this kind of divine service.

And, further, the young men who fall into my company, and those who have most leisure especially-young men of fortune-are delighted to hear these questionings of mine, and often imitate me themselves and try to question others. And I think the result is that they find a great abundance of persons who think that they know something, but who really know little or nothing. And thereupon those who are questioned by them are irritated against me rather than them, and say that there is a certain wicked Socrates who corrupts the young men. And if any one asks them what he does and what he teaches which corrupts them, they can make no reply, as they have nothing to allege. But that they may seem to have some ground for what they say, they take up all these accusations which have been cast against all who have meddled with philosophy-that they search into things under the earth and above the earth, and do not believe in the gods, and make the worse appear the better reason. Of course they will not assign the true cause -that they are convicted of pretending to know, when they really do not know. They are jealous of their reputation, persons of dignity, numerous; and, urging these charges. perseveringly and plausibly, they have for a long time filled your ears with these vile calumnies. And now they have set upon me Meletus and Anytus and LyconMeletus, urged by the resentment of the poets; Anytus, by the artists and the politicians; and Lycon, by the orators; so that, as I have said, it will be wonderful if I am able, in the short time which is allowed me,

ing for so long. This is the truth, O men of Athens. I speak to you, not concealing or disguising anything, great or small, though I know that I shall still find the hatred of these persons undiminished-a proof that I speak the truth, and that this is the source and cause of the calumny; and this you will find by examination, now or at any future time.

Perhaps some one may say, "Are you not ashamed, Socrates, to have involved yourself in a business like this, through which at present you stand in danger of your life?" To such a person I should answer, Truly, O man, you judge not well if you think that a man who is worth anything should calculate the danger and the chances of living or dyingif you think that he should consider anything but this, whether what he is doing is right or wrong, whether it is the work of a good or of a bad man. According to your calculation, the heroes who died at Troy were under a mistake. The son of Thetis despised danger in comparison of disgrace. When his mother found him bent upon avenging Patroclus and killing Hector, she, goddess as she was, said, O son, if thou avenge thy friend and kill Hector, thou thyself wilt die; for, said she,

"Forthwith thy destiny follows the ruin of Hector;"

and he despised this danger, and feared still more to live unhonored with his friend unavenged; he says,

"Forthwith, then, may I die,"

provided that I punish him who has wronged me, and become not a laughing-stock,

"Nor remain at my ships, of earth a profitless burden."

Do you think that he cared for danger and death?

For so it is, O Athenians, in truth. Whatever is each man's post, chosen by himself as the better part or appointed by his leader, there, as I think, he must stay in spite of danger, reckoning not of death, nor of anything except of disgrace and honor.

For me, Athenians, it would be a shameful deed, if, when your rulers, whom you appointed to direct me, had assigned me my post at Potidea and at Amphipolis and at Delium, I stood my ground where they had placed me, like every other soldier, and faced the danger of death; but when the deity had assigned me my post, as I think and believe, and made it my business to live a life in the pursuit of wisdom, questioning myself and others, I should then, from fear of death or any other thing, quit my appointed rank, that would indeed be a shocking proceeding; and in that case any one might with reason bring me to judgment as a man who does not believe in the gods, who disobeys their oracles, who fears death and thinks himself wise when he is not so.

For to fear death, O men of Athens, is to think one's self wise when one is not so. For no one knows what death is, nor whether it is not the greatest good for man: they fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils. And is not this the most shameful kind of ignorance, to think that we know this when we know it not? In this respect, perhaps, I differ from the rest of mankind. If I am wise in anything, it is in this-that as I know nothing of the state of departed spirits, so I do not think that I know; but that to do wrong and to disobey good guidance, whether of God or man, is an evil and

a disgrace, that I know. And so I will never fear nor shun things of which I know not but they may be good, in preference to evils of which I am sure that they are evils.

you are

And so now if you dismiss me, disregarding Anytus, who said at the outset that either I ought never to have been brought before you, or, having been brought, not to be allowed to escape with my life, telling you that if I escape your sons will follow the teaching of Socrates and be perverted; if you should now say, "O Socrates, we shall not now comply with the advice of Anytus; we dismiss you on this condition that you shall not pursue your accustomed researches nor go on seeking for wisdom, and if found still doing so you shall die,"—if, I say, you should dismiss me on this condition, I should reply, O Athenians, you I love and cherish, but I must obey the god rather than you, and so long as I breathe and have my faculties I cannot desist from seeking for wisdom and exhorting you and arguing to those of you who come in my way, and saying what I have been accustomed to say: O excellent friend, can you, being an Athenian, a citizen of the first and most famous of cities for wisdom and power, help being ashamed while you make riches your highest aim, and reputation and distinction, and give no thought nor care to the pursuit of truth and the improvement of your soul? And if any one argues with me, and says that he does care for these things, I shall not go away nor quit my hold of him, but I shall examine him. and test him; and if he does not appear to me to have acquired virtue, but only to say that he has, I shall reproach him as thinking most of the smallest things and least of the greatest. This I must do to all, young and

meddling with everybody, and yet that I do not come forward before your public assemblies and give my advice about matters of state. The cause of this is that which I have often said and you have often heard, that I have a divine monitor of which Meletus in his indictment makes a charge in so extravagant a manner. This monitor I have had from my boyhood-a voice which warns me, which restrains me constantly from what I am about to do, but never urges me on to do. This was what stood in the way of my undertaking public affairs, whence you may be well assured that if I had engaged in public business I should. long ago have perished, and should have done no good either to you or to myself. And be not offended with me when I tell you the truth. No man can long be safe who, either to you or to any other democratic body, opposes himself frankly and resists wrong and illegal things being done by the city. It is necessary that he who really fights for what is right, if he is to be safe even for a short time, should be in a private, not in a public, station.

were overboard in the sea-fight of Arginusæ; you chose to judge them in one lot, against the law, as at a later period you all allowed. Then I alone of all the presidents opposed myself to your taking an illegal course and gave my vote against it; and when the orators denounced me and were on the point of joining me with the accused, and when you clamored in an imperious manner, I thought that I ought rather to run any danger than for fear of bonds or death to join you in an act of injustice. And this was in the time of the democracy.

And when the oligarchy was set up, the Thirty Tyrants sent for me, along with four others, to their council-chamber, and ordered us to fetch from Salamis Leon the Salaminian, that he might be put to death according to a practice which they then followed, in order to involve as many persons as possible in their own guilty proceedings. On that occasion too I showed-not in words, but in deed-that I cared, if I may be allowed a rough expression, not a jot for death, but cared mightily about doing nothing unjust or wicked. For that government, strong as it was, struck me with no terror which could make me do what was wrong. When we left the council-chamber, the other four went to Salamis and brought back Leon; I went

For, men of Athens, I never had any other public office in the state, but I had a place in the Senate. My tribe, the Antiochian tribe, had the presidency when you had to judge the ten captains who did not save the men who

have died for that act if that government had not soon afterward been dissolved. And of these there are many who can bear witness.

Do you, then, think that I should have lived so many years if I had entered into public life, and, as became a good man, had taken the side of right on all occasions?

his assailants, and many other ways there are, in other cases, of escaping death, if a

ALTY, SOCRATES AGAIN ADDRESSES THEM.

In consequence of your not being willing to wait a very short time, men of Athens, you will soon have to bear the blame, from those who wish to speak reproachfully of the city, of having put to death Socrates, that wise man; for those who wish to say harsh things of you will call me a wise man, though I am not. If you had waited but a little while, this result would have come of itself; for you see my age: I am far advanced in life and near the borders of death. I say not this to all of you: I say it to those who have sentenced me to death; and to the same persons I say this: Perhaps you think, O men, that I should have failed in gaining your votes from want of power of speaking even if I had been willing to do everything to avoid this sentence. Far from it. I have failed, not for want of words, but for want of forwardness and impudence, and because I would not utter to you such things as you would most willingly hear-complaints and lamentations and other things unworthy of me, as I say, but such as you have been accustomed to hear from others. But I did not before think that I ought, for the sake of danger, to do anything unworthy of a freeman, nor do I now repent of the way in which I have made my defence; on the contrary, I much prefer dying to living on such conditions. For neither in a court of justice nor in war am I, or any one, allowed to use every conceivable art and means to escape death. No! Often in battle it is plain that a man might escape death by throwing

anything. But the great object, O men, is not to escape death, but to escape baseness and wickedness. Wickedness runs faster than Death, and so is more difficult to escape. I, old and slow, am overtaken by the slower of these two, but my accusers, quick and clever as they are, are overtaken by the quicker of the two, Wickedness. And now I go hence, sentenced by you to receive the penalty of death, but they go sentenced by Truth to receive the penalty of wickedness and injustice. I stand to my punishment; they must stand to theirs. All this ought to be as it is. Everything is for the best.

And now, O you who have condemned. me, I wish to deliver a prediction to you; for I am now in that position in which men's predictions are most regarded, being about to die. I predict to you, O men who have put me to death, that a punishment will soon fall upon you, and, by the heavens, a much heavier one than that which you have inflicted upon me. For you have done this deed in the hope of being freed from the call to give account of your lives; but the result will be very different, as I prophesy. There will be many more who will call upon you for such an account, whom I have hitherto kept back, so that you were not aware of their existence. These will be more vehement in their appeals to you than I have been, as being younger and more indignant at your acts. For if you think that by putting persons to death you can prevent any one from reproaching you that you do not live rightly, you are quite mistaken. Such a way of get