruction--that is another mistaken notion:--he has
nothing to teach. But he commends
Evenus for teaching virtue at such a 'moderate' rate as
five minae. Something of the 'accustomed irony,' which may
perhaps be expected to sleep in the ear of the multitude,
is lurking here.
He then goes on to explain the reason why he
is in such an evil name. That had arisen out of a peculiar
mission which he had taken upon himself. The enthusiastic
Chaerephon (probably in anticipation of the answer which he
received) had gone to Delphi and asked the oracle if there
was any man wiser than Socrates; and the answer was, that
there was no man wiser. What could be the meaning of
this--that he who knew nothing, and knew that he knew
nothing, should be declared by the oracle to be the wisest
of men? Reflecting upon the answer, he determined to refute
it by finding 'a wiser;' and first he went to the
politicians, and then to the poets, and then to the
craftsmen, but always with the same result--he found that
they knew nothing, or hardly anything more than himself;
and that the little advantage which in some cases they
possessed was more than counter-balanced by their conceit
of knowledge. He knew nothing, and knew that he knew
nothing: they knew little or nothing, and imagined that
they knew all things. Thus he had passed his life as a sort
of missionary in detecting the pretended wisdom of mankind;
and this occupation had quite absorbed him and taken him
away both from public and private affairs. Young men of the
richer sort had made a pastime of the same pursuit, 'which
was not unamusing.' And hence bitter enmities had arisen;
the professors of knowledge had revenged themselves by
calling him a villainous corrupter of youth, and by
repeating the commonplaces about atheism and materialism
and sophistry, which are the stock-accusations against all
philosophers when there is nothing else to be said of them.
The second accusation he meets by
interrogating Meletus, who is present and can be
interrogated. 'If he is the corrupter, who is the improver
of the citizens?' (Compare Meno.) 'All men everywhere.' But
how absurd, how contrary to analogy is this! How
inconceivable too, that he should make the citizens worse
when he has to live with them. This surely cannot be
intentional; and if unintentional, he ought to have been
instructed by Meletus, and not accused in the court.
But there is another part of the indictment
which says that he teaches men not to receive the gods whom
the city receives, and has other new gods. 'Is that the way
in which he is supposed to corrupt the youth?' 'Yes, it
is.' 'Has he only new gods, or none at all?' 'None at all.'
'What, not even the sun and moon?' 'No; why, he says that
the sun is a stone, and the moon earth.' That, replies
Socrates, is the old confusion about Anaxagoras; the
Athenian people are not so ignorant as to attribute to the
influence of Socrates notions which have found their way
into the drama, and may be learned at the theatre. Socrates
undertakes to show that Meletus (rather unjustifiably) has
been compounding a riddle in this part of the indictment:
'There are no gods, but Socrates believes in the existence
of the sons of gods, which is absurd.'
Leaving Meletus, who has had enough words
spent upon him, he returns to the original accusation. The
question may be asked, Why will he persist in following a
profession which leads him to death? Why?--because he must
remain at his post where the god has placed him, as he
remained at Potidaea, and Amphipolis, and Delium, where the
generals placed him. Besides, he is not so overwise as to
imagine that he knows whether death is a good or an evil;
and he is certain that desertion of his duty is an evil.
Anytus is quite right in saying that they should never have
indicted him if they meant to let him go. For he will
certainly obey God rather than man; and will continue to
preach to all men of all ages the necessity of virtue and
improvement; and if they refuse to listen to him he will
still persevere and reprove them. This is his way of
corrupting the youth, which he will not cease to follow in
obedience to the god, even if a thousand deaths await him.
He is desirous that they should let him
live--not for his own sake, but for theirs; because he is
their heaven-sent friend (and they will never have such
another), or, as he may be ludicrously described, he is the
gadfly who stirs the generous steed into motion. Why then
has he never taken part in public affairs? Because the
familiar divine voice has hindered him; if he had been a
public man, and had fought for the right, as he would
certainly have fought against the many, he would not have
lived, and could therefore have done no good. Twice in
public matters he has risked his life for the sake of
justice--once at the trial of the generals; and again in
resistance
to the tyrannical commands of the Thirty.
But, though not a public man, he has passed
his days in instructing the citizens without fee or
reward--this was his mission. Whether his disciples have
turned out well or ill, he cannot justly be charged with
the result, for he never promised to teach them anything.
They might come if they liked, and they might stay away if
they liked: and they did come, because they found an
amusement in hearing the pretenders to wisdom detected. If
they have been corrupted, their elder relatives (if not
themselves) might surely come into court and witness
against him, and there is an opportunity still for them to
appear. But their fathers and brothers all appear in court
(including 'this' Plato), to witness on his behalf; and if
their relatives are corrupted, at least they are
uncorrupted; 'and they are my witnesses. For they know that
I am speaking the truth, and that Meletus is lying.'
This is about all that he has to say. He will
not entreat the judges to spare his life; neither will he
present a spectacle of weeping children, although he, too,
is not made of 'rock or oak.' Some of the judges themselves
may have complied with this practice on similar occasions,
and he trusts that they will not be angry with him for not
following their example. But he feels that such conduct
brings discredit on the name of Athens: he feels too, that
the judge has sworn not to give away justice;
and he cannot be guilty of the impiety of asking the judge
to break his oath, when he is himself being tried for
impiety.
As he expected, and probably intended, he is
convicted. And now the tone of the speech, instead of being
more conciliatory, becomes more lofty and commanding.
Anytus proposes death as the penalty: and what
counter-proposition shall he make? He, the benefactor of
the Athenian people, whose whole life has been spent in
doing them good, should at least have the Olympic victor's
reward of maintenance in the Prytaneum. Or why should he
propose any counter-penalty when he does not know whether
death, which Anytus proposes, is a good or an evil? And he
is certain that imprisonment is an evil, exile is an evil.
Loss of money might be an evil, but then he has none to
give; perhaps he can make up a mina. Let that be the
penalty, or, if his friends wish, thirty minae; for which
they will be excellent securities.
(He is condemned to death.)
He is an old man already, and the Athenians
will gain nothing but disgrace by depriving him of a few
years of life. Perhaps he could have escaped, if he had
chosen to throw down his arms and entreat for his life. But
he does not at all repent of the manner of his defence; he
would rather die in his own fashion than live in theirs.
For the penalty of unrighteousness is swifter than death;
that penalty has already overtaken his accusers as death
will soon overtake him.
And now, as one who is about to die, he will
prophesy to them. They have put him to death in order to
escape the necessity of giving an account of their lives.
But his death ‘will be the seed’ of many disciples who will
convince them of their evil ways, and will come forth to
reprove them in harsher terms, because they are younger and
more inconsiderate.
He would like to say a few words, while there
is time, to those who would have acquitted him. He wishes
them to know that the divine sign never interrupted him in
the course of his defence; the reason of which, as he
conjectures, is that the death to which he is going is a
good and not an evil. For either death is a long sleep, the
best of sleeps, or a journey to another world in which the
souls of the dead are gathered together, and in which there
may be a hope of seeing the heroes of old—in which, too,
there are just judges; and as all are immortal, there can
be no fear of any one suffering death for his opinions.
Nothing evil can happen to the good man either
in life or death, and his own death has been permitted by
the gods, because it was better for him to depart; and
therefore he forgives his judges because they have done him
no harm, although they never meant to do him any good.
He has a last request to make to them—that
they will trouble his sons as he has troubled them, if they
appear to prefer riches to virtue, or to think themselves
something when they are nothing.
...
‘Few persons will be found to wish that
Socrates should have defended himself otherwise,’—if, as we
must add, his defence was that with which Plato has
provided him. But leaving this question, which does not
admit of a precise solution, we may go on to ask what was
the impression which Plato in the Apology intended to give
of the character and conduct of his master in the last
great scene? Did he intend to represent him (1) as
employing sophistries; (2) as designedly irritating the
judges? Or are these sophistries to be regarded as
belonging to the age in which he lived and to his personal
character, and this apparent haughtiness as flowing from
the natural elevation of his position?
For example, when he says that it is absurd to
suppose that one man is the corrupter and all the rest of
the world the improvers of the youth; or, when he argues
that he never could have corrupted the men with whom he had
to live; or, when he proves his belief in the gods because
he believes in the sons of gods, is he serious or jesting?
It may be observed that these sophisms all occur in his
cross-examination of Meletus, who is easily foiled and
mastered in the hands of the great dialectician. Perhaps he
regarded these answers as good enough for his accuser, of
whom he makes very light. Also there is a touch of irony in
them, which takes them out of the category of sophistry.
(Compare Euthyph.)
That the manner in which he defends himself
about the lives of his disciples is not satisfactory, can
hardly be denied. Fresh in the memory of the Athenians, and
detestable as they deserved to be to the newly restored
democracy, were the names of Alcibiades, Critias,
Charmides. It is obviously not a sufficient answer that
Socrates had never professed to teach them anything, and is
therefore not justly chargeable with their crimes. Yet the
defence, when taken out of this ironical form, is doubtless
sound: that his teaching had nothing to do with their evil
lives. Here, then, the sophistry is rather in form than in
substance, though we might desire that to such a serious
charge Socrates had given a more serious answer.
Truly characteristic of Socrates is another
point in his answer, which may also be regarded as
sophistical. He says that ‘if he has corrupted the youth,
he must have corrupted them involuntarily.’ But if, as
Socrates argues, all evil is involuntary, then all
criminals ought to be admonished and not punished. In these
words the Socratic doctrine of the involuntariness of evil
is clearly intended to be conveyed. Here again, as in the
former instance, the defence of Socrates is untrue
practically, but may be true in some ideal or
transcendental sense. The commonplace reply, that if he had
been guilty of corrupting the youth their relations would
surely have witnessed against him, with which he concludes
this part of his defence, is more satisfactory.
Again, when Socrates argues that he must
believe in the gods because he believes in the sons of
gods, we must remember that this is a refutation not of the
original indictment, which is consistent enough—‘Socrates
does not receive the gods whom the city receives, and has
other new divinities’ --but of the interpretation put upon
the words by Meletus, who has affirmed that he is a
downright atheist. To this Socrates fairly answers, in
accordance with the ideas of the time, that a downright
atheist cannot believe in the sons of gods or in divine
things. The notion that demons or lesser divinities are the
sons of gods is not to be regarded as ironical or
sceptical. He is arguing ‘ad hominem’ according to the
notions of mythology current in his age. Yet he abstains
from saying that he believed in the gods whom the State
approved. He does not defend himself, as Xenophon has
defended him, by appealing to his practice of
religion. Probably he neither wholly believed, nor
disbelieved, in the existence of the popular gods; he had
no means of knowing about them. According to Plato (compare
Phaedo; Symp.), as well as Xenophon (Memor.), he was
punctual in the performance of the least religious duties;
and he must have believed in his own oracular sign, of
which he seemed to have an internal witness. But the
existence of Apollo or Zeus, or the other gods whom the
State approves, would have appeared to him both uncertain
and unimportant in comparison of the duty of
self-examination, and of those principles of truth and
right which he deemed to be the foundation of religion.
(Compare Phaedr.; Euthyph.; Republic.)
The second question, whether Plato meant to
represent Socrates as braving or irritating his judges,
must also be answered in the negative. His irony, his
superiority, his audacity, ‘regarding not the person of
man,’ necessarily flow out of the loftiness of his
situation. He is not acting a part upon a great occasion,
but he is what he has been all his life long, ‘a king of
men.’ He would rather not appear insolent, if he could
avoid it (ouch os authadizomenos touto lego). Neither is he
desirous of hastening his own end, for life and death are
simply indifferent to him. But such a defence as would be
acceptable to his judges and might procure an acquittal, it
is not in his nature to make. He will not say or do
anything that might pervert the course of justice; he
cannot have his tongue bound even ‘in the throat of death.’
With his accusers he will only fence and play, as he had
fenced with other ‘improvers of youth,’ answering the
Sophist according to his sophistry all his life long. He is
serious when he is speaking of his own mission, which seems
to distinguish him from all other reformers of mankind, and
originates in an accident. The dedication of himself to the
improvement of his fellow-citizens is not so remarkable as
the ironical spirit in which he goes about doing good only
in vindication of the credit of the oracle, and in the vain
hope of finding a wiser man than himself. Yet this singular
and almost accidental character of his mission agrees with
the divine sign which, according to our notions, is equally
accidental and irrational, and is nevertheless accepted by
him as the guiding principle of his life. Socrates is
nowhere represented to us as a freethinker or sceptic.
There is no reason to doubt his sincerity when he
speculates on the possibility of seeing and knowing the
heroes of the Trojan war in another world. On the other
hand, his hope of immortality is uncertain;--he also
conceives of death as a long sleep (in this respect
differing from the Phaedo), and at last falls back on
resignation to the divine will, and the certainty that no
evil can happen to the good man either in life or death.
His absolute truthfulness seems to hinder him from
asserting positively more than this; and he makes no
attempt to veil his ignorance in mythology and figures of
speech. The gentleness of the first part of the speech
contrasts with the aggravated, almost threatening, tone of
the conclusion. He characteristically remarks that he will
not speak as a rhetorician, that is to say, he will not
make a regular defence such as Lysias or one of the orators
might have composed for him, or, according to some
accounts, did compose for him. But he first procures
himself a hearing by conciliatory words. He does not attack
the Sophists; for they were open to the same charges as
himself; they were equally ridiculed by the Comic poets,
and almost equally hateful to Anytus and Meletus. Yet
incidentally the antagonism between Socrates and the
Sophists is allowed to appear. He is poor and they are
rich; his profession that he teaches nothing is opposed to
their readiness to teach all things; his talking in the
marketplace to their private instructions; his
tarry-at-home life to their wandering from city to city.
The tone which he assumes towards them is one of real
friendliness, but also of concealed irony. Towards
Anaxagoras, who had disappointed him in his hopes of
learning about mind and nature, he shows a less kindly
feeling, which is also the feeling of Plato in other
passages (Laws). But Anaxagoras had been dead thirty years,
and was beyond the reach of persecution.
It has been remarked that the prophecy of a
new generation of teachers who would rebuke and exhort the
Athenian people in harsher and more violent terms was, as
far as we know, never fulfilled. No inference can be drawn
from this circumstance as to the probability of the words
attributed to him having been actually uttered. They
express the aspiration of the first martyr of philosophy,
that he would leave behind him many followers, accompanied
by the not unnatural feeling that they would be fiercer and
more inconsiderate in their words when emancipated from his
control.
The above remarks must be understood as
applying with any degree of certainty to the Platonic
Socrates only. For, although these or similar words may
have been spoken by Socrates himself, we cannot exclude the
possibility, that like so much else, e.g. the wisdom of
Critias, the poem of Solon, the virtues of Charmides, they
may have been due only to the imagination of Plato. The
arguments of those who maintain that the Apology was
composed during the process, resting on no evidence, do not
require a serious refutation. Nor are the reasonings of
Schleiermacher, who argues that the Platonic defence is an
exact or nearly exact reproduction of the words of
Socrates, partly because Plato would not have been guilty
of the impiety of altering them, and also because many
points of the defence might have been improved and
strengthened, at all more conclusive. (See English
Translation.) What effect the death of Socrates produced on
the mind of Plato, we cannot certainly determine; nor can
we say how he would or must have written under the
circumstances. We observe that the enmity of Aristophanes
to Socrates does not prevent Plato from introducing them
together in the Symposium engaged in friendly intercourse.
Nor is there any trace in the Dialogues of an attempt to
make Anytus or Meletus personally odious in the eyes of the
Athenian public.
APOLOGY
by
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
How you, O Athenians, have been affected by my accusers, I
cannot tell; but I know that they almost made me forget who
I was—so persuasively did they speak; and yet they have
hardly uttered a word of truth. But of the many falsehoods
told by them, there was one which quite amazed me;--I mean
when they said that you should be upon your guard and not
allow yourselves to be deceived by the force of my
eloquence. To say this, when they were certain to be
detected as soon as I opened my lips and proved myself to
be anything but a great speaker, did indeed appear to me
most shameless—unless by the force of eloquence they mean
the force of truth; for is such is their meaning, I admit
that I am eloquent. But in how different a way from theirs!
Well, as I was saying, they have scarcely spoken the truth
at all; but from me you shall hear the whole truth: not,
however, delivered after their manner in a set oration duly
ornamented with words and phrases. No, by heaven! but I
shall use the words and arguments which occur to me at the
moment; for I am confident in the justice of my cause (Or,
I am certain that I am right in taking this course.): at my
time of life I ought not to be appearing before you, O men
of Athens, in the character of a juvenile orator—let no one
expect it of me. And I must beg of you to grant me a
favour:--If I defend myself in my accustomed manner, and
you hear me using the words which I have been in the habit
of using in the agora, at the tables of the money-changers,
or anywhere else, I would ask you not to be surprised, and
not to interrupt me on this account. For I am more than
seventy years of age, and appearing now for the first time
in a court of law, I am quite a stranger to the language of
the place; and therefore I would have you regard me as if I
were really a stranger, whom you would excuse if he spoke
in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his
country:--Am I making an unfair request of you? Never mind
the manner, which may or may not be good; but think only of
the truth of my words, and give heed to that: let the
speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.
And first, I have to reply to the older charges and to my
first accusers, and then I will go on to the later ones.
For of old I have had many accusers, who have accused me
falsely to you during many years; and I am more afraid of
them than of Anytus and his associates, who are dangerous,
too, in their own way. But far more dangerous are the
others, who began when you were children, and took
possession of your minds with their falsehoods, telling of
one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heaven
above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the
worse appear the better cause. The disseminators of this
tale are the accusers whom I dread; for their hearers are
apt to fancy that such enquirers do not believe in the
existence of the gods. And they are many, and their charges
against me are of ancient date, and they were made by them
in the days when you were more impressible than you are
now—in childhood, or it may have been in youth—and the
cause when heard went by default, for there was none to
answer. And hardest of all, I do not know and cannot tell
the names of my accusers; unless in the chance case of a
Comic poet. All who from envy and malice have persuaded
you—some of them having first convinced themselves—all this
class of men are most difficult to deal with; for I cannot
have them up here, and cross-examine them, and therefore I
must simply fight with shadows in my own defence, and argue
when there is no one who answers. I will ask you then to
assume with me, as I was saying, that my opponents are of
two kinds; one recent, the other ancient: and I hope that
you will see the propriety of my answering the latter
first, for these accusations you heard long before the
others, and much oftener.
Well, then, I must make my defence, and endeavour to clear
away in a short time, a slander which has lasted a long
time. May I succeed, if to succeed be for my good and
yours, or likely to avail me in my cause! The task is not
an easy one; I quite understand the nature of it. And so
leaving the event with God, in obedience to the law I will
now make my defence.
I will begin at the beginning, and ask what is the
accusation which has given rise to the slander of me, and
in fact has encouraged Meletus to proof this charge against
me. Well, what do the slanderers say? They shall be my
prosecutors, and I will sum up their words in an affidavit:
‘Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who
searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he
makes the worse appear the better cause; and he teaches the
aforesaid doctrines to others.’ Such is the nature of the
accusation: it is just what you have yourselves seen in the
comedy of Aristophanes (Aristoph., Clouds.), who has
introduced a man whom he calls Socrates, going about and
saying that he walks in air, and talking a deal of nonsense
concerning matters of which I do not pretend to know either
much or little—not that I mean to speak disparagingly of
any one who is a student of natural philosophy. I should be
very sorry if Meletus could bring so grave a charge against
me. But the simple truth is, O Athenians, that I have
nothing to do with physical speculations. Very many of
those here present are witnesses to the truth of this, and
to them I appeal. Speak then, you who have heard me, and
tell your neighbours whether any of you have ever known me
hold forth in few words or in many upon such matters...You
hear their answer. And from what they say of this part of
the charge you will be able to judge of the truth of the
rest.
As little foundation is there for the report that I am a
teacher, and take money; this accusation has no more truth
in it than the other. Although, if a man were really able
to instruct mankind, to receive money for giving
instruction would, in my opinion, be an honour to him.
There is Gorgias of Leontium, and Prodicus of Ceos, and
Hippias of Elis, who go the round of the cities, and are
able to persuade the young men to leave their own citizens
by whom they might be taught for nothing, and come to them
whom they not only pay, but are thankful if they may be
allowed to pay them. There is at this time a Parian
philosopher residing in Athens, of whom I have heard; and I
came to hear of him in this way:--I came across a man who
has spent a world of money on the Sophists, Callias, the
son of Hipponicus, and knowing that he had sons, I asked
him: ‘Callias,’ I said, ‘if your two sons were foals or
calves, there would be no difficulty in finding some one to
put over them; we should hire a trainer of horses, or a
farmer probably, who would improve and perfect them in
their own proper virtue and excellence; but as they are
human beings, whom are you thinking of placing over them?
Is there any one who understands human and political
virtue? You must have thought about the matter, for
you have sons; is there any one?’ ‘There is,’ he said. ‘Who
is he?’ said I; ‘and of what country? and what does he
charge?’ ‘Evenus the Parian,’ he replied; ‘he is the man,
and his charge is five minae.’ Happy is Evenus, I said to
myself, if he really has this wisdom, and teaches at such a
moderate charge. Had I the same, I should have been very
proud and conceited; but the truth is that I have no
knowledge of the kind.
I dare say, Athenians, that some one among you will reply,
‘Yes, Socrates, but what is the origin of these accusations
which are brought against you; there must have been
something strange which you have been doing? All these
rumours and this talk about you would never have arisen if
you had been like other men: tell us, then, what is the
cause of them, for we should be sorry to judge hastily of
you.’ Now I regard this as a fair challenge, and I will
endeavour to explain to you the reason why I am called wise
and have such an evil fame. Please to attend then. And
although some of you may think that I am joking, I declare
that I will tell you the entire truth. Men of Athens, this
reputation of mine has come of a certain sort of wisdom
which I possess. If you ask me what kind of wisdom, I
reply, wisdom such as may perhaps be attained by man, for
to that extent I am inclined to believe that I am wise;
whereas the persons of whom I was speaking have a
superhuman wisdom which I may fail to describe, because I
have it not myself; and he who says that I have, speaks
falsely, and is taking away my character. And here, O men
of Athens, I must beg you not to interrupt me, even if I
seem to say something extravagant. For the word which I
will speak is not mine. I will refer you to a witness who
is worthy of credit; that witness shall be the God of
Delphi—he will tell you about my wisdom, if I have any, and
of what sort it is. You must have known Chaerephon; he was
early a friend of mine, and also a friend of yours, for he
shared in the recent exile of the people, and returned with
you. Well, Chaerephon, as you know, was very impetuous in
all his doings, and he went to Delphi and boldly asked the
oracle to tell him whether—as I was saying, I must beg you
not to interrupt—he asked the oracle to tell him whether
anyone was wiser than I was, and the Pythian prophetess
answered, that there was no man wiser. Chaerephon is dead
himself; but his brother, who is in court, will confirm the
truth of what I am saying.
Why do I mention this? Because I am going to explain to you
why I have such an evil name. When I heard the answer, I
said to myself, What can the god mean? and what is the
interpretation of his riddle? for I know that I have no
wisdom, small or great. What then can he mean when he says
that I am the wisest of men? And yet he is a god, and
cannot lie; that would be against his nature. After long
consideration, I thought of a method of trying the
question. I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser
than myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation
in my hand. I should say to him, ‘Here is a man who is
wiser than I am; but you said that I was the wisest.’
Accordingly I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom,
and observed him—his name I need not mention; he was a
politician whom I selected for examination—and the result
was as follows: When I began to talk with him, I could not
help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was
thought wise by many, and still wiser by himself; and
thereupon I tried to explain to him that he thought himself
wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that
he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were
present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I
went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of
us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better
off than he is,-- for he knows nothing, and thinks that he
knows; I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter
particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of
him. Then I went to another who had still higher
pretensions to wisdom, and my conclusion was exactly the
same. Whereupon I made another enemy of him, and of many
others besides him.
Then I went to one man after another, being not unconscious
of the enmity which I provoked, and I lamented and feared
this: but necessity was laid upon me,--the word of God, I
thought, ought to be considered first. And I said to
myself, Go I must to all who appear to know, and find out
the meaning of the oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians,
by the dog I swear!
• for I must tell you the truth—the result of my mission
was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all
but the most foolish; and that others less esteemed were
really wiser and better. I will tell you the tale of my
wanderings and of the ‘Herculean’ labours, as I may call
them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle
irrefutable. After the politicians, I went to the poets;
tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to
myself, you will be instantly detected; now you will find
out that you are more ignorant than they are. Accordingly,
I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their
own writings, and asked what was the meaning of
them—thinking that they would teach me something. Will you
believe me? I am almost ashamed to confess the truth, but I
must say that there is hardly a person present who would
not have talked better about their poetry than they did
themselves. Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write
poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are
like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things,
but do not understand the meaning of them. The poets
appeared to me to be much in the same case; and I further
observed that upon the strength of their poetry they
believed themselves to be the wisest of men in other things
in which they were not wise. So I departed, conceiving
myself to be superior to them for the same reason that I
was superior to the politicians.
At last I went to the artisans. I was conscious that I knew
nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew
many fine things; and here I was not mistaken, for they did
know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they
certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even
the good artisans fell into the same error as the
poets;--because they were good workmen they thought that
they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect
in them overshadowed their wisdom; and therefore I asked
myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be
as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their
ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to
myself and to the oracle that I was better off as I was.
This inquisition has led to my having many enemies of the
worst and most dangerous kind, and has given occasion also
to many calumnies. And I am called wise, for my hearers
always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I
find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens,
that God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show
that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing; he is
not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name by way
of illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest,
who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth
nothing. And so I go about the world, obedient to the god,
and search and make enquiry into the wisdom of any one,
whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise; and if
he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show
him that he is not wise; and my occupation quite absorbs
me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter
of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter
poverty by reason of my devotion to the god.
There is another thing:--young men of the richer classes,
who have not much to do, come about me of their own accord;
they like to hear the pretenders examined, and they often
imitate me, and proceed to examine others; there are plenty
of persons, as they quickly discover, who think that they
know something, but really know little or nothing; and then
those who are examined by them instead of being angry with
themselves are angry with me:
This confounded Socrates, they say; this villainous
misleader of youth!-- and then if somebody asks them, Why,
what evil does he practise or teach? they do not
know, and cannot tell; but in order that they may not
appear to be at a loss, they repeat the ready-made charges
which are used against all philosophers about teaching
things up in the clouds and under the earth, and having no
gods, and making the worse appear the better cause; for
they do not like to confess that their pretence of
knowledge has been detected— which is the truth; and as
they are numerous and ambitious and energetic, and are
drawn up in battle array and have persuasive tongues, they
have filled your ears with their loud and inveterate
calumnies. And this is the reason why my three accusers,
Meletus and Anytus and Lycon, have set upon me; Meletus,
who has a quarrel with me on behalf of the poets; Anytus,
on behalf of the craftsmen and politicians; Lycon, on
behalf of the rhetoricians: and as I said at the beginning,
I cannot expect to get rid of such a mass of calumny all in
a moment. And this, O men of Athens, is the truth and the
whole truth; I have concealed nothing, I have dissembled
nothing. And yet, I know that my plainness of speech makes
them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I
am speaking the truth?--Hence has arisen the prejudice
against me; and this is the reason of it, as you will find
out either in this or in any future enquiry.
I have said enough in my defence against the first class of
my accusers; I turn to the second class. They are headed by
Meletus, that good man and true lover of his country, as he
calls himself. Against these, too, I must try to make a
defence:--Let their affidavit be read: it contains
something of this kind: It says that Socrates is a doer of
evil, who corrupts the youth; and who does not believe in
the gods of the state, but has other new divinities of his
own. Such is the charge; and now let us examine the
particular counts. He says that I am a doer of evil, and
corrupt the youth; but I say, O men of Athens, that Meletus
is a doer of evil, in that he pretends to be in earnest
when he is only in jest, and is so eager to bring men to
trial from a pretended zeal and interest about matters in
which he really never had the smallest interest. And the
truth of this I will endeavour to prove to you.
Come hither, Meletus, and let me ask a question of you. You
think a great deal about the improvement of youth?
Yes, I do.
Tell the judges, then, who is their improver; for you must
know, as you have taken the pains to discover their
corrupter, and are citing and accusing me before them.
Speak, then, and tell the judges who their improver
is.—Observe, Meletus, that you are silent, and have nothing
to say. But is not this rather disgraceful, and a very
considerable proof of what I was saying, that you have no
interest in the matter? Speak up, friend, and tell us who
their improver is.
The laws.
But that, my good sir, is not my meaning. I want to know
who the person is, who, in the first place, knows the laws.
The judges, Socrates, who are present in court.
What, do you mean to say, Meletus, that they are able to
instruct and improve youth?
Certainly they are.
What, all of them, or some only and not others?
All of them.
By the goddess Here, that is good news! There are plenty of
improvers, then. And what do you say of the audience,--do
they improve them?
Yes, they do.
And the senators?
Yes, the senators improve them.
But perhaps the members of the assembly corrupt them?--or
do they too improve them?
They improve them.
Then every Athenian improves and elevates them; all with
the exception of myself; and I alone am their corrupter? Is
that what you affirm?
That is what I stoutly affirm.
I am very unfortunate if you are right. But suppose I ask
you a question:
How about horses? Does one man do them harm and all the
world good? Is not the exact opposite the truth? One man is
able to do them good, or at least not many;--the trainer of
horses, that is to say, does them good, and others who have
to do with them rather injure them? Is not that true,
Meletus, of horses, or of any other animals? Most assuredly
it is; whether you and Anytus say yes or no. Happy indeed
would be the condition of youth if they had one corrupter
only, and all the rest of the world were their improvers.
But you, Meletus, have sufficiently shown that you never
had a thought about the young: your carelessness is seen in
your not caring about the very things which you bring
against me.
And now, Meletus, I will ask you another question—by Zeus I
will: Which is better, to live among bad citizens, or among
good ones? Answer, friend, I say; the question is one which
may be easily answered. Do not the good do their neighbours
good, and the bad do them evil?
Certainly.
And is there anyone who would rather be injured than
benefited by those who live with him? Answer, my good
friend, the law requires you to answer— does any one like
to be injured?
Certainly not.
And when you accuse me of corrupting and deteriorating the
youth, do you allege that I corrupt them intentionally or
unintentionally?
Intentionally, I say.
But you have just admitted that the good do their
neighbours good, and the evil do them evil. Now, is that a
truth which your superior wisdom has recognized thus early
in life, and am I, at my age, in such darkness and
ignorance as not to know that if a man with whom I have to
live is corrupted by me, I am very likely to be harmed by
him; and yet I corrupt him, and intentionally, too—so you
say, although neither I nor any other human being is ever
likely to be convinced by you. But either I do not corrupt
them, or I corrupt them unintentionally; and on either view
of the case you lie. If my offence is unintentional, the
law has no cognizance of unintentional offences: you ought
to have taken me privately, and warned and admonished me;
for if I had been better advised, I should have left off
doing what I only did unintentionally—no doubt I should;
but you would have nothing to say to me and refused to
teach me. And now you bring me up in this court, which is a
place not of instruction, but of punishment.
It will be very clear to you, Athenians, as I was saying,
that Meletus has no care at all, great or small, about the
matter. But still I should like to know, Meletus, in what I
am affirmed to corrupt the young. I suppose you mean, as I
infer from your indictment, that I teach them not to
acknowledge the gods which the state acknowledges, but some
other new divinities or spiritual agencies in their stead.
These are the lessons by which I corrupt the youth, as you
say.
Yes, that I say emphatically.
Then, by the gods, Meletus, of whom we are speaking, tell
me and the court, in somewhat plainer terms, what you mean!
for I do not as yet understand whether you affirm that I
teach other men to acknowledge some gods, and therefore
that I do believe in gods, and am not an entire
atheist—this you do not lay to my charge,--but only you say
that they are not the same gods which the city
recognizes—the charge is that they are different gods. Or,
do you mean that I am an atheist simply, and a teacher of
atheism?
I mean the latter—that you are a complete atheist.
What an extraordinary statement! Why do you think so,
Meletus? Do you mean that I do not believe in the godhead
of the sun or moon, like other men?
I assure you, judges, that he does not: for he says that
the sun is stone, and the moon earth.
Friend Meletus, you think that you are accusing Anaxagoras:
and you have but a bad opinion of the judges, if you fancy
them illiterate to such a degree as not to know that these
doctrines are found in the books of Anaxagoras the
Clazomenian, which are full of them. And so, forsooth, the
youth are said to be taught them by Socrates, when there
are not unfrequently exhibitions of them at the theatre
(Probably in allusion to Aristophanes who caricatured, and
to Euripides who borrowed the notions of Anaxagoras, as
well as to other dramatic poets.) (price of admission one
drachma at the most); and they might pay their money, and
laugh at Socrates if he pretends to father these
extraordinary views. And so, Meletus, you really think that
I do not believe in any god?
I swear by Zeus that you believe absolutely in none at all.
Nobody will believe you, Meletus, and I am pretty sure that
you do not believe yourself. I cannot help thinking, men of
Athens, that Meletus is reckless and impudent, and that he
has written this indictment in a spirit of mere wantonness
and youthful bravado. Has he not compounded a riddle,
thinking to try me? He said to himself:--I shall see
whether the wise Socrates will discover my facetious
contradiction, or whether I shall be able to deceive him
and the rest of them. For he certainly does appear to me to
contradict himself in the indictment as much as if he said
that Socrates is guilty of not believing in the gods, and
yet of believing in them—but this is not like a person who
is in earnest.
I should like you, O men of Athens, to join me in examining
what I conceive to be his inconsistency; and do you,
Meletus, answer. And I must remind the audience of my
request that they would not make a disturbance if I speak
in my accustomed manner:
Did ever man, Meletus, believe in the existence of human
things, and not of human beings?...I wish, men of Athens,
that he would answer, and not be always trying to get up an
interruption. Did ever any man believe in horsemanship, and
not in horses? or in flute-playing, and not in
flute-players? No, my friend; I will answer to you and to
the court, as you refuse to answer for yourself. There is
no man who ever did. But now please to answer the next
question: Can a man believe in spiritual and divine
agencies, and not in spirits or demigods?
He cannot.
How lucky I am to have extracted that answer, by the
assistance of the court! But then you swear in the
indictment that I teach and believe in divine or spiritual
agencies (new or old, no matter for that); at any rate, I
believe in spiritual agencies,--so you say and swear in the
affidavit; and yet if I believe in divine beings, how can I
help believing in spirits or demigods;--must I not? To be
sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence
gives consent. Now what are spirits or demigods? Are they
not either gods or the sons of gods?
Certainly they are.
But this is what I call the facetious riddle invented by
you: the demigods or spirits are gods, and you say first
that I do not believe in gods, and then again that I do
believe in gods; that is, if I believe in demigods.
For if the demigods are the illegitimate sons of gods,
whether by the nymphs or by any other mothers, of whom they
are said to be the sons—what human being will ever believe
that there are no gods if they are the sons of gods? You
might as well affirm the existence of mules, and deny that
of horses and asses. Such nonsense, Meletus, could only
have been intended by you to make trial of me. You have put
this into the indictment because you had nothing real of
which to accuse me. But no one who has a particle of
understanding will ever be convinced by you that the same
men can believe in divine and superhuman things, and yet
not believe that there are gods and demigods and heroes.
I have said enough in answer to the charge of Meletus: any
elaborate defence is unnecessary, but I know only too well
how many are the enmities which I have incurred, and this
is what will be my destruction if I am destroyed;--not
Meletus, nor yet Anytus, but the envy and detraction of the
world, which has been the death of many good men, and will
probably be the death of many more; there is no danger of
my being the last of them.
Some one will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a
course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely
end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a
man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the
chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider
whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong—acting
the part of a good man or of a bad. Whereas, upon your
view, the heroes who fell at Troy were not good for much,
and the son of Thetis above all, who altogether despised
danger in comparison with disgrace; and when he was so
eager to slay Hector, his goddess mother said to him, that
if he avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he
would die himself—‘Fate,’ she said, in these or the like
words, ‘waits for you next after Hector;’ he, receiving
this warning, utterly despised danger and death, and
instead of fearing them, feared rather to live in
dishonour, and not to avenge his friend. ‘Let me die
forthwith,’ he replies, ‘and be avenged of my enemy, rather
than abide here by the beaked ships, a laughing-stock and a
burden of the earth.’ Had Achilles any thought of death and
danger? For wherever a man’s place is, whether the place
which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by
a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of
danger; he should not think of death or of anything but of
disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying.
Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I
who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to
command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained
where they placed me, like any other man, facing death—if
now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to
fulfil the philosopher’s mission of searching into myself
and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of
death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and
I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the
existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I
was afraid of death, fancying that I was wise when I was
not wise. For the fear of death is indeed the pretence of
wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretence of knowing
the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in
their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be
the greatest good. Is not this ignorance of a disgraceful
sort, the ignorance which is the conceit that a man knows
what he does not know? And in this respect only I believe
myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim
to be wiser than they are:--that whereas I know but little
of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do
know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether
God or man, is evil and dishonourable, and I will never
fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.
And therefore if you let me go now, and are not convinced
by Anytus, who said that since I had been prosecuted I must
be put to death; (or if not that I ought never to have been
prosecuted at all); and that if I escape now, your sons
will all be utterly ruined by listening to my words—if you
say to me, Socrates, this time we will not mind Anytus, and
you shall be let off, but upon one condition, that you are
not to enquire and speculate in this way any more, and that
if you are caught doing so again you shall die;--if this
was the condition on which you let me go, I should reply:
Men of Athens, I honour and love you; but I shall obey God
rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall
never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy,
exhorting any one whom I meet and saying to him after my
manner: You, my friend,--a citizen of the great and mighty
and wise city of Athens,--are you not ashamed of heaping up
the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and
caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest
improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at
all? And if the person with whom I am arguing, says: Yes,
but I do care; then I do not leave him or let him go at
once; but I proceed to interrogate and examine and
cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue in
him, but only says that he has, I reproach him with
undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less. And I
shall repeat the same words to every one whom I meet, young
and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens,
inasmuch as they are my brethren. For know that this is the
command of God; and I believe that no greater good has ever
happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do
nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young
alike, not to take thought for your persons or your
properties, but first and chiefly to care about the
greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is
not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and
every other good of man, public as well as private.
This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which
corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. But if any
one says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an
untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as
Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or
not; but whichever you do, understand that I shall never
alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.
Men of Athens, do not interrupt, but hear me; there was an
understanding between us that you should hear me to the
end: I have something more to say, at which you may be
inclined to cry out; but I believe that to hear me will be
good for you, and therefore I beg that you will not cry
out. I would have you know, that if you kill such an one as
I am, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure
me. Nothing will injure me, not Meletus nor yet Anytus—they
cannot, for a bad man is not permitted to injure a better
than himself. I do not deny that Anytus may, perhaps, kill
him, or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil
rights; and he may imagine, and others may imagine, that he
is inflicting a great injury upon him: but there I do not
agree. For the evil of doing as he is doing—the evil of
unjustly taking away the life of another—is greater far.
And now, Athenians, I am not going to argue for my own
sake, as you may think, but for yours, that you may not sin
against the God by condemning me, who am his gift to you.
For if you kill me you will not easily find a successor to
me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am
a sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state
is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions
owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into
life. I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state,
and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon
you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. You will
not easily find another like me, and therefore I would
advise you to spare me. I dare say that you may feel out of
temper (like a person who is suddenly awakened from sleep),
and you think that you might easily strike me dead as
Anytus advises, and then you would sleep on for the
remainder of your lives, unless God in his care of you sent
you another gadfly. When I say that I am given to you by
God, the proof of my mission is this:--if I had been like
other men, I should not have neglected all my own concerns
or patiently seen the neglect of them during all these
years, and have been doing yours, coming to you
individually like a father or elder brother, exhorting you
to regard virtue; such conduct, I say, would be unlike
human nature. If I had gained anything, or if my
exhortations had been paid, there would have been some
sense in my doing so; but now, as you will perceive, not
even the impudence of my accusers dares to say that I have
ever exacted or sought pay of any one; of that they have no
witness. And I have a sufficient witness to the truth of
what I say—my poverty.
Some one may wonder why I go about in private giving advice
and busying myself with the concerns of others, but do not
venture to come forward in public and advise the state. I
will tell you why. You have heard me speak at sundry times
and in divers places of an oracle or sign which comes to
me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the
indictment. This sign, which is a kind of voice, first
began to come to me when I was a child; it always forbids
but never commands me to do anything which I am going to
do. This is what deters me from being a politician. And
rightly, as I think. For I am certain, O men of Athens,
that if I had engaged in politics, I should have perished
long ago, and done no good either to you or to myself. And
do not be offended at my telling you the truth: for the
truth is, that no man who goes to war with you or any other
multitude, honestly striving against the many lawless and
unrighteous deeds which are done in a state, will save his
life; he who will fight for the right, if he would live
even for a brief space, must have a private station and not
a public one.
I can give you convincing evidence of what I say, not words
only, but what you value far more—actions. Let me relate to
you a passage of my own life which will prove to you that I
should never have yielded to injustice from any fear of
death, and that ‘as I should have refused to yield’ I must
have died at once. I will tell you a tale of the courts,
not very interesting perhaps, but nevertheless true. The
only office of state which I ever held, O men of Athens,
was that of senator: the tribe Antiochis, which is my
tribe, had the presidency at the trial of the generals who
had not taken up the bodies of the slain after the battle
of Arginusae; and you proposed to try them in a body,
contrary to law, as you all thought afterwards; but at the
time I was the only one of the Prytanes who was opposed to
the illegality, and I gave my vote against you; and when
the orators threatened to impeach and arrest me, and you
called and shouted, I made up my mind that I would run the
risk, having law and justice with me, rather than take part
in your injustice because I feared imprisonment and death.
This happened in the days of the democracy. But when the
oligarchy of the Thirty was in power, they sent for me and
four others into the rotunda, and bade us bring Leon the
Salaminian from Salamis, as they wanted to put him to
death. This was a specimen of the sort of commands which
they were always giving with the view of implicating as
many as possible in their crimes; and then I showed, not in
word only but in deed, that, if I may be allowed to use
such an expression, I cared not a straw for death, and that
my great and only care was lest I should do an unrighteous
or unholy thing. For the strong arm of that
oppressive power did not frighten me into doing wrong; and
when we came out of the rotunda the other four went to
Salamis and fetched Leon, but I went quietly home. For
which I might have lost my life, had not the power of the
Thirty shortly afterwards come to an end. And many
will witness to my words.
Now do you really imagine that I could have survived all
these years, if I had led a public life, supposing that
like a good man I had always maintained the right and had
made justice, as I ought, the first thing? No indeed, men
of Athens, neither I nor any other man. But I have been
always the same in all my actions, public as well as
private, and never have I yielded any base compliance to
those who are slanderously termed my disciples, or to any
other. Not that I have any regular disciples. But if any
one likes to come and hear me while I am pursuing my
mission, whether he be young or old, he is not excluded.
Nor do I converse only with those who pay; but any one,
whether he be rich or poor, may ask and answer me and
listen to my words; and whether he turns out to be a bad
man or a good one, neither result can be justly imputed to
me; for I never taught or professed to teach him anything.
And if any one says that he has ever learned or heard
anything from me in private which all the world has not
heard, let me tell you that he is lying.
But I shall be asked, Why do people delight in continually
conversing with you? I have told you already, Athenians,
the whole truth about this matter: they like to hear the
cross-examination of the pretenders to wisdom; there is
amusement in it. Now this duty of cross-examining other men
has been imposed upon me by God; and has been signified to
me by oracles, visions, and in every way in which the will
of divine power was ever intimated to any one. This is
true, O Athenians, or, if not true, would be soon refuted.
If I am or have been corrupting the youth, those of them
who are now grown up and have become sensible that I gave
them bad advice in the days of their youth should come
forward as accusers, and take their revenge; or if they do
not like to come themselves, some of their relatives,
fathers, brothers, or other kinsmen, should say what evil
their families have suffered at my hands. Now is their
time. Many of them I see in the court. There is Crito, who
is of the same age and of the same deme with myself, and
there is Critobulus his son, whom I also see. Then again
there is Lysanias of Sphettus, who is the father of
Aeschines—he is present; and also there is Antiphon of
Cephisus, who is the father of Epigenes; and there are the
brothers of several who have associated with me. There is
Nicostratus the son of Theosdotides, and the brother of
Theodotus (now Theodotus himself is dead, and therefore he,
at any rate, will not seek to stop him); and there is
Paralus the son of Demodocus, who had a brother Theages;
and Adeimantus the son of Ariston, whose brother Plato is
present; and Aeantodorus, who is the brother of
Apollodorus, whom I also see. I might mention a great many
others, some of whom Meletus should have produced as
witnesses in the course of his speech; and let him still
produce them, if he has forgotten—I will make way for him.
And let him say, if he has any testimony of the sort which
he can produce. Nay, Athenians, the very opposite is the
truth. For all these are ready to witness on behalf of the
corrupter, of the injurer of their kindred, as Meletus and
Anytus call me; not the corrupted youth only—there might
have been a motive for that—but their uncorrupted elder
relatives. Why should they too support me with their
testimony? Why, indeed, except for the sake of truth and
justice, and because they know that I am speaking the
truth, and that Meletus is a liar.
Well, Athenians, this and the like of this is all the
defence which I have to offer. Yet a word more. Perhaps
there may be some one who is offended at me, when he calls
to mind how he himself on a similar, or even a less serious
occasion, prayed and entreated the judges with many tears,
and how he produced his children in court, which was a
moving spectacle, together with a host of relations and
friends; whereas I, who am probably in danger of my life,
will do none of these things. The contrast may occur to his
mind, and he may be set against me, and vote in anger
because he is displeased at me on this account. Now if
there be such a person among you,--mind, I do not say that
there is,--to him I may fairly reply: My friend, I am a
man, and like other men, a creature of flesh and blood, and
not ‘of wood or stone,’ as Homer says; and I have a family,
yes, and sons, O Athenians, three in number, one almost a
man, and two others who are still young; and yet I will not
bring any of them hither in order to petition you for an
acquittal. And why not? Not from any self-assertion or want
of respect for you. Whether I am or am not afraid of death
is another question, of which I will not now speak. But,
having regard to public opinion, I feel that such conduct
would be discreditable to myself, and to you, and to the
whole state. One who has reached my years, and who has a
name for wisdom, ought not to demean himself. Whether this
opinion of me be deserved or not, at any rate the world has
decided that Socrates is in some way superior to other men.
And if those among you who are said to be superior in
wisdom and courage, and any other virtue, demean themselves
in this way, how shameful is their conduct! I have seen men
of reputation, when they have been condemned, behaving in
the strangest manner: they seemed to fancy that they were
going to suffer something dreadful if they died, and that
they could be immortal if you only allowed them to live;
and I think that such are a dishonour to the state, and
that any stranger coming in would have said of them that
the most eminent men of Athens, to whom the Athenians
themselves give honour and command, are no better than
women. And I say that these things ought not to be done by
those of us who have a reputation; and if they are done,
you ought not to permit them; you ought rather to show that
you are far more disposed to condemn the man who gets up a
doleful scene and makes the city ridiculous, than him who
holds his peace.
But, setting aside the question of public opinion, there
seems to be something wrong in asking a favour of a judge,
and thus procuring an acquittal, instead of informing and
convincing him. For his duty is, not to make a present of
justice, but to give judgment; and he has sworn that he
will judge according to the laws, and not according to his
own good pleasure; and we ought not to encourage you, nor
should you allow yourselves to be encouraged, in this habit
of perjury—there can be no piety in that. Do not then
require me to do what I consider dishonourable and impious
and wrong, especially now, when I am being tried for
impiety on the indictment of Meletus. For if, O men of
Athens, by force of persuasion and entreaty I could
overpower your oaths, then I should be teaching you to
believe that there are no gods, and in defending should
simply convict myself of the charge of not believing in
them. But that is not so—far otherwise. For I do believe
that there are gods, and in a sense higher than that in
which any of my accusers believe in them. And to you and to
God I commit my cause, to be determined by you as is best
for you and me.
...
There are many reasons why I am not grieved, O men of
Athens, at the vote of condemnation. I expected it, and am
only surprised that the votes are so nearly equal; for I
had thought that the majority against me would have been
far larger; but now, had thirty votes gone over to the
other side, I should have been acquitted. And I may say, I
think, that I have escaped Meletus. I may say more; for
without the assistance of Anytus and Lycon, any one may see
that he would not have had a fifth part of the votes, as
the law requires, in which case he would have incurred a
fine of a thousand drachmae.
And so he proposes death as the penalty. And what shall I
propose on my part, O men of Athens? Clearly that which is
my due. And what is my due? What return shall be made
to the man who has never had the wit to be idle during his
whole life; but has been careless of what the many care
for— wealth, and family interests, and military offices,
and speaking in the assembly, and magistracies, and plots,
and parties. Reflecting that I was really too honest a man
to be a politician and live, I did not go where I could do
no good to you or to myself; but where I could do the
greatest good privately to every one of you, thither I
went, and sought to persuade every man among you that he
must look to himself, and seek virtue and wisdom before he
looks to his private interests, and look to the state
before he looks to the interests of the state; and that
this should be the order which he observes in all his
actions. What shall be done to such an one? Doubtless some
good thing, O men of Athens, if he has his reward; and the
good should be of a kind suitable to him. What would be a
reward suitable to a poor man who is your benefactor, and
who desires leisure that he may instruct you? There can be
no reward so fitting as maintenance in the Prytaneum, O men
of Athens, a reward which he deserves far more than the
citizen who has won the prize at Olympia in the horse or
chariot race, whether the chariots were drawn by two horses
or by many. For I am in want, and he has enough; and he
only gives you the appearance of happiness, and I give you
the reality. And if I am to estimate the penalty fairly, I
should say that maintenance in the Prytaneum is the just
return.
Perhaps you think that I am braving you in what I am saying
now, as in what I said before about the tears and prayers.
But this is not so. I speak rather because I am convinced
that I never intentionally wronged any one, although I
cannot convince you—the time has been too short; if there
were a law at Athens, as there is in other cities, that a
capital cause should not be decided in one day, then I
believe that I should have convinced you. But I
cannot in a moment refute great slanders; and, as I am
convinced that I never wronged another, I will assuredly
not wrong myself. I will not say of myself that I deserve
any evil, or propose any penalty. Why should I?
because I am afraid of the penalty of death which Meletus
proposes? When I do not know whether death is a good or an
evil, why should I propose a penalty which would certainly
be an evil? Shall I say imprisonment? And why should I live
in prison, and be the slave of the magistrates of the
year—of the Eleven? Or shall the penalty be a fine, and
imprisonment until the fine is paid? There is the same
objection. I should have to lie in prison, for money I have
none, and cannot pay. And if I say exile (and this may
possibly be the penalty which you will affix), I must
indeed be blinded by the love of life, if I am so
irrational as to expect that when you, who are my own
citizens, cannot endure my discourses and words, and have
found them so grievous and odious that you will have no
more of them, others are likely to endure me. No indeed,
men of Athens, that is not very likely. And what a life
should I lead, at my age, wandering from city to city, ever
changing my place of exile, and always being driven out!
For I am quite sure that wherever I go, there, as here, the
young men will flock to me; and if I drive them away, their
elders will drive me out at their request; and if I let
them come, their fathers and friends will drive me out for
their sakes.
Some one will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your
tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one
will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty
in making you understand my answer to this. For if I
tell you that to do as you say would be a disobedience to
the God, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you
will not believe that I am serious; and if I say again that
daily to discourse about virtue, and of those other things
about which you hear me examining myself and others, is the
greatest good of man, and that the unexamined life is not
worth living, you are still less likely to believe me. Yet
I say what is true, although a thing of which it is hard
for me to persuade you. Also, I have never been accustomed
to think that I deserve to suffer any harm. Had I money I
might have estimated the offence at what I was able to pay,
and not have been much the worse. But I have none, and
therefore I must ask you to proportion the fine to my
means. Well, perhaps I could afford a mina, and therefore I
propose that penalty: Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and
Apollodorus, my friends here, bid me say thirty minae, and
they will be the sureties. Let thirty minae be the penalty;
for which sum they will be ample security to you.
...
Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for
the evil name which you will get from the detractors of the
city, who will say that you killed Socrates, a wise man;
for they will call me wise, even although I am not wise,
when they want to reproach you. If you had waited a little
while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course
of nature. For I am far advanced in years, as you may
perceive, and not far from death. I am speaking now not to
all of you, but only to those who have condemned me to
death. And I have another thing to say to them: you think
that I was convicted because I had no words of the sort
which would have procured my acquittal—I mean, if I had
thought fit to leave nothing undone or unsaid. Not
so; the deficiency which led to my conviction was not of
words— certainly not. But I had not the boldness or
impudence or inclination to address you as you would have
liked me to do, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and
saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed
to hear from others, and which, as I maintain, are unworthy
of me. I thought at the time that I ought not to do
anything common or mean when in danger: nor do I now repent
of the style of my defence; I would rather die having
spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live.
For neither in war nor yet at law ought I or any man to use
every way of escaping death. Often in battle there can be
no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall
on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and
in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if
a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my
friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid
unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. I am old
and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me,
and my accusers are keen and quick, and the faster runner,
who is unrighteousness, has overtaken them. And now I
depart hence condemned by you to suffer the penalty of
death,--they too go their ways condemned by the truth to
suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide
by my award—let them abide by theirs. I suppose that these
things may be regarded as fated,--and I think that they are
well.
And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain prophesy
to you; for I am about to die, and in the hour of death men
are gifted with prophetic power. And I prophesy to you who
are my murderers, that immediately after my departure
punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will
surely await you. Me you have killed because you wanted to
escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your
lives. But that will not be as you suppose: far otherwise.
For I say that there will be more accusers of you than
there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained:
and as they are younger they will be more inconsiderate
with you, and you will be more offended at them. If you
think that by killing men you can prevent some one from
censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a
way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the
easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others,
but to be improving yourselves. This is the prophecy
which I utter before my departure to the judges who have
condemned me.
Friends, who would have acquitted me, I would like also to
talk with you about the thing which has come to pass, while
the magistrates are busy, and before I go to the place at
which I must die. Stay then a little, for we may as well
talk with one another while there is time. You are my
friends, and I should like to show you the meaning of this
event which has happened to me. O my judges—for you I may
truly call judges—I should like to tell you of a wonderful
circumstance. Hitherto the divine faculty of which the
internal oracle is the source has constantly been in the
habit of opposing me even about trifles, if I was going to
make a slip or error in any matter; and now as you see
there has come upon me that which may be thought, and is
generally believed to be, the last and worst evil. But the
oracle made no sign of opposition, either when I was
leaving my house in the morning, or when I was on my way to
the court, or while I was speaking, at anything which I was
going to say; and yet I have often been stopped in the
middle of a speech, but now in nothing I either said or did
touching the matter in hand has the oracle opposed me. What
do I take to be the explanation of this silence? I will
tell you. It is an intimation that what has happened to me
is a good, and that those of us who think that death is an
evil are in error. For the customary sign would surely have
opposed me had I been going to evil and not to good.
Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there
is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of
two things—either death is a state of nothingness and utter
unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and
migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if
you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep
like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams,
death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to
select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by
dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and
nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days
and nights he had passed in the course of his life better
and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I
will not say a private man, but even the great king will
not find many such days or nights, when compared with the
others. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die
is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if
death is the journey to another place, and there, as men
say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and
judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the
pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from
the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true
judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and
Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of
God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage
will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might
converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer?
Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I myself,
too, shall have a wonderful interest in there meeting and
conversing with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and
any other ancient hero who has suffered death through an
unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I
think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above
all, I shall then be able to continue my search into true
and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the next;
and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be
wise, and is not. What would not a man give, O judges, to
be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan
expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others,
men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in
conversing with them and asking them questions! In another
world they do not put a man to death for asking questions:
assuredly not. For besides being happier than we are, they
will be immortal, if what is said is true.
Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know
of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man,
either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected
by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by
mere chance. But I see clearly that the time had arrived
when it was better for me to die and be released from
trouble; wherefore the oracle gave no sign. For which
reason, also, I am not angry with my condemners, or with my
accusers; they have done me no harm, although they did not
mean to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame
them.
Still I have a favour to ask of them. When my sons are
grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them;
and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you,
if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than
about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they
are really nothing,--then reprove them, as I have reproved
you, for not caring about that for which they ought to
care, and thinking that they are something when they are
really nothing. And if you do this, both I and my sons will
have received justice at your hands.
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to
die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.