Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
What effect my accusers have had on you, men of Athens, I cannot say. As for me, I nearly forgot who I was, listening to them — they were that persuasive. And yet, hardly a word they said was true. Of all the many lies they told, one amazed me most: their claim that you should be on guard against being taken in by me, since I am supposedly a clever speaker. That they were not ashamed to say this, when they are about to be refuted by the plain fact that I am nothing of the sort — that struck me as their most shameless move, unless of course what they mean by "clever speaker" is someone who speaks the truth. If that is what they mean, then yes, I would admit to being an orator — though not of their kind. In any case, these men have said little or nothing true, while from me you will hear the whole truth — not, by Zeus, dressed up in fine phrases and fancy words like theirs, but spoken plainly, in whatever words come to me, because I trust that what I say is right. None of you should expect anything else from me; it would hardly suit a man my age to come before you crafting speeches like a schoolboy. And there is one thing I must ask of you, men of Athens: if you hear me defending myself in the same style I generally use in the marketplace, at the money-changers' tables — where many of you have heard me — and elsewhere, please don't be surprised or make a disturbance over it. Here is the situation: this is the first time in my seventy years that I have ever stood before a court, so I am simply a stranger to the way people speak here.
Just as you would forgive a real foreigner for speaking in the accent and manner he was raised with, so now I ask this fair concession of you: set aside my style of speaking — it may be worse, it may be better — and instead pay attention to this alone, whether what I say is just or not. That is the excellence proper to a judge, while a speaker's job is to tell the truth. So first, men of Athens, it is right that I answer the earliest false charges against me, and my earliest accusers, before turning to the later ones and their accusers. For I have had many accusers before you, going back many years now, none of them saying anything true, and I fear them more than I fear Anytus and his group, formidable as those men are. No, the others are more dangerous still — the ones who got hold of most of you since childhood and, without any truth behind them, persuaded you and accused me: that there is a certain Socrates, a wise man, a ponderer of things in the sky, an investigator of everything under the earth, and one who makes the weaker argument the stronger. These men, Athenians, the ones who have spread this rumor around, are my truly dangerous accusers, because their listeners assume that anyone who studies such things doesn't believe in the gods at all. Besides, there are many of them, and they've been at it a long time now, and they spoke to you at just the age when you would have believed them most readily — some of you were children or young boys — and they made their accusations by default, with no one there to answer them. And the most absurd part of it is that I cannot even learn their names and tell you who they are, except perhaps some comic playwright. As for those who worked on you out of envy and malice, and those who were themselves convinced and passed it along to others — all of these are hardest to deal with, since I cannot bring a single one of them here to cross-examine. I simply have to fight shadows, so to speak, defending myself and refuting charges with no one there to answer. So I ask you to accept, as I've said, that I have had two sets of accusers: those who have just now brought charges, and those older ones I've been describing — and to think it right that I answer the older ones first. After all, you heard them accusing me earlier, and far more than you heard these recent ones.
Well then — I must make my defense, men of Athens, and try to clear away in this short time a prejudice you have held for so long. I would certainly wish this could turn out well, both for you and for me, and that my defense might actually accomplish something — but I suspect it's a hard task, and I'm not blind to what it involves. Still, let that go however the god wishes; the law must be obeyed, and the defense must be made. So let us go back to the beginning and ask what the charge is that has produced the slander against me — the very slander Meletus relied on when he wrote this indictment. Well then, what exactly did my slanderers say to slander me? I should read out something like a sworn deposition of theirs: "Socrates does wrong and oversteps himself, inquiring into things beneath the earth and in the heavens, making the weaker argument the stronger, and teaching others these same things." That's the substance of it — and indeed you have seen this for yourselves in Aristophanes' comedy, some "Socrates" being carried around on stage, claiming to walk on air and spouting a great deal of other nonsense, none of which I understand in the slightest, great or small. I don't say this to belittle that kind of knowledge, if anyone is in fact wise about such things — heaven forbid Meletus should hit me with yet another lawsuit — but the truth is, Athenians, I have no part in any of it. I call most of you yourselves as witnesses, and I ask you to inform and tell one another, all of you who have ever heard me in conversation — and many of you have — tell each other whether any of you ever heard me discussing such things, great or small. From that you will see that the rest of what people say about me is of the same quality. None of it is true. And if you have heard that I undertake to educate people and charge money for it, that isn't true either — though I do think it would be a fine thing if someone were capable of teaching people, the way Gorgias of Leontini can, or Prodicus of Ceos, or Hippias of Elis.
Each of these men, gentlemen, is able to go into any city and persuade the young — who could associate for free with any of their own fellow citizens they wished — to leave that company and join theirs instead, paying money for it and being grateful besides. In fact there's another one here in town right now, a wise man from Paros, whose presence I happened to learn of. I ran into a man who has paid more money to sophists than everyone else put together, Callias, son of Hipponicus. So I asked him — since he has two sons — "Callias," I said, "if your two sons had been born colts or calves, we would have no trouble finding and hiring a supervisor for them, someone to make them excellent at the qualities proper to their kind — some horse-trainer or farmer. But as it is, since they are human beings, whom do you have in mind to put in charge of them? Who understands this kind of excellence, the human and political kind? I assume you've given this thought, given that you have sons. Is there such a person, or not?" "Certainly," he said. "Who is he," I said, "and where's he from, and what does he charge?" "Evenus," he said, "Socrates, from Paros, five minas." And I thought Evenus a lucky man, if he really has this skill and teaches it at so reasonable a rate. I myself would preen and put on airs if I knew such things — but I don't, Athenians. Now perhaps one of you will object: "But Socrates, what exactly is your situation? Where have these slanders against you come from? Surely if you weren't doing something out of the ordinary, all this talk and rumor wouldn't have arisen, unless you were up to something different from most people. So tell us what it is, so we don't have to guess." Whoever says this seems to me to have a fair point, and I will try to show you what exactly it is that has given me this reputation and this slander. Listen, then. Some of you may think I am joking, but I promise you, I will tell you the whole truth. I have gotten this reputation, Athenians, for nothing other than a certain kind of wisdom. What kind of wisdom is that? Just the kind, perhaps, that is available to a human being — for in that sense I may really be wise. The men I mentioned a moment ago are wise, perhaps, with a wisdom greater than human wisdom — I don't know how else to describe it, since I certainly don't have it myself, and whoever says I do is lying and speaking to slander me. Now please, Athenians, don't make a disturbance, even if I seem to be saying something rather grand — for the account I'm about to give is not my own; I will point you to a source you'll consider trustworthy. As evidence for my wisdom, if it is wisdom at all and of whatever kind, I will call as witness the god at Delphi. You know Chaerephon, I imagine.
He was a friend of mine from youth, and a friend of your democratic party as well, sharing your recent exile and returning with you. And you know what Chaerephon was like, how impulsive he was in whatever he set out to do. Well, once he went to Delphi and had the nerve to ask this question of the oracle — and please, as I said, don't make a disturbance, gentlemen — he asked whether there was anyone wiser than I was. The Pythia answered that no one was wiser. Chaerephon has since died, but his brother here can testify to this before you. Now consider why I bring this up: I want to explain to you where this slander against me has come from. When I heard this, I thought to myself: what can the god mean? What is he hinting at? I am certainly not aware of being wise in anything, great or small. So what can he mean by declaring me the wisest? He can't be lying — that isn't permitted him. For a long time I was at a loss over what he meant; then, very reluctantly, I turned to something like the following approach to investigate it. I went to one of the men reputed to be wise, thinking that there, if anywhere, I could refute the oracle's pronouncement and say to it, "Here is a man wiser than I am, and yet you said I was the wisest." So I examined this man — there's no need to name him, only that he was one of our politicians — and in examining him and talking with him, I had roughly this experience, Athenians: it seemed to me that this man appeared wise to many other people, and above all to himself, but was not. So I tried to show him that he thought himself wise but wasn't. As a result, I became hateful to him, and to many of the people present. So as I walked away, I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man, at least — it's likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he doesn't, whereas I, since I don't in fact know, don't think that I do either. So it seems I am wiser than he is in just this one small way: that what I do not know, I do not think I know. From there I went on to another man, one thought even wiser than the first, and got exactly the same impression, and I became hateful to him too, and to many others besides. After that I kept going, one after another, aware of it and troubled by it, and afraid of the hostility I was creating, but it still seemed necessary to put the god's business first. So I had to go on, examining the meaning of the oracle, to everyone who seemed to know anything at all.
And by the dog, men of Athens—I have to tell you the truth—this is really what happened to me: those with the highest reputations seemed to me, when I examined them in the god's service, to be nearly the most lacking, while others thought inferior turned out to be sounder in their thinking. I need to show you my wanderings as a kind of labor I undertook, so that the oracle would end up unrefuted. After the politicians, I went to the poets—the tragedians, the dithyrambic poets, and the rest—thinking that there I would catch myself red-handed being more ignorant than they were. So I picked up the poems they seemed to have worked hardest on, and I questioned them about what they meant, hoping to learn something from them in the process. I'm ashamed to tell you the truth, men, but it must be told: pretty much anyone standing nearby could have explained their own poems better than the poets themselves did. So I soon realized about the poets, too, that it isn't wisdom that lets them write what they write, but some kind of natural gift, an inspiration, like seers and prophets who say many fine things but understand none of what they say. The poets struck me as being in that same condition. And at the same time I noticed that, because of their poetry, they believed themselves the wisest of people in other matters too, which they were not. So I left there thinking I had come out ahead of them in the very same way I had with the politicians. Finally I went to the craftsmen. I knew perfectly well that I understood practically nothing myself, but I was certain I'd find that they knew a great many fine things. And in this I wasn't wrong: they knew things I didn't, and in that way they were wiser than I was. But, men of Athens, the good craftsmen seemed to me to have fallen into the very same error as the poets: because each of them did his own craft well, he thought himself the wisest man alive in the biggest matters too—and this flaw of theirs cast a shadow over the wisdom they did have. So I asked myself, on the oracle's behalf, whether I would rather be as I am—wise in neither their wisdom nor their ignorance—or have both, the way they do. And I answered myself, and the oracle, that it was better for me to be just as I am.
Out of this examination, men of Athens, I've earned a great many hatreds, the harshest and heaviest kind, which have given rise to a lot of slander, and to this label people attach to me: 'wise.' Because each time, the bystanders think that whatever I show someone else lacks, I myself must possess. But really, men, it looks like the god is the only one who's actually wise, and that in this oracle he's saying that human wisdom is worth little or nothing. And it seems he isn't really talking about me, Socrates—he's just using my name as an example, as if he were saying: 'The wisest of you, people, is whoever has realized, like Socrates, that he is truly worthless when it comes to wisdom.' That's why I still go around even now, searching and investigating, at the god's bidding, anyone—citizen or foreigner—I think might be wise; and whenever he isn't, I come to the god's aid by showing him that he isn't wise. This occupation has left me no free time worth mentioning, either for public affairs or my own household—I live in utter poverty because of my service to the god. On top of that, the young men who have the most free time, the sons of the wealthiest families, follow me around on their own, and they enjoy hearing people cross-examined; and often they imitate me themselves and set about examining others too. Then, I imagine, they find no shortage of people who think they know something but know little or nothing. And so the people they examine get angry at me, not at themselves, and they say that this Socrates fellow is a thoroughly rotten character who corrupts the young. And whenever someone asks them exactly what I do and what I teach, they have nothing to say—they don't know—but so as not to look at a loss, they trot out the stock charges against all philosophers: that he studies things in the sky and under the earth, doesn't believe in the gods, and makes the weaker argument the stronger. Because, I think, they'd rather not say the truth: that they've been caught pretending to know when they know nothing. So, being ambitious, fierce, and numerous, and speaking about me forcefully and persuasively, they have filled your ears, slandering me both for a long time now and vehemently.
This is why Meletus went after me, along with Anytus and Lycon—Meletus aggrieved on behalf of the poets, Anytus on behalf of the craftsmen and politicians, Lycon on behalf of the orators. So, as I said at the start, I would be amazed if I could clear away this slander from your minds in such a short time, when it has grown so large. This is the truth for you, men of Athens, and I'm telling it to you hiding nothing, great or small, and holding nothing back. Yet I know well enough that this very frankness earns me hatred, which is itself proof that I'm telling the truth, that this is the slander against me, and these are its causes. And whether you look into this now or later, this is what you'll find. So, concerning the charges my first accusers made, let this be a sufficient defense before you. Now I'll try to defend myself against Meletus, that good man, that lover of his city, as he calls himself, and against those who came after. So then, as if these were different accusers, let's take up their sworn charge again. It runs something like this: it says Socrates does wrong by corrupting the young and by not believing in the gods the city believes in, but in other new divine things instead. That's the charge—let's examine it point by point. He says I do wrong by corrupting the young. But I say, men of Athens, that Meletus does wrong, because he treats a serious matter as a joke, easily hauling people into court, pretending to be earnest and concerned about things he has never cared about at all. That this is so, I'll try to show you as well. Come here, Meletus, tell me: isn't it true that you care above all that the young become as good as possible? Yes. Well then, tell these men here, who makes them better? Clearly you know, since you care about it. You've found the one who corrupts them, so you say—me—and you're bringing me before these men and accusing me. So come, name the one who makes them better, and tell them who he is. You see, Meletus, that you're silent and have nothing to say? Doesn't that strike you as shameful, and sufficient proof of exactly what I'm saying, that you've never cared at all? Come, tell us, my good man, who makes them better? The laws. But that's not what I'm asking, my excellent fellow—I'm asking what person, who knows the laws themselves to begin with. These men here, Socrates, the jurors. What are you saying, Meletus? These men here are able to educate the young and make them better? Certainly. All of them, or only some and not others? All of them. Well said, by Hera—what an abundance of people doing good!
And what about this: do the audience members at the assembly make them better, or not? Those too. What about the councilmen? The councilmen too. But then, Meletus, surely the men in the assembly, the assemblymen, don't corrupt the younger generation? Or do all of them make them better too? Those too. So it seems all the Athenians make the young fine and good, except me—I alone corrupt them. Is that what you're saying? That's exactly what I'm saying. You've condemned me to quite a misfortune. Now answer me this: does the same hold for horses, do you think? Do all people make them better, and only one person ruins them? Or is it the complete opposite—one person, or very few, the horse-trainers, are able to make them better, while the majority, if they handle and use horses, ruin them? Isn't that how it works, Meletus, both with horses and with every other animal? Surely it is, whether you and Anytus say so or not—it would be a wonderful stroke of luck for the young if only one person corrupted them while everyone else benefited them. But in fact, Meletus, you show clearly enough that you have never given the young a moment's thought, and you plainly reveal your own carelessness—that you have never cared at all about the very things you're bringing me to court over. Tell us further, Meletus, in Zeus's name: is it better to live among decent citizens or wicked ones? My friend, answer—I'm not asking anything difficult. Don't the wicked do some harm to whoever is closest to them, and the good do some benefit? Certainly. Now, is there anyone who would want to be harmed by those around him rather than benefited? Answer, my good man—the law requires you to answer. Is there anyone who wants to be harmed? Of course not. Come, then—are you bringing me here on the charge that I corrupt the young and make them worse, willingly or unwillingly? Willingly, I say. Well then, Meletus? Are you, at your age, so much wiser than I am at mine, that you have grasped that the bad always do some harm to those nearest them, and the good some benefit, while I have sunk into such ignorance that I don't even know this—that if I make one of my companions rotten, I risk suffering some harm from him myself—so that I do this great evil on purpose, as you claim?
I don't believe you in this, Meletus, and I don't think anyone else does either: either I don't corrupt anyone, or if I do, it's unwillingly, so that either way you're lying. And if I corrupt people unwillingly, the law doesn't call for hauling someone into court for mistakes of that unwilling kind—it calls for taking him aside privately to teach and admonish him. For clearly, if I learn better, I'll stop doing what I do unintentionally. But you avoided spending time with me and teaching me—you were unwilling—and instead you bring me here, where the law says to bring those who need punishment, not instruction. But it's already clear enough, men of Athens, what I was saying: that Meletus has never cared about these matters at all, great or small. Still, tell us, Meletus, how do you say I corrupt the younger generation? Or is it obvious, given the indictment you filed, that it's by teaching them not to believe in the gods the city believes in, but in other new divine things instead? Isn't that what you're saying I corrupt them by teaching? That is exactly, precisely what I'm saying. Then, Meletus, by those very gods we're now discussing, explain yourself more clearly, to me and to these men here. Because I can't tell whether you mean that I teach people to believe some gods exist—in which case I myself believe gods exist, and I'm not a complete atheist, and I'm not guilty on that score—only not the ones the city believes in, but different ones, and that's your charge against me, that they're different; or whether you mean that I don't believe in gods at all myself, and that I teach others the same. That's what I mean—that you don't believe in gods at all. That's astonishing, Meletus—why do you say that? Do you mean I don't even think the sun or the moon are gods, the way other people do? No, by Zeus, jurymen, since he says the sun is a stone and the moon is earth. Do you think you're prosecuting Anaxagoras, my dear Meletus? Do you hold these men in such contempt, and think them so illiterate, that they don't know Anaxagoras of Clazomenae's books are full of exactly these claims? And are the young supposed to be learning this from me, when they can buy it for a drachma at most, in the theater, and laugh at Socrates for pretending it's his own—especially since it's so absurd? But tell me, in Zeus's name, is that really what you think of me? That I believe in no god at all? None whatsoever, by Zeus. You're not to be believed, Meletus, and what's more, I think, not even by yourself. Because to me, men of Athens, this man seems thoroughly insolent and unrestrained, and to have brought this indictment out of sheer insolence, license, and youthful recklessness.
It's like a riddle he's put together to test whether Socrates the wise will notice that he's joking and contradicting himself, or whether he'll fool me and everyone else listening. Because it looks to me like he's saying opposite things in his own indictment, as if he'd said: Socrates does wrong by not believing in gods, but believing in gods. And that's just playing games. Look at this together with me, gentlemen, and see why I say he's saying this. You answer us, Meletus. And you, remember what I asked at the start — don't make an uproar if I argue in my usual way. Is there any human being, Meletus, who believes that human affairs exist but doesn't believe there are humans? Let him answer, gentlemen, and stop dodging from one thing to another. Is there anyone who doesn't believe there are horses, but believes there are horse-affairs? Or who doesn't believe there are flute-players, but believes there is flute-playing? There isn't, best of men — if you don't want to answer, I'll tell you and everyone else here. But answer this next one at least: is there anyone who believes there are divine things but doesn't believe there are divine beings? — There isn't. How good of you to finally answer, even though these gentlemen had to force it out of you. So you say I believe in and teach divine things — whether new or old, it doesn't matter — but in any case I believe in divine things by your own account, and you swore to that in your written charge. But if I believe in divine things, then surely I must also believe in divine beings — isn't that so? It is so — I'll take it that you agree, since you won't answer. And don't we think of divine beings as either gods or children of gods? Yes or no? — Certainly. So if I believe in divine beings, as you say, and if these divine beings are a kind of god, then this is exactly what I say you're joking about and hinting at riddles over — claiming I don't believe in gods and then that I do believe in gods after all, since I believe in divine beings. But if, on the other hand, these divine beings are children of gods, some sort of bastard offspring from nymphs or whatever else they're said to come from, then who on earth would think there are children of gods but no gods? That would be as absurd as thinking there are children of horses and donkeys — mules — but no horses or donkeys. No, Meletus, there's no way you wrote this charge except to test us, or because you were at a loss for some real wrongdoing to pin on me. There's no way on earth you could persuade anyone with even a grain of sense that the same person can believe in divine and daimonic things while not believing in divine beings, gods, or heroes.
But truly, men of Athens, I don't think it takes much of a defense to show that I'm not guilty under Meletus's charge — what I've said is enough. But what I said earlier, that I've earned a great deal of hostility from a great many people — know that this is true. And this is what will bring me down, if anything does — not Meletus, not Anytus, but the slander and envy of the crowd. This has brought down many other good men before, and I expect it will keep doing so; there's no danger it will stop with me. Now someone might say: Aren't you ashamed, Socrates, to have followed a way of life that now puts you in danger of dying for it? I would answer him fairly: you're not speaking well, friend, if you think a man of even the slightest worth ought to calculate his risk of living or dying, rather than looking only at this when he acts — whether what he does is just or unjust, the work of a good man or a bad one. By your reasoning, all the demigods who died at Troy would turn out to be worthless — including the son of Thetis, who cared so little about danger next to enduring something shameful that when his mother, a goddess, told him — eager as he was to kill Hector — something like this: my son, if you avenge your friend Patroclus's murder and kill Hector, you yourself will die, for your fate is fixed to follow right after Hector's — he heard this and gave no weight to death or danger, fearing far more to live as a coward who failed to avenge his friends. Let me die at once, he said, once I've punished the wrongdoer, rather than stay here by the curved ships, a laughingstock, a burden on the earth. Do you think he gave a thought to death and danger? That's how it truly is, men of Athens: wherever a man has stationed himself because he judged it best, or has been stationed by his commander, there he must stay and face the danger, I think, giving no weight to death or anything else, next to disgrace. So I would have been acting terribly, men of Athens, if, when the commanders you chose to command me stationed me at Potidaea, at Amphipolis, and at Delium, I stayed then where they stationed me, like anyone else, and risked death — but when the god stationed me, as I believed and understood it, to live philosophizing, examining myself and others, I then deserted my post out of fear of death or anything else.
That would be terrible, and then someone really would be right to bring me to court for not believing there are gods, since I'd be disobeying the oracle, fearing death, and thinking myself wise when I'm not. Fearing death, gentlemen, is nothing other than seeming to be wise when you're not — it's seeming to know what you don't know. No one knows whether death might actually be the greatest of all goods for a human being, yet people fear it as if they knew for certain it's the worst of evils. And isn't this the most blameworthy kind of ignorance, thinking you know what you don't know? I, gentlemen, may differ from most people precisely in this — and if I were to claim to be wiser than anyone in any way, it would be in this: that not knowing enough about the world below, I also don't think I know. But I do know that doing wrong and disobeying one's better — whether god or human — is bad and shameful. So I will never fear or run from things that, for all I know, might be good, in preference to things I know to be bad. So even if you acquitted me now, disregarding Anytus, who said that either I shouldn't have come to trial in the first place, or that since I had, there was no way to avoid putting me to death — telling you that if I got off, your sons would all be thoroughly corrupted by practicing what Socrates teaches — if you said to me in response to that: Socrates, this time we won't listen to Anytus, we'll acquit you, but on this condition, that you no longer spend your time on this inquiry or practice philosophy; and if you're caught doing it again, you'll die — if you acquitted me on those terms, as I said, I would tell you: men of Athens, I respect and love you, but I will obey the god rather than you, and as long as I have breath and the strength for it, I will not stop philosophizing, urging you on, and pointing things out to whichever of you I happen to meet, saying just what I always say: best of men, you're an Athenian, from the greatest city, famous above all for wisdom and power — aren't you ashamed to care so much about piling up as much money as possible, and reputation and honor, while giving no thought or care to wisdom and truth and how your soul can be as good as possible?
And if any of you disputes this and says he does care, I won't let him off right away or walk away — I'll question him, examine him, and test him, and if it seems to me he doesn't actually possess virtue but only claims to, I'll reproach him for placing the least value on what matters most and greater value on lesser things. I'll do this to anyone I meet, young or old, foreigner or citizen, but especially to citizens, since you're closer to me in kinship. This is what the god commands, understand that well, and I believe no greater good has ever come to you in this city than my service to the god. For I do nothing but go around persuading you, young and old alike, to care not for your bodies or your money first and foremost, nor as intensely, but for your soul, that it may be as good as possible — telling you that wealth doesn't produce virtue, but virtue produces wealth and everything else good for human beings, both privately and publicly. If saying this corrupts the young, then this teaching would be harmful — but if anyone says I teach something other than this, he's talking nonsense. Given this, men of Athens, I say: either listen to Anytus or don't, either acquit me or don't, since I won't act otherwise, not even if I have to die many times over. Don't make an uproar, men of Athens, but hold to what I asked of you — not to shout at what I say, but to listen. In fact, I think you'll benefit from listening. I'm about to tell you some other things that may make you want to shout, but please don't. Understand this well: if you kill me, being the kind of man I say I am, you won't harm me so much as you'll harm yourselves. Neither Meletus nor Anytus could harm me at all — they have no power to — since I don't think it's permitted by divine law for a worse man to harm a better one. He might kill me, or banish me, or strip me of my rights; he and others may think these are great evils, but I don't think so — I think it's a far greater evil to do what this man is doing now, trying to put a man to death unjustly. So now, men of Athens, I am far from making my defense on my own behalf, as one might think, but on yours, so that you don't make a mistake concerning the god's gift to you by condemning me. If you kill me, you won't easily find another like me — to put it rather comically, someone literally attached to the city by the god, like a gadfly to a large, well-bred horse that's grown sluggish from its size and needs stirring up. It seems to me the god has attached me to the city as just such a creature — one who never stops all day long, settling everywhere, waking you, persuading you, and reproaching each and every one of you.
Someone like me won't easily come your way again, gentlemen, and if you'll take my advice, you'll spare me. But you'll probably be annoyed—like people woken from a doze—and slap at me, and following Anytus's lead, kill me without a second thought, and then spend the rest of your lives asleep, unless god in his care for you sends someone else your way. That I am, in fact, just such a person given to the city by god, you can see from this: it isn't natural for a human being to have neglected all his own affairs, to have put up with the neglect of his household's interests for so many years now, and all the while to keep doing your business, going to each of you privately like a father or an elder brother, urging you to care about excellence. And if I got something out of it—if I collected fees for these exhortations—there would be some sense to it. But as it is, you can see for yourselves that even my accusers, shameless as they've been in leveling every other charge, couldn't bring themselves to be shameless enough to produce a witness claiming I ever took a fee or asked for one. I offer a witness sufficient, I think, to show I'm telling the truth: my poverty. Now it might seem odd that I go around giving this advice privately, meddling in everyone's business, and yet don't dare come before your assembly and advise the city in public. The reason is one you've heard me give many times, in many places: something divine and spirit-like comes to me—a voice—which is exactly what Meletus mocked in his indictment. It's been with me since childhood, this voice; whenever it comes, it always turns me away from something I'm about to do, but it never urges me forward. This is what stands in the way of my taking part in politics, and I think it's dead right to stand in the way. Because you should know well, men of Athens, that if I had tried long ago to engage in political affairs, I would have been destroyed long ago, and would have done no good either to you or to myself. And don't be annoyed with me for telling the truth: no man on earth will survive who genuinely opposes either you or any other mass of people, and tries to stop the many unjust and illegal things that happen in a city. The man who truly fights for justice, if he's going to survive even a little while, must live a private life, not a public one.
I'll give you strong proof of this—not words, but what you value: deeds. Listen to what happened to me, so you'll know that I would not have given way to anyone, against justice, out of fear of death—that not giving way, I'd have destroyed myself instead. What I'm about to tell you is crude and courtroom-ish, but true. I, men of Athens, never held any other office in the city, but I did serve on the Council. It happened that my tribe, Antiochis, held the presidency when you decided to try the ten generals who had failed to gather the dead from the sea battle, all together as a group—which was illegal, as you all came to recognize later. At that time I alone of the presiding officers opposed doing anything against the laws, and I voted against it. And though the public speakers were ready to have me indicted and hauled off, and though you were shouting and urging it on, I thought I ought to run the risk with law and justice on my side, rather than side with you in an unjust decision, out of fear of prison or death. That was while the city was still a democracy. Then, when the oligarchy came, the Thirty summoned me, along with four others, to the Rotunda and ordered us to bring in Leon of Salamis from Salamis, to be put to death—the sort of order they gave to many others too, wanting to implicate as many people as possible in their guilt. But then, too, I showed, not in word but in deed, that death—if it isn't too blunt to say—means nothing at all to me, but that doing nothing unjust or unholy means everything. That government, powerful as it was, didn't frighten me into doing anything unjust: when we came out of the Rotunda, the other four went to Salamis and brought back Leon, but I went home. And I might well have been put to death for it, if the government hadn't been overthrown shortly afterward. There are many who can witness to this for you. Do you think, then, that I would have survived all these years if I had been active in public life, and had acted as a good man should, coming to the aid of justice, and had counted that, as one must, the most important thing? Far from it, men of Athens—nor would any other man.
But throughout my whole life, in anything I've done publicly, I'll be shown to be the same, and privately the same as well—never having yielded to anyone on any point against justice, not to anyone else, and not to any of these people whom my slanderers claim are my students. I have never at any time been anyone's teacher. But if anyone wanted to listen to me talking and going about my own business, whether younger or older, I never begrudged that to anyone, and I don't converse only with those who pay me and refuse those who don't—I offer myself equally to rich and poor to question me, and if anyone wants to answer and hear what I have to say, he may. And whether any of these people turns out good or bad, I couldn't fairly be held responsible, since I never promised any of them any instruction and never taught them anything. And if anyone claims to have learned or heard anything from me privately that everyone else didn't also hear, be assured he isn't telling the truth. But then why do some people enjoy spending a great deal of time with me? You've heard, men of Athens—I've told you the whole truth: they enjoy listening to people being examined who think they're wise but aren't. It isn't unpleasant, after all. This task, as I say, has been assigned to me by the god, through oracles and dreams and every other means by which divine providence has ever assigned a man any task at all. This is true, men of Athens, and easily tested. For if I really am corrupting some of the young and have already corrupted others, then surely, if some of them, now grown older, came to realize that I had once given them bad advice when they were young, they ought now to come forward themselves to accuse me and get their revenge. Or if they weren't willing to do it themselves, some of their relatives—fathers, brothers, other kinsmen—ought now, if their own people had suffered some harm from me, to remember it and seek redress. Well, there are plenty of them here, whom I see: first Crito here, my contemporary and fellow demesman, father of Critobulus here; then Lysanias of Sphettus, father of Aeschines here; then also Antiphon of Cephisia here, father of Epigenes. And here are others whose brothers have spent time in this same pursuit with me: Nicostratus, son of Theozotides, brother of Theodotus—and Theodotus has died, so he at least couldn't plead with his brother not to testify—and Paralius here, son of Demodocus, whose brother was Theages; and here is Adeimantus, son of Ariston, whose brother is Plato here; and Aeantodorus, whose brother Apollodorus is right here.
And I can name many others for you, one of whom Meletus certainly ought to have produced as a witness in his own speech. If he forgot to then, let him do it now—I yield the floor—and let him say if he has any such witness. But you'll find quite the opposite is true, gentlemen: all of them are ready to help me, the corrupter, the one doing harm to their own kin, as Meletus and Anytus put it. Now the corrupted ones themselves might have some reason to help me. But the uncorrupted ones, older men now, relatives of these young men—what reason could they have to help me, except the right and just one: that they know Meletus is lying and I am telling the truth? Well then, gentlemen. What I have to say in my defense is more or less this, and perhaps other things of the same kind. But maybe one of you will be indignant, remembering his own case, if he, in facing a lesser contest than this one, begged and pleaded with the jurors with many tears, bringing forward his children so as to be pitied as much as possible, along with many other relatives and friends—while I will do none of these things, even though, as it might seem, I'm facing the ultimate risk. Perhaps someone thinking about this will be harder on me, and getting angry at just this, will cast his vote in anger. Now if any of you is inclined that way—I don't expect it, but if so—I think it would be fair for me to say to him: my good man, I do have relatives too; as Homer puts it, I too was not born of oak or rock but of human beings, so I have relatives, and sons too, men of Athens, three of them, one already a young man and two still children. But even so I won't bring any of them forward here to beg you for acquittal. Why won't I do any of this? Not out of stubbornness, men of Athens, nor out of disrespect for you—whether I face death bravely or not is another matter—but for the sake of my reputation, and yours, and the whole city's, it doesn't seem right to me to do any of that, given my age and the name I bear, whether truly or falsely, since it's been decided, at any rate, that Socrates is different from most people.
If those of you who are thought to excel in wisdom or courage or any other excellence are going to behave this way, it would be shameful—the sort of thing I've often seen: men who are thought to be something doing astonishing things when on trial, as though they expected something terrible to happen to them if they die, as if they'd be immortal if you didn't kill them. Such men seem to me to bring shame on the city, so that a foreigner might well conclude that those Athenians who excel in virtue, whom the Athenians themselves pick out for offices and other honors, are no better than women. These are things, men of Athens, that those of us thought to be worth anything ought not to do, and you ought not to permit us to do, if we try—you should show, instead, that you'll vote to convict far more readily the man who stages these pitiful scenes and makes the city a laughingstock than the man who keeps quiet. But apart from reputation, gentlemen, it doesn't seem right to me to beg the juror, or to get off by begging—rather, one should instruct and persuade him. The juror isn't sitting there to hand out justice as a favor, but to judge where justice lies; and he has sworn not to favor whomever he pleases, but to judge according to the laws. So we shouldn't get you into the habit of breaking your oath, nor should you fall into that habit—neither of us would be acting piously. So don't expect me, men of Athens, to do things toward you that I neither think good nor just nor holy—especially, by Zeus, when I'm being prosecuted for impiety by this man Meletus here. For clearly, if I were to persuade you by begging, and force you against your oath, I would be teaching you not to believe there are gods, and in defending myself I would in effect be accusing myself of not believing in gods. But that's far from the truth: I do believe, men of Athens, as none of my accusers does, and I leave it to you and to the god to judge about me in whatever way will be best both for me and for you.
That I'm not distressed, men of Athens, at what has happened -- that you voted to convict me -- that's due to a number of things, and above all this: the result was not unexpected. What does astonish me is the count on each side of the vote. I never thought it would be so close -- I expected a wide margin, not a narrow one. As it turns out, if a mere thirty votes had gone the other way, I would have been acquitted. Against Meletus, as I see it, I've already been acquitted, and not just that -- it's plain to everyone that if Anytus and Lycon hadn't come forward to accuse me alongside him, he would have owed a fine of a thousand drachmas, for failing to win a fifth of the votes. So the man proposes death as my penalty. Very well. And what counterproposal shall I make to you, men of Athens? Clearly, whatever I deserve. Then what is that? What do I deserve to suffer or to pay, given that I refused to live quietly, and instead, neglecting the things most people care about -- making money, managing a household, holding military commands, giving speeches in the assembly, and all the other offices, factions, and political cliques that exist in our city -- because I considered myself too honest a man to survive if I went in for that sort of thing, I didn't go where going would have done no good either to you or to me. Instead I went to each of you privately and tried to do you what I call the greatest service: I set about persuading each one of you not to care for any of his own affairs before caring that he himself become as good and as thoughtful as possible, nor to care for the city's affairs before caring for the city itself, and to care for everything else in the same way. So given that this is who I am, what do I deserve to suffer? Something good, men of Athens, if the penalty is to be truly fitted to what I deserve -- and good of the kind that would actually suit me. What suits a poor man who has done you good and who needs the leisure to keep exhorting you? Nothing suits him better, men of Athens, than for such a man to be given his meals in the Prytaneum -- far more so than if one of you had won a race at Olympia with a horse, a pair, or a four-horse team. That man makes you seem happy; I make you actually happy. And he has no need of food, while I do.
So if I'm to propose what I truly deserve as a matter of justice, this is it: to be fed at public expense in the Prytaneum. Perhaps in saying this I sound to you much as I did about pity and pleading, as though I'm being stubborn out of arrogance. But that isn't so, men of Athens -- rather this is the case. I'm convinced that I never wrong anyone intentionally, but I can't convince you of that, because we've had too little time to talk with one another. If you had a law, as other peoples do, that a capital case be judged not in a single day but over many, you would be convinced. As it is, it isn't easy to clear oneself of grave slanders in so little time. So being convinced that I wrong no one, I am far from wronging myself -- from saying against myself that I deserve some evil, and proposing any such penalty for myself. Why should I fear that? That I might suffer the very thing Meletus proposes for me, which I say I don't know whether it's good or bad? Should I choose instead, in place of that, something I know for certain to be bad, and propose that as my penalty? Imprisonment? And why should I live in prison, enslaved to whatever board of officials happens to be in charge, the Eleven? A fine, then, and imprisonment until I pay it? But that comes to the same thing I just said, since I have no money to pay with. Exile, then? Perhaps you'd accept that as my proposal. I would have to love my life very dearly, men of Athens, to be so unreasonable as not to work out that if you, my own fellow citizens, couldn't bear my conversations and arguments -- if they've grown so burdensome and so hateful to you that you're now trying to be rid of them -- others are hardly going to put up with them easily. Far from it, men of Athens. What a fine life it would be for a man my age to leave here and spend the rest of it drifting from city to city, always being driven out. I know very well that wherever I go, the young will listen to me talking, just as they do here. If I drive them away, they themselves will get their elders to drive me out; if I don't drive them away, their fathers and families will do it on their account. Someone might say, 'Socrates, can't you just go away and live quietly, saying nothing?' This is the hardest point of all to make some of you believe.
If I say that doing so would mean disobeying the god, and that this is why I can't keep quiet, you won't believe I'm serious -- you'll think I'm being ironic. And if I say again that it is, in fact, the greatest good for a human being to spend every day discussing virtue and the other things you've heard me discuss, examining myself and others -- and that the unexamined life isn't worth living for a human being -- you'll believe that even less. That's how it is, men, as I say, though it isn't easy to make you believe it. And I'm not in the habit of thinking I deserve anything bad. If I had money, I would propose a fine of as much as I could pay, since that would cost me nothing. But I don't have it -- unless you want to set the fine at whatever amount I'm actually able to pay. Perhaps I could pay you as much as a mina of silver. So I propose that as my penalty. But Plato here, men of Athens, and Crito and Critobulus and Apollodorus urge me to propose thirty minas, and they will stand as guarantors. So I propose that amount, and these men will be your reliable guarantors for the money. Well, men of Athens, for the sake of a little time you will earn yourselves a name and the blame, from those who want to disparage the city, of having killed Socrates, a wise man -- for those who want to find fault with you will say I was wise, even though I'm not. If you had just waited a little while, this would have come about for you on its own; you can see how far along in life I already am, close to death. I say this not to all of you, but to those who voted for my death. And I have this to say as well to those very same men. Perhaps you think I was convicted for lack of the kind of arguments that might have won you over, if I'd thought it right to do and say anything at all to escape the charge. Far from it. I was convicted for a lack, but not a lack of arguments -- rather a lack of shamelessness and impudence, and my unwillingness to say to you the things you would have most enjoyed hearing -- to wail and grieve, and do and say many other things unworthy of me, as I maintain, the sort of things you're used to hearing from others. But I didn't think then that I should do anything unworthy of a free man because of the danger, and I don't regret now having defended myself as I did. I would much rather die having defended myself this way than live having defended myself the other way.
For neither in a court of law nor in war should I or anyone else scheme to escape death by any means possible. In battles too it often becomes clear that a man could escape death by throwing down his weapons and turning to beg his pursuers for mercy; and in every kind of danger there are many other ways to dodge death, if a man is willing to say and do anything at all. But I suspect, men, that the hard thing isn't escaping death, but escaping wickedness -- for wickedness outruns death. And now I, being slow and old, have been overtaken by the slower of the two, death, while my accusers, being clever and quick, have been overtaken by the faster one, wickedness. And now I go away condemned by you to death, while they go away condemned by truth to depravity and injustice. I stand by my penalty, and so do they. Perhaps this was bound to turn out this way, and I think it's fitting enough. But after this I want to prophesy to you, you who voted to condemn me -- for I am now at the point where people are most given to prophecy, when they're about to die. I tell you, men who have killed me, that punishment will come upon you right after my death, and a far harsher one, by Zeus, than the one you've inflicted on me. You've done this now thinking you would be rid of having to give an account of your lives, but it will turn out quite the opposite for you, I tell you. There will be more people to test you, whom I've been holding back until now without your noticing, and they will be harder on you, since they're younger, and you will resent it more. If you think that by killing people you'll stop anyone from reproaching you for not living rightly, you're not thinking straight -- that escape isn't at all workable, nor is it honorable. The best and easiest escape isn't to silence others, but to prepare yourself to be as good as possible. This is my prophecy to you who voted against me, and with it I take my leave. As for those who voted to acquit me, I'd be glad to talk with you about what has just happened, while the officials are busy and I haven't yet gone to the place where I must die. So stay with me a while longer, men -- there's nothing stopping us from talking with one another while we still can.
Since you're my friends, I want to show you what this thing that's happened to me actually means. Men of the jury -- for you I could rightly call judges -- something remarkable has happened to me. The customary prophetic sign, the divine voice, in all the time before now was always extremely frequent, opposing me even over small matters whenever I was about to do something wrong. But now this has happened to me, as you can see for yourselves, the very thing one might suppose and generally consider the worst of evils. Yet the divine sign didn't oppose me this morning when I left home, nor when I came up here to the court, nor at any point in my speech when I was about to say something. Yet in other speeches it has often stopped me in the middle of talking; but this time, in this whole affair, it has opposed me in nothing I did or said. What do I take to be the reason? I'll tell you: it's likely that what has happened to me is a good thing, and that those of us who suppose death is an evil must be mistaken. I have strong proof of this -- there's no way my usual sign would have failed to oppose me if I weren't about to do something good. Let us consider it also this way, how much reason there is to hope it is a good thing. Death is one of two things: either it's like being nothing, with no awareness of anything at all, or, as some say, it's a kind of change, a migration of the soul from this place to another. If it is the absence of all awareness, like a sleep in which the sleeper doesn't even dream, then death would be an extraordinary gain. I think that if someone had to pick out that night in which he slept so soundly that he didn't even dream, and set it beside all the other nights and days of his life, and then, on consideration, say how many days and nights of his life he had spent better and more pleasantly than that night, I think that even the Great King himself, let alone some ordinary person, would find them easy to count against all the other days and nights. So if death is like that, I call it a gain -- for in that case the whole of time seems no longer than a single night. But if death is like a journey from here to another place, and what's said is true, that all the dead are there, what greater good could there be than this, men of the jury?
Consider: if someone arrives in Hades, set free from these people here who claim to be judges, and finds the ones who are truly judges — the very ones who are said to sit in judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthys and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and all the other demigods who lived just lives — would that journey be a bad one? Or again, to keep company with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer — what wouldn't any of you give for that? I myself would be willing to die many times over if this is true. As for me, it would be a wonderful way to spend my time there, whenever I met Palamedes or Ajax son of Telamon, or any other figure of old who died through an unjust verdict, comparing my own experience with theirs — that, I think, would not be unpleasant. And best of all, I could go on doing there what I do here: examining and searching people out, asking which of them is wise, and which only thinks he is but isn't. What wouldn't a person give, gentlemen of the jury, to examine the man who led that great army against Troy, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, or the countless others one could name, men and women both — to talk with them, to keep company with them, to question them, would be happiness beyond imagining. And surely it isn't for that reason that they put people to death there. In every other respect, too, those there are happier than we are here, and from now on they are immortal for the rest of time, if indeed what is said is true. So you too, gentlemen of the jury, must be hopeful in the face of death, and hold on to this one truth: nothing bad can happen to a good man, whether alive or dead, and the gods do not neglect his fortunes. What has happened to me now did not happen by accident. It's clear to me that it was better for me to die now and be free of my troubles. That is why the sign never turned me back, and why I feel no real anger toward those who condemned me or accused me. Of course they didn't condemn and accuse me with this in mind — they thought they were harming me, and for that they deserve blame. Still, I ask this one thing of them: when my sons grow up, gentlemen, punish them by giving them the same trouble I gave you, if they seem to you to care more for money or anything else than for goodness, and if they think they're something when they're nothing — reproach them just as I reproached you, for not caring about what they should, and for thinking they amount to something when they're worth nothing.
If you do this, I will have received justice from you, both I myself and my sons. But now it's time to go — I to die, and you to live. Which of us goes to the better fate is unclear to everyone except god.