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THE DEATH OF SOCRATES - BY
JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID
Socrates' Apology (by Plato) - Page
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Socrates' Apology by Plato.
It follows the English
translation of the full text transcript of
Socrates' Apology according to Plato, delivered at
Athens, Greece - 399 BC.
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1.
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.
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