Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
SOCRATES: What brings you here at such an hour, Crito? Isn't it still early?
CRITO: Very early indeed.
SOCRATES: About what time?
CRITO: Just before dawn.
SOCRATES: I'm surprised the prison guard was willing to let you in.
CRITO: He knows me by now, Socrates, because I come here so often — and besides, he's had a favor or two from me.
SOCRATES: Did you just arrive, or have you been here a while?
CRITO: Quite a while.
SOCRATES: Then why didn't you wake me right away, instead of sitting beside me in silence?
CRITO: By Zeus, Socrates, no — I wouldn't want to be lying awake in such grief myself, and I've been marveling at you for some time, seeing how sweetly you sleep. I deliberately didn't wake you, so you could pass the time as pleasantly as possible. Often before, all through your life, I've counted you happy for your temperament, but never more than in this present misfortune — you bear it so easily and calmly.
SOCRATES: Well, Crito, it would be out of tune for a man my age to resent it if he now has to die.
CRITO: Other men your age, Socrates, get caught in misfortunes like this, and their age doesn't release them one bit from resenting the fate in front of them.
SOCRATES: That's true. But why have you come so early?
CRITO: I bring hard news, Socrates — not hard for you, it seems to me, but for me and all your friends, hard and heavy; and I think I will bear it as heavily as anyone.
SOCRATES: What news? Has the ship come from Delos, the one whose arrival means I must die?
CRITO: It hasn't arrived yet, but I think it will come today, judging from the report of some men who came from Sounion and left it there. From these messengers it's clear it will come today, and then tomorrow, Socrates, your life must end.
SOCRATES: Well, Crito, may it be for the best. If this is what pleases the gods, so be it. Still, I don't think it will come today.
CRITO: What's your evidence for that?
SOCRATES: I'll tell you. I have to die, I suppose, on the day after the ship arrives.
CRITO: So say the men in charge of these things, anyway.
SOCRATES: Then I don't think it will come during the day now dawning, but the day after. I judge from a dream I saw a little earlier this night — and it may be a lucky thing you didn't wake me.
CRITO: What was the dream?
SOCRATES: A woman seemed to come to me, beautiful and fair to look at, wearing white robes; she called me and said: "Socrates, on the third day you would reach fertile Phthia."
CRITO: A strange dream, Socrates.
SOCRATES: A clear one, though, as it seems to me, Crito.
CRITO: Too clear, apparently. But, Socrates, you extraordinary man, even now listen to me and save yourself. For me, if you die, it isn't one misfortune only: apart from losing a friend such as I will never find again, many people who don't know you and me well will think that I could have saved you if I'd been willing to spend money, and that I didn't bother. And what reputation could be more shameful than that — to be thought to value money above friends? The many won't believe that you yourself refused to leave this place, though we were eager to help.
SOCRATES: But Crito, my friend, why should the opinion of the many matter so much to us? The most reasonable people, whose opinion is more worth our attention, will believe things were done exactly as they were done.
CRITO: But you can see, Socrates, that one must care about the opinion of the many too. The present situation itself makes it plain that the many can inflict not the smallest of evils but just about the greatest, when someone has been slandered before them.
SOCRATES: If only, Crito, the many were able to do the greatest evils, so that they were also able to do the greatest goods — that would be fine. But as it is, they can do neither: they can't make a man wise or foolish; they just do whatever they happen to do.
CRITO: Have it that way, then. But tell me this, Socrates. Surely you're not worrying about me and your other friends — afraid that if you leave this place, the informers will make trouble for us for having smuggled you out, and we'll be forced to lose our whole estate, or a great deal of money, or suffer something else on top of that?
If you're afraid of anything like that, forget it. We are surely right to run this risk in saving you, and a greater one still, if need be. Trust me and don't do otherwise.
SOCRATES: I am worrying about that, Crito, and about much else.
CRITO: Then don't fear it. In fact it isn't even much money that certain men will take to save you and get you out of here. And besides, don't you see how cheap these informers are — it wouldn't take much money to deal with them? My money is at your disposal, and it's enough, I think. And then, if out of concern for me you think you shouldn't spend mine, there are foreigners here ready to spend theirs. One of them has actually brought enough money for this very purpose — Simmias of Thebes; and Cebes is ready too, and a great many others. So, as I say, don't let fear of that make you give up on saving yourself; and don't let what you said in court trouble you either — that if you went into exile you wouldn't know what to do with yourself. In many places, wherever you go, people will welcome you gladly; and if you want to go to Thessaly, I have friends there who will make much of you and keep you safe, so that no one in Thessaly will give you any grief.
Besides, Socrates, I don't think what you're attempting is even just — to betray yourself when you could be saved, and to hurry along for yourself exactly what your enemies would hurry along, and did hurry along, in their desire to destroy you. On top of that, I think you're betraying your own sons too: when you could bring them up and educate them, you'll go off and abandon them, and as far as you're concerned they'll fare however they happen to fare — and they'll likely meet the sort of things that usually happen to orphans in their orphanhood. Either a man shouldn't have children, or he should stay and share the labor of raising and educating them; but you seem to me to be choosing the laziest course. You ought to choose what a good and brave man would choose — you, who claim to have cared about virtue all your life. For my part, I'm ashamed both for you and for us, your friends, that this whole affair of yours may seem to have been carried through by a kind of cowardice on our part: the way the case came into court when it could have been kept out; the way the trial itself was conducted; and now this final scene, like the farce that caps the whole business — that we seem to have let the chance slip through some baseness and cowardice of ours, we who didn't save you, and you who didn't save yourself, though it was possible and feasible if we had been of even a little use. CRITO: So watch out, Socrates, that these things are not shameful, on top of the harm, both for you and for us. Think it over — or rather, it is no longer time to be thinking it over, but to have finished thinking; and there is only one plan. Everything has to be done this coming night. If we wait any longer, it becomes impossible — it can't be done anymore. So by every means, Socrates, listen to me, and do not do anything else.
SOCRATES: My dear Crito, your eagerness would be worth a great deal if it had some rightness to it; but if not, then the greater it is, the harder it is to deal with. So we have to consider whether we should do this or not. Because I am the kind of man — not just now, but always — who obeys nothing in me except the argument that seems best to me when I reason it through. And the arguments I used to make in the past I cannot throw out now, just because this fortune has come upon me. They look pretty much the same to me, and I respect and honor the very same ones as before. If we have nothing better to say in the present situation, be assured that I will not give in to you — not even if the power of the many scares us like children with even more bogeymen than the ones here now, sending chains and deaths and confiscations of money against us. So how could we examine this most reasonably? Suppose we first take up this argument of yours about opinions. Was it well said, each time we said it, or not — that one should pay attention to some opinions and not to others? Or was it well said before I had to die, while now it has turned out to be obvious that it was said idly, for the sake of talking, and was really just play and nonsense? For my part, Crito, I want to look into it together with you: whether it will seem any different to me now that I am in this position, or the same; and whether we will let it go or obey it. It used to be said, I think, each time, by those who thought they were saying something — just as I was saying a moment ago — that of the opinions people hold, one ought to value some highly and others not. In the name of the gods, Crito, doesn't that seem to you well said?
SOCRATES: — for you, as far as human affairs go, are in no danger of dying tomorrow, and the present disaster shouldn't be throwing off your judgment. So consider: doesn't it seem adequately said to you that one should not honor all the opinions of men, but some and not others, and not the opinions of everyone, but of some and not of others? What do you say? Isn't that well said?
CRITO: It is.
SOCRATES: So we should honor the good opinions and not the bad ones?
CRITO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the good ones are those of the wise, and the bad ones those of the foolish?
CRITO: How could it be otherwise?
SOCRATES: Come then, how did we put this sort of thing? A man in training, who takes it seriously — does he attend to the praise, the criticism, the judgment of just anyone, or only to that one man who happens to be a doctor or a trainer?
CRITO: Of that one only.
SOCRATES: Then he should fear the blame and welcome the praise of that one man, and not those of the many.
CRITO: Clearly.
SOCRATES: So he should act, exercise, eat, and drink exactly as the one — the man in charge, the one who understands — rather than in the way that seems right to all the rest together.
CRITO: That's so.
SOCRATES: Very well. But if he disobeys the one, and slights his opinion and his praises, and honors instead the words of the many who understand nothing, won't he suffer some harm?
CRITO: Of course he will.
SOCRATES: And what is this harm, and where does it lead — into what part of the man who disobeys?
CRITO: Into his body, obviously; that's what it ruins.
SOCRATES: Well said. And isn't it the same with everything else, Crito — so that we don't have to go through every case — and in particular with just and unjust things, shameful and fine, good and bad, the things our deliberation is now about? Should we follow the opinion of the many and fear it, or the opinion of the one, if there is anyone who understands — the one before whom we ought to feel shame and fear more than before all the others put together? And if we do not follow him, we will ruin and maim that thing which becomes better by justice and is destroyed by injustice. Or is that nothing?
CRITO: I think it is something, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Come then. If we destroy the thing that is made better by what is healthy and ruined by what is diseased, because we obey the opinion of those who do not understand, is life worth living for us once it has been ruined? And that thing is, of course, the body — isn't it?
CRITO: Yes.
SOCRATES: So is life worth living for us with a wretched, ruined body?
CRITO: Not at all.
SOCRATES: But then is life worth living for us when that thing has been ruined which injustice maims and justice benefits? Or do we think that thing — whichever part of us it is that injustice and justice concern — is of less account than the body? CRITO: Not at all.
SOCRATES: But more valuable?
CRITO: Much more.
SOCRATES: Then, my good friend, we shouldn't care so much about what the many will say about us, but about what the one who understands justice and injustice will say — that one man, and the truth itself. So in the first place you are wrong to propose that we should care about the opinion of the many concerning what is just and noble and good, and their opposites. "But still," someone might say, "the many are able to put us to death."
CRITO: That's obvious too — someone would say it, Socrates. You're right.
SOCRATES: And yet, my remarkable friend, the argument we've just gone through still seems to me the same as it was before. And consider this one too, whether it still holds for us or not: that it is not living that should be valued most, but living well.
CRITO: It holds.
SOCRATES: And that living well and living nobly and living justly are the same thing — does that hold, or does it not?
CRITO: It holds.
SOCRATES: Then from what we have agreed, this is what we must examine: whether it is just for me to try to get out of here without the Athenians' release, or not just. If it appears just, let us try; if not, let us drop it. As for the considerations you raise about spending money, and reputation, and raising children — the truth is, Crito, these are the reflections of those people who lightly put men to death and would bring them back to life again, if they could, with no sense at all: the many. But for us, since the argument compels it this way, there may be nothing else to examine but the question we were just raising: whether we will be acting justly — paying money and owing favors to the men who will get me out of here, ourselves both leading the escape and being led out — or whether in truth we will be doing wrong in doing all this. And if it becomes clear that we would be committing injustice, then perhaps we need not weigh at all whether we must die by staying here and keeping quiet, or suffer anything else whatsoever, rather than do wrong.
CRITO: I think you put that well, Socrates. But see what we should do.
SOCRATES: Let us examine it together, my good man, and if you can contradict anything I say, contradict it, and I will listen to you. But if not, then stop, my dear friend, telling me the same thing over and over — that I ought to leave here against the will of the Athenians. I set great store on acting in this with your consent, not against your will. Now look at the starting point of our inquiry, whether it is stated to your satisfaction, and try to answer what is asked as you truly believe.
CRITO: I'll try.
SOCRATES: Do we say that one must never willingly do wrong, or that one may do wrong in some circumstances but not in others? Or is doing wrong never good or noble in any way, as we have often agreed in the past? Or have all those former agreements of ours been poured out in these last few days, and have we, Crito — old men of our age, conversing seriously with one another all this time — failed to notice that we are no different from children? Or does it stand exactly as we said then: whether the many say so or not, and whether we must suffer things still harder than these or things milder, all the same, doing wrong is in every way both bad and shameful for the one who does it? Do we say so or not?
CRITO: We do.
SOCRATES: Then one must never do wrong.
CRITO: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Nor, then, when wronged should one do wrong in return, as the many think — since one must never do wrong at all.
CRITO: Apparently not.
SOCRATES: And what about this? Should one do harm, Crito, or not?
CRITO: Surely not, Socrates.
SOCRATES: What then? Is it just to do harm in return when one is harmed, as the many say, or not just?
CRITO: Not at all.
SOCRATES: For doing harm to people, I suppose, is no different from doing wrong.
CRITO: True.
SOCRATES: Then one must neither do wrong in return nor do harm to any human being, no matter what one suffers at their hands. And take care, Crito, in agreeing to this, that you don't agree contrary to your real opinion. For I know that only a few people believe this, or ever will. And between those who hold this view and those who don't, there is no common ground for deliberation; each side necessarily despises the other when they see each other's counsels. So consider very carefully whether you share this view and agree with me, and whether we may begin our deliberation from this point — that it is never right either to do wrong, or to do wrong in return, or, when one is treated badly, to defend oneself by doing bad in return — or whether you dissent and do not share the starting point. For I have long believed this and believe it still; but if you have come to think otherwise in any way, speak up and instruct me. If, however, you stand by what we said before, then hear what comes next.
CRITO: I do stand by it, and I agree with you. Go on.
SOCRATES: Then I'll state the next point — or rather, ask it: should a man do what he has agreed with someone to do, provided it is just, or should he cheat?
CRITO: He should do it. SOCRATES: Then look at it from this angle. If we leave this place without persuading the city, are we treating some people badly — and the very people we should least of all treat that way — or not? And are we standing by the agreements we made, which were just, or not?
CRITO: I can't answer what you're asking, Socrates. I don't follow it.
SOCRATES: Then consider it this way. Suppose that as we were about to run away from here — or whatever we ought to call it — the laws and the community of the city came and stood over us and asked: "Tell me, Socrates, what do you have in mind to do? By this act you're attempting, do you intend anything other than to destroy us, the laws, and the whole city, so far as it lies in you? Or does it seem possible to you that a city can still exist and not be overturned when the verdicts reached in it have no force, but are made void and destroyed by private individuals?" What will we say, Crito, to that and other questions like it? For someone — especially an orator — could say a great deal on behalf of this law that is being destroyed, the one that requires the verdicts of the courts to stand. Or shall we tell them, "Yes — because the city wronged us and did not judge the case correctly"? Shall we say that, or what?
CRITO: That, by Zeus, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then what if the laws say: "Socrates, was that really the agreement between us and you — or was it to abide by whatever verdicts the city delivers?" And if we were surprised at their saying this, they might well say: "Socrates, don't be surprised at what we're saying — answer, since you're so used to proceeding by question and answer. Come then: what charge do you have against us and the city, that you're attempting to destroy us? To begin with, didn't we bring you into being — wasn't it through us that your father took your mother and fathered you? So tell us: do you have some complaint against those of us laws that govern marriage, that they're not good?" "I have no complaint," I would say. "Then against the laws concerning the rearing and education of the child once born, under which you yourself were educated? Or did those of us laws appointed over this not give good orders when they directed your father to educate you in music and gymnastics?" "Good orders," I would say. "Well then. Since you were born, reared, and educated, could you claim, in the first place, that you were not ours — our offspring and our slave, both you and your ancestors before you? And if that's how things stand, do you think that justice is on equal terms between you and us — that whatever we undertake to do to you, you have the right to do back to us?
SOCRATES: "With your father, then — or with a master, if you happened to have one — justice was not on equal terms for you, so that whatever you suffered you could do back: you couldn't answer back when spoken to harshly, or strike back when struck, or any number of things like that. But with your fatherland and the laws it will be permitted — so that if we undertake to destroy you, believing it just, you in turn will undertake, so far as you can, to destroy us, the laws, and your fatherland in return, and you'll claim that in doing so you're acting justly — you, the man who genuinely cares about virtue? Or are you so wise that it has escaped you that fatherland is more precious than mother and father and all your other ancestors put together — more venerable, more holy, held in greater honor both among the gods and among human beings with any sense — and that you must revere it, and yield to it, and soothe a fatherland when it is angry more than a father, and either persuade it or do whatever it commands, and suffer quietly whatever it orders you to suffer, whether to be beaten or to be bound; and if it leads you to war to be wounded or killed, you must do it, and that is what justice is — no giving way, no retreating, no leaving your post, but in war and in the law court and everywhere you must do what your city and fatherland command, or else persuade it where justice truly lies; and that to use force against a mother or a father is unholy, and against your fatherland far more so still?" What will we say to that, Crito? That the laws are speaking the truth, or not?
CRITO: I think they are.
SOCRATES: "Consider then, Socrates," the laws might perhaps say, "whether we are speaking the truth in this: that what you are now attempting to do to us is not just. For we brought you into being, reared you, educated you, gave you, as we gave every citizen, a share in everything fine we could — and even so, we proclaim, by having granted the liberty to any Athenian who wishes, that once he has passed his citizen's scrutiny and seen the affairs of the city and us, the laws, if we do not please him, he may take what is his and go wherever he likes. Not one of us laws stands in the way or forbids it: if any of you wants to go off to a colony because we and the city do not please him, or to move and live as a foreigner somewhere else, he may go wherever he likes, taking his property with him. But whoever of you stays, seeing the way we judge our cases and manage the city in everything else — that man, we say, has by his action already agreed with us to do whatever we command; and if he does not obey, we say he does wrong in three ways: because he disobeys us who are his parents; because he disobeys those who reared him; and because, having agreed to obey us, he neither obeys nor persuades us if we are doing something badly — even though we set the choice before him and do not harshly order him to do whatever we command, but allow one of two things, either to persuade us or to do it — he does neither. SOCRATES: "So we say that you too, Socrates, will be liable to these charges if you do what you have in mind — and you not least of the Athenians, but among the most of all." And if I should say, "Why so?" perhaps they would fairly take hold of me and say that I, as much as any Athenian, happen to have made this agreement with them. For they would say: "Socrates, we have strong evidence that we and the city pleased you. You would never have stayed at home in it more than every other Athenian if it had not pleased you more than it pleased them. You never left the city for a festival — except once, to the Isthmus — nor went anywhere else, except somewhere on military service; you never made any other journey abroad, as other people do; no desire ever seized you to know another city or other laws. We were enough for you, we and our city. So decidedly did you choose us and agree to live as a citizen under us that, among other things, you fathered children in the city — because it pleased you. Furthermore, at your very trial you could have proposed exile as your penalty, if you had wanted, and done then, with the city's consent, what you are now attempting against its will. But at that time you put on a fine show of not resenting it if you had to die; you chose death before exile — so you said. And now you feel no shame before those words, you show no regard for us, the laws, since you are trying to destroy us; and you are doing what the meanest slave would do, attempting to run away contrary to the contracts and agreements under which you covenanted with us to live as a citizen. First, then, answer us this very point: are we telling the truth when we assert that you agreed — by deed, not by word — to live as a citizen under us, or is it untrue?" What are we to say to that, Crito? Anything but agree?
CRITO: We must agree, Socrates.
SOCRATES: "Then what are you doing," they would say, "but breaking the contracts and agreements you made with us — agreements you made under no compulsion, not deceived, not forced to decide in a short time, but over seventy years, in which you were free to leave if we did not please you and the agreements did not seem just to you?"
SOCRATES: "But you preferred neither Sparta nor Crete — the places you keep saying are well governed — nor any other city, Greek or barbarian; you traveled out of Athens less than the lame and the blind and the other cripples. So decidedly, beyond the other Athenians, did the city please you, and we the laws too — obviously; for whom would a city please without its laws? And now will you not stand by what you agreed? You will, if you take our advice, Socrates; and you will not make yourself ridiculous by leaving the city. For consider: if you break these agreements and go wrong in any of this, what good will you do yourself or your friends? That your friends will themselves risk exile too, and being barred from their city or losing their property, is fairly clear. As for you: first, if you go to one of the nearest cities, Thebes or Megara — both are well governed — you will arrive as an enemy of their constitution, Socrates, and all who care for their own cities will look at you askance, regarding you as a destroyer of the laws; and you will confirm the jurors in their opinion, so that they will seem to have judged the case correctly. For whoever is a destroyer of laws would very likely be thought a destroyer of the young and the foolish. Will you then avoid the well-governed cities and the most orderly men? And if you do that, will your life be worth living? Or will you approach these men and have the effrontery to converse with them — saying what, Socrates? The same things you said here, that virtue and justice are worth most to human beings, and lawful conduct and the laws? Don't you think the whole business of Socrates will look disgraceful? You must think so. Or will you clear out of these regions and go to Thessaly, to Crito's friends? There, of course, there is the greatest disorder and license, and perhaps they would enjoy hearing from you how comically you ran away from the prison, dressed up in some outfit — wearing a leather jerkin or the other things runaways usually rig themselves out in — and altering your own appearance. But that an old man, with probably only a little time left to live, dared to cling so greedily to life by breaking the greatest laws — will no one say that? Perhaps, if you annoy no one; otherwise, Socrates, you will hear many things unworthy of you. So you will live fawning on everyone and playing the slave — doing what, except feasting in Thessaly, as if you had traveled abroad to Thessaly for a dinner?
SOCRATES: "And those arguments of yours about justice and the rest of virtue — where will they be then? But is it for your children's sake that you want to live, to rear and educate them? What — will you take them to Thessaly and rear and educate them there, making foreigners of them, so that they can enjoy that too? Or if not that, will they be better reared and educated brought up here while you are alive, though you are not with them? Your friends, you say, will look after them. Will they look after them if you travel to Thessaly, and not look after them if you travel to Hades? If those who claim to be your friends are worth anything, you must believe they will. No, Socrates: obey us, who reared you, and do not put children or life or anything else above justice, so that when you come to Hades you may have all this to say in your defense to the rulers there. For it is plain that doing these things is not better or more just or more holy for you here, or for any of yours, nor will it be better for you when you arrive there. As it is, if you depart, you depart wronged — not by us, the laws, but by men. But if you go out so shamefully, returning wrong for wrong and harm for harm, breaking your own agreements and contracts with us and doing harm to those you should least of all harm — yourself, your friends, your country, and us — then we will be angry with you for as long as you live, and in that other world our brothers, the laws in Hades, will not receive you kindly, knowing that you tried to destroy us, so far as it lay in you. Do not let Crito persuade you to do what he says rather than what we say."
These things, my dear friend Crito, you can be sure I seem to hear, as the Corybants seem to hear the pipes, and this echo of these words hums within me and makes me unable to hear anything else. Know, then, that as things now seem to me, if you speak against them, you will speak in vain. Still, if you think you can accomplish anything, speak.
CRITO: No, Socrates, I have nothing to say.
SOCRATES: Then let it be, Crito, and let us act this way, since this is the way the god leads.