Complete Works (13 page)
Perhaps someone might say: But Socrates, if you leave us will you not be able to live quietly, without talking? Now this is the most difficult point on which to convince some of you. If I say that it is impossible for me to
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keep quiet because that means disobeying the god, you will not believe me and will think I am being ironical. On the other hand, if I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men, you will believe me even less.
What I say is true, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you. At the [b] same time, I am not accustomed to think that I deserve any penalty. If I had money, I would assess the penalty at the amount I could pay, for that would not hurt me, but I have none, unless you are willing to set the penalty at the amount I can pay, and perhaps I could pay you one mina of silver.
8
So that is my assessment.
Plato here, men of Athens, and Crito and Critobulus and Apollodorus bid me put the penalty at thirty minas, and they will stand surety for the money. Well then, that is my assessment, and they will be sufficient guarantee of payment.
[The jury now votes again and sentences Socrates to death.]
[c] It is for the sake of a short time, men of Athens, that you will acquire the reputation and the guilt, in the eyes of those who want to denigrate the city, of having killed Socrates, a wise man, for they who want to revile you will say that I am wise even if I am not. If you had waited but a little while, this would have happened of its own accord. You see my age, that [d] I am already advanced in years and close to death. I am saying this not to all of you but to those who condemned me to death, and to these same ones I say: Perhaps you think that I was convicted for lack of such words as might have convinced you, if I thought I should say or do all I could to avoid my sentence. Far from it. I was convicted because I lacked not words but boldness and shamelessness and the willingness to say to you what you would most gladly have heard from me, lamentations and tears [e] and my saying and doing many things that I say are unworthy of me but that you are accustomed to hear from others. I did not think then that the danger I ran should make me do anything mean, nor do I now regret the nature of my defense. I would much rather die after this kind of defense than live after making the other kind. Neither I nor any other man should,
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on trial or in war, contrive to avoid death at any cost. Indeed it is often obvious in battle that one could escape death by throwing away one’s weapons and by turning to supplicate one’s pursuers, and there are many ways to avoid death in every kind of danger if one will venture to do or [b] say anything to avoid it. It is not difficult to avoid death, gentlemen; it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death. Slow and elderly as I am, I have been caught by the slower pursuer, whereas my accusers, being clever and sharp, have been caught by the quicker, wickedness. I leave you now, condemned to death by you, but they are condemned by truth to wickedness and injustice. So I maintain my assessment, and they maintain theirs. This perhaps had to happen, and I think it is as it should be.
[c] Now I want to prophesy to those who convicted me, for I am at the point when men prophesy most, when they are about to die. I say gentlemen, to those who voted to kill me, that vengeance will come upon you immediately after my death, a vengeance much harder to bear than that which you took in killing me. You did this in the belief that you would avoid giving an account of your life, but I maintain that quite the opposite will [d] happen to you. There will be more people to test you, whom I now held back, but you did not notice it. They will be more difficult to deal with as they will be younger and you will resent them more. You are wrong if you believe that by killing people you will prevent anyone from reproaching you for not living in the right way. To escape such tests is neither possible nor good, but it is best and easiest not to discredit others but to prepare oneself to be as good as possible. With this prophecy to you who convicted me, I part from you.
I should be glad to discuss what has happened with those who voted [e] for my acquittal during the time that the officers of the court are busy and I do not yet have to depart to my death. So, gentlemen, stay with me awhile, for nothing prevents us from talking to each other while it is allowed. To you, as being my friends, I want to show the meaning of what
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has occurred. A surprising thing has happened to me, jurymen—you I would rightly call jurymen. At all previous times my familiar prophetic power, my spiritual manifestation, frequently opposed me, even in small matters, when I was about to do something wrong, but now that, as you can see for yourselves, I was faced with what one might think, and what is generally thought to be, the worst of evils, my divine sign has not opposed me, either when I left home at dawn, or when I came into court, [b] or at any time that I was about to say something during my speech. Yet in other talks it often held me back in the middle of my speaking, but now it has opposed no word or deed of mine. What do I think is the reason for this? I will tell you. What has happened to me may well be a good thing, and those of us who believe death to be an evil are certainly mistaken. I have convincing proof of this, for it is impossible that my [c] familiar sign did not oppose me if I was not about to do what was right.
Let us reflect in this way, too, that there is good hope that death is a blessing, for it is one of two things: either the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything, or it is, as we are told, a change and a relocating for the soul from here to another place. If it is complete lack of perception, [d] like a dreamless sleep, then death would be a great advantage. For I think that if one had to pick out that night during which a man slept soundly and did not dream, put beside it the other nights and days of his life, and then see how many days and nights had been better and more pleasant than that night, not only a private person but the great king would find them easy to count compared with the other days and nights. If death is [e] like this I say it is an advantage, for all eternity would then seem to be no more than a single night. If, on the other hand, death is a change from here to another place, and what we are told is true and all who have died are there, what greater blessing could there be, gentlemen of the jury? If
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anyone arriving in Hades will have escaped from those who call themselves jurymen here, and will find those true jurymen who are said to sit in judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus and the other demi-gods who have been upright in their own life, would that be a poor kind of change? Again, what would one of you give to keep company with Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer? I am willing to die many times if that is true. It would be a wonderful way for me to spend my time whenever I met Palamedes and Ajax, the son of Telamon, [b] and any other of the men of old who died through an unjust conviction, to compare my experience with theirs. I think it would be pleasant. Most important, I could spend my time testing and examining people there, as I do here, as to who among them is wise, and who thinks he is, but is not.
What would one not give, gentlemen of the jury, for the opportunity to [c] examine the man who led the great expedition against Troy, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, and innumerable other men and women one could mention? It would be an extraordinary happiness to talk with them, to keep company with them and examine them. In any case, they would certainly not put one to death for doing so. They are happier there than we are here in other respects, and for the rest of time they are deathless, if indeed what we are told is true.
You too must be of good hope as regards death, gentlemen of the jury, [d] and keep this one truth in mind, that a good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and that his affairs are not neglected by the gods. What has happened to me now has not happened of itself, but it is clear to me that it was better for me to die now and to escape from trouble. That is why my divine sign did not oppose me at any point. So I am certainly not angry with those who convicted me, or with my accusers. Of course that was not their purpose when they accused and convicted me, but they [e] thought they were hurting me, and for this they deserve blame. This much I ask from them: when my sons grow up, avenge yourselves by causing them the same kind of grief that I caused you, if you think they care for money or anything else more than they care for virtue, or if they think they are somebody when they are nobody. Reproach them as I reproach you, that they do not care for the right things and think they are worthy
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when they are not worthy of anything. If you do this, I shall have been justly treated by you, and my sons also.
Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god.
1
. This is Aristophanes. Socrates refers below (19c) to the character Socrates in his
Clouds
(225 ff.), first produced in 423
B.C.
2
. These were all well-known Sophists. For Gorgias and Hippias see Plato’s dialogues named after them; both Hippias and Prodicus appear in
Protagoras
.
3
. See
Iliad
xviii.94 ff.
4
. Alternatively, this sentence could be translated: “Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence brings about wealth and all other public and private blessings for men.”
5
. This was the battle of Arginusae (south of Lesbos) in 406
B.C.
, the last Athenian victory of the Peloponnesian war. A violent storm prevented the Athenian generals from rescuing their survivors.
6
. This was the harsh oligarchy that was set up after the final defeat of Athens in 404
B.C.
and ruled Athens for some nine months in 404–3 before the democracy was restored.
7
. The Prytaneum was the magistrates’ hall or town hall of Athens in which public entertainments were given, particularly to Olympian victors on their return home.
8
. One mina was the equivalent of 100 drachmas. In the late fifth century one drachma was the standard daily wage of a laborer. A mina, then, was a considerable sum.
Translated by G.M.A. Grube.
As the beginning of the
Phaedo
relates, Socrates did not die until a month
after his trial, which followed by a day the sailing of the Athenian state galley
on an annual religious mission to the island of Delos; no executions were permitted
during its absence. Crito comes to tell Socrates of its anticipated arrival
later that day and to make one last effort to persuade him to allow his friends
to save him by bribing his jailers and bundling him off somewhere beyond the
reach of Athenian law. Crito indicates that most people expect his friends to do
this—unless (dishonorably) they value their money more than their friend. Socrates,
however, refuses. Even if people do expect it, to do that would be grossly
unjust.
Both Crito’s arguments in favor of his plan and Socrates’ in rejecting it are
rather jumbled—as perhaps befits the pressure and excitement of the moment.
Crito cites the damage to his and Socrates’ other friends’ reputations and delicately
minimizes any financial loss he might suffer, in case Socrates might be
unwilling to accept any great sacrifice from a friend. Socrates witheringly dismisses
the first consideration and ignores the second. But Crito also claims
that it would actually be unjust of Socrates to stay. That would allow his enemies
to triumph over him and his friends, including his young sons, whom he
will abandon by going docilely to his death: a person ought not to take lying
down an attack on the things he holds most dear, including philosophy itself
and the philosophical life to which he and (presumably) his friends are devoted.
Here we hear strains of the time-honored Greek idea that justice is helping
one’s friends and harming one’s enemies, cited by Polemarchus in
Republic
I.
(But Crito does not propose harming their enemies—only preventing them
from having their way.) As to his children, Socrates responds that they will be
as well or better cared for after his death than if he resisted it and went into exile.
But ironically, considering his own subsequent arguments for accepting his
death, he seems not to hear the larger claim of injustice that Crito lodges.
Crito’s jumbled presentation of his case facilitates this.
Unmoved by the claims of justice grounded in his private relationships to
friends and family, Socrates appeals to the standards of civic justice imbedded
in his relations as a citizen to the Athenian people and to the Athenian system
of law. He claims that a citizen is necessarily, given the benefits he has enjoyed
under the laws of the city, their slave, justly required to do whatever they ask,
and more forbidden to attack them than to violate his own parents. That would
be retaliation—rendering a wrong for the wrong received in his unjust condemnation—and retaliation is never just. But what if he chose to depart not in an
unjust spirit of retaliation, but only in order to evade the ill consequences of
the unjust condemnation for himself and his friends and family? As if recognizing
that loophole, Socrates also develops a celebrated early version of the social
contract—a ‘contract’ between the laws or the city and each citizen, not among
the citizens themselves—with the argument that now, after he is condemned by
an Athenian court and has exhausted all legal appeals, he must, in justice to
his implicit promise, abide by the laws’ final judgment and accept his death sentence.