There is another thingyoung 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 [= do a mimsis of me], and examine others themselves; there are plenty of persons, as they soon enough 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: [23d] they say that Socrates is someone who is most polluted, he corrupts young menand then if somebody asks them, Why, what evil does he practice or teach? But, as any reader of the work can see, Plato is at the same time using the trial and death of Socrates to condemn Athens, to call upon his readers to reject the conventional life that Athens would have preferred Socrates to lead, and to choose instead the life of a Socratic philosopher. Christopher Planeaux, "The Life of Plato", Thomas power [18c] These are the accusers whom I dread; for they are the circulators of this rumor, and their hearers are too apt to fancy that speculators of this sort do not believe in the gods. [1], Specifically, the Apology of Socrates is a defence against the charges of "corrupting the youth" and "not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other daimonia that are novel" to Athens (24b).[2]. But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to address you, weeping and wailing and lamenting, [38e] and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I say, are unworthy of me. And I said to myself, Go I must to all who appear to know, and find out the meaning of the oracle. agreement: first, Socrates's speech had a defiant tone (one might call Three of Plato's four writings concerning Meletus The Apology of Socrates (Greek: , Apologa Sokrtous; Latin: Apologia Socratis), written by Plato, is a Socratic dialogue of the speech of legal self-defence which Socrates (469399 BC) spoke at his trial for impiety and corruption in 399 BC. And I may say more; for without the assistance of Anytus and Lycon, [36b] 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, as is evident.
Stoa In the course of the trial, Socrates imitates, parodies, and corrects the Orators, his accusers, and asks the jury to judge him by the truth of his statements, not by his oratorical skill (cf. discredited The Apology is presented as the speech given by is Speak then, you who have heard me, and tell your neighbors whether any of you have ever known me hold forth in few words or in many upon matters of this sort. Whether I am or am not afraid of death is another question, of which I will not now speak. defense [38d] I am speaking now only to those of you who have condemned me to death. But, setting aside the question of dishonor, [35c] there seems to be something wrong in petitioning a judge, and thus procuring an acquittal instead of informing and convincing him. 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. But now please answer the next question: [27c] Can a man believe in things having to do with daimones, and not in the daimones themselves? young The judges, Socrates, who are present in court. I have shown, Athenians, as I was saying, [26b] that Meletus has no care at all, great or small, about the matter. 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 first, its only right [full of dik] that I reply to the older charges and to my first accusers, and then I will go to the later ones. And I say that these things ought not to be done by those of us who are of reputation; and if they are done, you ought not to permit them; you ought rather to show that you are more inclined to condemn, not the man who is quiet, but the man who gets up a doleful scene, and makes the city ridiculous. Why didnt Socrates try to escape his death sentence. In the 4th century bce Athens had no norm of accurate reportage or faithful biography, and so Plato would have felt free to shape his material in whatever way suited his multiple aims. But in how different a way from theirs! And yet he is a god and cannot lie; that would be against his nature [= themis does not allow it]. After a long consideration, I at last thought of a method of trying the question. But now that these things, as you can see, have happened to methings that anyone would consider, by general consensus, to be the worst possible things to happen to someone |40b the signal [to smeion] of the god [theos] has not opposed me, either as I was leaving my house and going out in the morning, or when I was coming up to this place of judgment, or as I was speaking. he, along with Xenophon, wrote the only two surviving accounts of the [19d] Very many of those here present are witnesses to the truth of this, and to them I appeal. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, [39a] 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. a piece in which Socrates discussed his obligation to accept his But my reason simply is that I feel such conduct to be discreditable to myself, and you, and the whole state. Socrates concludes his legal defence by reminding the judges that he shall not resort to emotive tricks and arguments, shall not cry in public regret, and that his three sons will not appear in court to pathetically sway the judges. But far more dangerous are these, who began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods [non-alths], telling of one Socrates, a wise [sophos] man, who speculated about the sky above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause. But no one who has a particle of understanding will ever be convinced by you that the same man can believe in things having to do with daimones and gods, and yet not believe that there are daimones themselves [28a] and gods and heroes [hres]. I will ask you then to assume with me, as I was saying, that my opponents are of two kindsone recent, [18e] 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. One who has reached my years, and who has a name for wisdom, whether deserved or not, ought not to debase himself. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of themthinking that they would teach me something. Because of Plato's obviously high regard For this fear of death is indeed the pretence of sophi , and not real sophi, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil [kakos], may not be the greatest good [agathos]. Years earlier, in the play The Clouds (423 BC), Aristophanes lampooned Socrates as a charlatan, the paradigm philosopher of atheist and scientific sophistry carefully arranged arguments constructed of ornate words and phrases misrepresented as wisdom. Except for Socrates's two dialogues with Meletus, about the nature and logic of his accusations of impiety, the text of the Apology of Socrates is in the first-person perspective and voice of the philosopher Socrates (24d25d and 26b27d). And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying [alths]. In support of the moral mission assigned him by the Oracle at Delphi, Socrates tells the court that his daimonion continually forbids him to act unethically (implicitly validating Meletus' accusation that Socrates believes in novel deities not of the Athenian pantheon). During their brief hold on And there, I said to myself, you will be detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are. Among the primary sources about the trial and death of the philosopher Socrates, the Apology of Socrates is the dialogue that depicts the trial, and is one of four Socratic dialogues, along with Euthyphro, Phaedo, and Crito, through which Plato details the final days of the philosopher Socrates. at a time during which he could expect many of his readers to have If you had waited a little while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature. And this I should say to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien [xenos], but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. Granted, it was not with this in mind that they accused me and condemned me, since they thought they were doing me harm, |41e and for this they deserve to be blamed. And why not? [23a] This investigation 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 sophos, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess the sophi which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that the god only is sophos; and in this oracle he means to say that the sophi of men is little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, [23b] he is only using my name as an illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the most sophos, who, like Socrates, knows that his sophi is in truth [alths] worth nothing. The jury condemns Socrates to death. Socrates says he will not use sophisticated language carefully arranged ornate words and phrases but will speak using the common idiom of the Greek language. He also says that his false reputation as a sophistical philosopher comes from his enemies and that all of them are malicious, yet must remain nameless except for the playwright Aristophanes, who lampooned him (Socrates) as a charlatan-philosopher in the comedy play The Clouds (423 BC). These scholars point out that Plato I do not deny that he may, perhaps, kill him, or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights [literally: rob his tm]; and he may imagine, and others may imagine, that he is doing him a great injury: but in that I do not agree with him; for the evil of doing as Anytus is doingof unjustly [without dik] taking away another mans lifeis greater far. No indeed!
Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives. [27a] Has he not compounded a riddle [ainigma], thinking to try me? firsthand You have put this into the indictment because you had nothing real [alths] of which to accuse me. I suppose that these things may be regarded as fated, and I think that they are well. Further, it is for this reason that I am not at all angry with those who accused me or with those who condemned me. 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 pretense of knowledge has been detectedwhich is the truth: [23e] and as they are numerous and ambitious and energetic, and are all in battle array and have persuasive tongues, they have filled your ears with their loud and inveterate calumnies. But either I do not corrupt them, [26a] or I corrupt them unintentionally, so that on either view of the case you lie. 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, or lightly reject his boon by condemning me. He says that the accusations of him being a corrupter of youth began at the time of his obedience to the Oracle at Delphi, and tells how Chaerephon went to the Oracle, to ask her, the Pythian prophetess, if there was a man wiser than Socrates. Then again there is Lysanias of Sphettos, who is the father of Aeschineshe 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. [17a] How you have felt, O men of Athens, at hearing the speeches of my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that their persuasive words almost made me forget who I wassuch was the effect of them; and yet they have hardly spoken a word of truth [alths]. In this way Plato lets us know that he was an eyewitness of the trial and therefore in the best possible position to write about it. Do you mean that I do not believe in the divinity of the sun or moon, which is the common creed of all men? And what do you say of the audiencedo they improve them? I made another enemy of him, and of many others besides him. You see, the hour [hr] of departure has already arrived. Socrates says to the court that these old accusations arise from years of gossip and prejudice against him; hence, are matters difficult to address. I will tell you a storytasteless, perhaps, and commonplace, but nevertheless true [alths]. 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 they were a dishonor to the state, [35b] and that any stranger coming in would say of them that the most eminent men of Athens, to whom the Athenians themselves give honor [tm] and command, are no better than women. is especially important to our understanding of the trial of Socrates
Of the two authors, Plato's account is And what is that which I ought to pay or to endure [paskhein]? [22a] And I swear to you, Athenians, by the dog I swear!for I must tell you the truth [alths]the result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some inferior men were really wiser and better. Had I the same, I should have been very proud and conceited; but the truth is that I have no knowledge of the kind. Worthless men, |28c according to your view, would be the demigods [hmi-theoi] who fulfilled their lives by dying at Troy, especially the son of Thetis [= Achilles], who so despised the danger of risk, preferring it to waiting for disgrace. Right away your fate [potmos]she saysis ready for you after Hector. He said to himself: I shall see whether this sophos Socrates will discover my ingenious 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 thembut this surely is an exercise in playfulness. least on two large points, both Plato's and Xenophon's accounts are in Meletus I should have to lie in prison, for money I have none, and I cannot pay. For this is the command of the god, as I would have you know; and I believe that to this day no greater good [agathos] has ever happened in the state than my service to the god. The jury casts a vote, and finds Socrates guilty. And if anyone says that he has ever learned or heard anything from me in private which all the world has not heard, I should like you to know that he is speaking an untruth [non-alths]. Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, [28e] 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, I say, now, when, as I conceive and imagine, the god orders me to fulfill the philosophers mission of searching into myself and other men, [29a] I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly [with dik] be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle [manteion] because I was afraid of death: then I should be fancying that I was sophos when I was not sophos. Having addressed the social prejudices against him, Socrates addresses the first accusation the moral corruption of Athenian youth by accusing his accuser, Meletus, of being indifferent to the persons and things about which he professes to care. And to you and to the god I commit my cause, to be determined by you as is best [aristos] for you and me. Such nonsense, Meletus, could only have been devised by you as a way to charge me. [30e] For if you kill me you will not easily find another like me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by the god; and the state is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. But even you, O jurors [dikastai], should have good hopes when you face death, and you should have in mind [dia-noesthai] this one thing as true [althes]: |41d that nothing bad [kakon] can happen to a good [agathos] person, either in life or when he comes to its completion [teleutn]. But I shall be asked, Why do people delight in continually conversing with you? and writing. 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. By the goddess Hera, that is good news! Barnes and Noble, Essential Dialogues of Plato, Socrates on Trial: A Play Based on Aristophane's Clouds and Plato's Apology, Crito, and Phaedo Adapted for Modern Performance, "Plato, Xenophon, and the Uneven Temporalities of Ethos in the Trial of Socrates", "The Harvard Classics: Plato: The Apology, Phaedo, and Crito; The golden sayings of Epictetus; The meditations of Marcus Aurelius", "The Trial of the Satirist: Poetic Vitae (Aesop, Archilochus, Homer) as Background for Plato's Apology", () (Greek original), Approaching Plato: A Guide to the Early and Middle Dialogues, Guides to the Socratic Dialogues: Plato's, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apology_(Plato)&oldid=1095172399, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 26 June 2022, at 20:38.
Stoa In the course of the trial, Socrates imitates, parodies, and corrects the Orators, his accusers, and asks the jury to judge him by the truth of his statements, not by his oratorical skill (cf. discredited The Apology is presented as the speech given by is Speak then, you who have heard me, and tell your neighbors whether any of you have ever known me hold forth in few words or in many upon matters of this sort. Whether I am or am not afraid of death is another question, of which I will not now speak. defense [38d] I am speaking now only to those of you who have condemned me to death. But, setting aside the question of dishonor, [35c] there seems to be something wrong in petitioning a judge, and thus procuring an acquittal instead of informing and convincing him. 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. But now please answer the next question: [27c] Can a man believe in things having to do with daimones, and not in the daimones themselves? young The judges, Socrates, who are present in court. I have shown, Athenians, as I was saying, [26b] that Meletus has no care at all, great or small, about the matter. 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 first, its only right [full of dik] that I reply to the older charges and to my first accusers, and then I will go to the later ones. And I say that these things ought not to be done by those of us who are of reputation; and if they are done, you ought not to permit them; you ought rather to show that you are more inclined to condemn, not the man who is quiet, but the man who gets up a doleful scene, and makes the city ridiculous. Why didnt Socrates try to escape his death sentence. In the 4th century bce Athens had no norm of accurate reportage or faithful biography, and so Plato would have felt free to shape his material in whatever way suited his multiple aims. But in how different a way from theirs! And yet he is a god and cannot lie; that would be against his nature [= themis does not allow it]. After a long consideration, I at last thought of a method of trying the question. But now that these things, as you can see, have happened to methings that anyone would consider, by general consensus, to be the worst possible things to happen to someone |40b the signal [to smeion] of the god [theos] has not opposed me, either as I was leaving my house and going out in the morning, or when I was coming up to this place of judgment, or as I was speaking. he, along with Xenophon, wrote the only two surviving accounts of the [19d] Very many of those here present are witnesses to the truth of this, and to them I appeal. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, [39a] 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. a piece in which Socrates discussed his obligation to accept his But my reason simply is that I feel such conduct to be discreditable to myself, and you, and the whole state. Socrates concludes his legal defence by reminding the judges that he shall not resort to emotive tricks and arguments, shall not cry in public regret, and that his three sons will not appear in court to pathetically sway the judges. But far more dangerous are these, who began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods [non-alths], telling of one Socrates, a wise [sophos] man, who speculated about the sky above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause. But no one who has a particle of understanding will ever be convinced by you that the same man can believe in things having to do with daimones and gods, and yet not believe that there are daimones themselves [28a] and gods and heroes [hres]. I will ask you then to assume with me, as I was saying, that my opponents are of two kindsone recent, [18e] 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. One who has reached my years, and who has a name for wisdom, whether deserved or not, ought not to debase himself. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of themthinking that they would teach me something. Because of Plato's obviously high regard For this fear of death is indeed the pretence of sophi , and not real sophi, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil [kakos], may not be the greatest good [agathos]. Years earlier, in the play The Clouds (423 BC), Aristophanes lampooned Socrates as a charlatan, the paradigm philosopher of atheist and scientific sophistry carefully arranged arguments constructed of ornate words and phrases misrepresented as wisdom. Except for Socrates's two dialogues with Meletus, about the nature and logic of his accusations of impiety, the text of the Apology of Socrates is in the first-person perspective and voice of the philosopher Socrates (24d25d and 26b27d). And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying [alths]. In support of the moral mission assigned him by the Oracle at Delphi, Socrates tells the court that his daimonion continually forbids him to act unethically (implicitly validating Meletus' accusation that Socrates believes in novel deities not of the Athenian pantheon). During their brief hold on And there, I said to myself, you will be detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are. Among the primary sources about the trial and death of the philosopher Socrates, the Apology of Socrates is the dialogue that depicts the trial, and is one of four Socratic dialogues, along with Euthyphro, Phaedo, and Crito, through which Plato details the final days of the philosopher Socrates. at a time during which he could expect many of his readers to have If you had waited a little while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature. And this I should say to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien [xenos], but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. Granted, it was not with this in mind that they accused me and condemned me, since they thought they were doing me harm, |41e and for this they deserve to be blamed. And why not? [23a] This investigation 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 sophos, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess the sophi which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that the god only is sophos; and in this oracle he means to say that the sophi of men is little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, [23b] he is only using my name as an illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the most sophos, who, like Socrates, knows that his sophi is in truth [alths] worth nothing. The jury condemns Socrates to death. Socrates says he will not use sophisticated language carefully arranged ornate words and phrases but will speak using the common idiom of the Greek language. He also says that his false reputation as a sophistical philosopher comes from his enemies and that all of them are malicious, yet must remain nameless except for the playwright Aristophanes, who lampooned him (Socrates) as a charlatan-philosopher in the comedy play The Clouds (423 BC). These scholars point out that Plato I do not deny that he may, perhaps, kill him, or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights [literally: rob his tm]; and he may imagine, and others may imagine, that he is doing him a great injury: but in that I do not agree with him; for the evil of doing as Anytus is doingof unjustly [without dik] taking away another mans lifeis greater far. No indeed!
Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives. [27a] Has he not compounded a riddle [ainigma], thinking to try me? firsthand You have put this into the indictment because you had nothing real [alths] of which to accuse me. I suppose that these things may be regarded as fated, and I think that they are well. Further, it is for this reason that I am not at all angry with those who accused me or with those who condemned me. 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 pretense of knowledge has been detectedwhich is the truth: [23e] and as they are numerous and ambitious and energetic, and are all in battle array and have persuasive tongues, they have filled your ears with their loud and inveterate calumnies. But either I do not corrupt them, [26a] or I corrupt them unintentionally, so that on either view of the case you lie. 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, or lightly reject his boon by condemning me. He says that the accusations of him being a corrupter of youth began at the time of his obedience to the Oracle at Delphi, and tells how Chaerephon went to the Oracle, to ask her, the Pythian prophetess, if there was a man wiser than Socrates. Then again there is Lysanias of Sphettos, who is the father of Aeschineshe 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. [17a] How you have felt, O men of Athens, at hearing the speeches of my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that their persuasive words almost made me forget who I wassuch was the effect of them; and yet they have hardly spoken a word of truth [alths]. In this way Plato lets us know that he was an eyewitness of the trial and therefore in the best possible position to write about it. Do you mean that I do not believe in the divinity of the sun or moon, which is the common creed of all men? And what do you say of the audiencedo they improve them? I made another enemy of him, and of many others besides him. You see, the hour [hr] of departure has already arrived. Socrates says to the court that these old accusations arise from years of gossip and prejudice against him; hence, are matters difficult to address. I will tell you a storytasteless, perhaps, and commonplace, but nevertheless true [alths]. 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 they were a dishonor to the state, [35b] and that any stranger coming in would say of them that the most eminent men of Athens, to whom the Athenians themselves give honor [tm] and command, are no better than women. is especially important to our understanding of the trial of Socrates Of the two authors, Plato's account is And what is that which I ought to pay or to endure [paskhein]? [22a] And I swear to you, Athenians, by the dog I swear!for I must tell you the truth [alths]the result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some inferior men were really wiser and better. Had I the same, I should have been very proud and conceited; but the truth is that I have no knowledge of the kind. Worthless men, |28c according to your view, would be the demigods [hmi-theoi] who fulfilled their lives by dying at Troy, especially the son of Thetis [= Achilles], who so despised the danger of risk, preferring it to waiting for disgrace. Right away your fate [potmos]she saysis ready for you after Hector. He said to himself: I shall see whether this sophos Socrates will discover my ingenious 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 thembut this surely is an exercise in playfulness. least on two large points, both Plato's and Xenophon's accounts are in Meletus I should have to lie in prison, for money I have none, and I cannot pay. For this is the command of the god, as I would have you know; and I believe that to this day no greater good [agathos] has ever happened in the state than my service to the god. The jury casts a vote, and finds Socrates guilty. And if anyone says that he has ever learned or heard anything from me in private which all the world has not heard, I should like you to know that he is speaking an untruth [non-alths]. Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, [28e] 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, I say, now, when, as I conceive and imagine, the god orders me to fulfill the philosophers mission of searching into myself and other men, [29a] I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly [with dik] be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle [manteion] because I was afraid of death: then I should be fancying that I was sophos when I was not sophos. Having addressed the social prejudices against him, Socrates addresses the first accusation the moral corruption of Athenian youth by accusing his accuser, Meletus, of being indifferent to the persons and things about which he professes to care. And to you and to the god I commit my cause, to be determined by you as is best [aristos] for you and me. Such nonsense, Meletus, could only have been devised by you as a way to charge me. [30e] For if you kill me you will not easily find another like me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by the god; and the state is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. But even you, O jurors [dikastai], should have good hopes when you face death, and you should have in mind [dia-noesthai] this one thing as true [althes]: |41d that nothing bad [kakon] can happen to a good [agathos] person, either in life or when he comes to its completion [teleutn]. But I shall be asked, Why do people delight in continually conversing with you? and writing. 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. By the goddess Hera, that is good news! 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