Apology of Socrates | 3
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 a 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.
Someone 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 diverse 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 anyone, 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 anyone.
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 someone 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.