Socartes is Condemned to Death

O men of Athens, there are many reasons why I am not grieved at the vote of condemnation.

I expected it. I am only surprised that the votes are so nearly equal.

• I had thought that the majority against me would have been far larger.

But now, had 30 votes gone over to the other side, I should have been acquitted.

I think that I have escaped Meletus.

Without the assistance of Anytus and Lycon, anyone 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 1,000 drachmae.

He proposes death as the penalty.

What shall I propose on my part, O men of Athens?

I have never had the wit to be idle in my whole life.

But I have been careless of what the many care for:

• wealth
• family interests
• military offices
• speaking in the assembly
• magistracies
• plots and parties

I was really too honest to be a politician.

I did not go where I could do no good to you or to myself.

Instead, I went where I could do the greatest good privately to everyone/

I sought to persuade every man that he must:

• look into himself
• seek virtue and wisdom before he looks onto his private interests
• look to the state before he looks to the interests of the state

This should be the order which he observes in all his actions.

What reward is suitable to a poor man who is your benefactor, and who desires leisure that he may instruct you?

The best reward, O men of Athens, is maintenance in the Prytaneum.

That is better than winning the prize at Olympia in the horse or chariot race.

I speak because I never intentionally wronged anyone.

Although I cannot convince you as 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.

I say imprisonment is evil as it lets me be the slave of the magistrates of the year—of the Eleven.

A fine is just as bad if I am imprisoned until the fine is paid. There is the same objection.

I would stay in prison for money I do not have and cannot pay.

You are not likely to exile me as I am blinded by the love of life.

You, my fellow citizens, cannot endure my discourses. Others would not likely endure me

I would wander from city to city always being driven out!

Wherever I go, the young men will flock to me.

• If I drive them away, their elders will drive me out at their request.
• If I let them come, their fathers and friends will drive me out for their sakes.

Some one will say:

I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this.

Doing so would be a disobedience to the God. Therefore, I cannot hold my tongue. You will not believe that I am serious.

The greatest good of man is to discourse daily about:

• virtue, and
• those other things which you hear me examining myself and others

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Also, I have never been accustomed to think that I deserve to suffer any harm.

Had I money I might have estimated the offence that I was able to pay, and not have been much the worse.

But I have no money. Therefore, I ask you to proportion the fine to my means.

Perhaps I could afford 1 mina, so I propose that penalty: Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus, my friends here, bid me say 30 minæ, and they will be the sureties.

Let 30 minæ be the penalty which 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.

They call me wise, even though I am not wise, when they want to reproach you.

If you had waited a little while, I would have died of old age anyway.

As you can see, I am old and not far from death.

You think that I was convicted because I had no words to acquit myself and that I would not say anything.

Not so. I was convicted because I did not

• address you as you liked
• weep and wail like others

I thought at the time that I should not 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 in my way than speak in your way and live.

For neither in war nor at law should anyone use every way to escape death.

Often in battle, a man might escape death if he:

• throws away his arms
• falls on his knees before his pursuers

In other dangers, there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything.

The difficulty is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness. For that runs faster than death.

I am old and move slowly. The slower runner has overtaken me. My accusers are keen and quick.

The faster runner, who is unrighteousness, has overtaken them.

Now I depart being condemned by you to death.

They too go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong.

I abide by my award as they abide by theirs.

I suppose that these things are fated and I think that they are well.

I prophesy to you, my murderers, that immediately after my departure punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await you.

You have killed me because you wanted to escape the accuser and not to give an account of your lives.

But the opposite will happen.

There will be more accusers of you than there are now, accusers whom hitherto I have restrained.

They are younger and 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 possible or honourable escape.

The easiest and noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves.

The internal oracle has a divine faculty which has constantly been opposing me even about trifles, if I was going to make a slip or error in any matter.

But the oracle did not oppose me when I left my house this morning, or when I was on my way to the court, or while I was speaking.

I believe that:

• what has happened to me is a good
• those of us who think that death is an evil are wrong

For the customary sign would surely have opposed me had I been going to evil.

There is great reason to hope that death is a good. Either:

• death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness or
• there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another.

If there is no consciousness, but an undisturbed sleep, then death will be an unspeakable gain for eternity is then only a single night.

But if death is the journey to another place then this is the greatest good.

A pilgrim who arrives in the world below is delivered from the justice in this world, and finds the true judges there:

• Minos
• Rhadamanthus
• Aeacus
• Triptolemus
• other sons of God who were righteous in their own life

That pilgrimage will be worth making.

What would not a man give to talk to Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, and Homer?

If this be true, let me die again and again.

I myself shall have a wonderful interest in meeting and conversing with:

• Palamedes
• Ajax the son of Telamon
• any other ancient hero who has suffered death through an unjust judgment

I would be happy to compare 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.

I shall find out:

• who is wise
• who pretends to be wise
• who is not.

What would not a man give to examine:

• the leader of the great Trojan expedition
• Odysseus or Sisyphus
• numberless other men and women

In that world they do not put a man to death for asking questions.

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, please punish them, trouble them as I have troubled you if they:

• care about riches, or anything more than virtue or
• 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.

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.