of the oracle I show him that he is not wise ; and this occupa-
tion quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to
any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own,
but I am in utter poverty 18 by reason of my devotion to the
god.
There is another thing : — young men of the richer classes,
who have not much to do, come about me of their own accord ;
they like to hear the pretenders examined, and they often imi-
tate me, and examine others themselves ; 19 there are plenty of
persons, as they soon enough discover, who think that they
know something, but really know little or nothing : and then
those who are examined by them instead of being angry with
themselves are angry with me : This confounded Socrates, they
say ; this villainous misleader of youth ! — and then if some-
body asks them, Why, what evil does he practise or teach ?
they do not know, and cannot tell ; but in order that they
may not appear to be at a loss, they repeat the ready-made
charges which are used against all philosophers about teaching
things up in the clouds and under the earth, and having no
gods, and making the worse appear the better cause ; for they
do not like to confess that their pretense of knowledge has
been detected — which is the truth : and as they are numerous
and ambitious and energetic, and are all in battle array and
have persuasive tongues, they have filled your ears with their
18 Socrates was notoriously neglectful of his own private interests.
19 Compare Republic VII., 539: " They must not be allowed to taste," etc.
APOLOGY 13
loud and inveterate calumnies. And this is the reason why
my three accusers, Meletus and Anytus and Lycon, 20 have set
upon me : Meletus, who has a quarrel with me on behalf of
the poets ; Anytus, on behalf of the craftsmen ; Lycon, on
behalf of the rhetoricians : and as I said at the beginning, I
cannot expect to get rid of this mass of calumny all in a
moment. And this, O men of Athens, is the truth and ^7"
the whole truth ; I have concealed nothing, I have dis-
sembled nothing. And yet, I know that this plainness of
speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a
proof that I am speaking the truth ? — this is the occasion and
reason of their slander of me, as you will find out either in
this or in any future inquiry.
I have said enough in my defense against the first class of
my accusers ; I turn to the second class who are headed by
Meletus, that good and patriotic man, as he calls himself.
And now I will try to defend myself against them : these new
accusers must also have their affidavit read. What do they
say ? Something of this sort : That Socrates is a doer of evil,
and corrupter of the youth, and he does not believe in the
gods of the State, and has other new divinities of his own.
That is the sort of charge ; and now let us examine the
particular counts. He says that I am a doer of evil, who
corrupt the youth ; but I say, O men of Athens, that Meletus
is a doer of evil, and the evil is that he makes a joke of a
serious matter, and is too ready at bringing other men to trial
from a pretended zeal and interest about matters in which he
really never had the smallest interest. And the truth of this
I will endeavor to prove.
[By questioning Meletus, Socrates brings out the fact that
Meletus himself is careless about the improvement of the
youth. In answer to the charge that he corrupts the youth,
Socrates shows how inconceivable it is that a man should
intentionally injure citizens among whom he has to live and
from whom he must expect evil in return as Meletus admits.
The declaration of Meletus that Socrates is an atheist is
shown to contradict the charge that he is introducing new
gods.]
*» Lycon (lylcon) : a rhetorician and orator, said to have been banished
for his part in the prosecution of Socrates.
14 PLATO THE TEACHER
I have said enough in answer to the charge of Meletus : any-
elaborate defense is unnecessary ; but as I was saying before,
R I certainly have many enemies, and this is what will be my
2 destruction if I am destroyed ; of that I am certain ; not
Meletus, nor yet Anytus, but the envy and detraction of the
world, which has been the death of many good men, and will
probably be the death of many more ; there is no danger of
my being the last of them.
"Some one will say : And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of
a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely
end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken :
a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the
chance of living or dying ; he ought only to consider whether
in doing anything he is doing r ight^orwrong — acting the part
of a good man or of a bad'.' Whereas, according to your view,
the heroes who fell at Troy 21 were not good for much, and the
son of Thetis above all, who altogether despised danger in
comparison with disgrace ; and when his goddess mother said
to him, in his eagerness to slay Hector, that if he avenged his
companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he would die himself,
— " Fate," as she said, " waits upon you next after Hector; "
he, hearing this, utterly despised danger and death, and in-
stead of fearing them, feared rather to live in dishonor, and not
to avenge his friend. " Let me die next," he replies, "and
be avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by the beaked
ships, a scorn and a burden of the earth." Had Achilles
any thought of death and danger? For wherever a man's
place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in
which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to
remain in the hour of danger j he should not think of death
or of anything, but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens,
is a true saying.
Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens,
if I who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose
21 According to legend, Helen, the beautiful wife of KingMenelaus (men'~
e-la'us) of Sparta, was carried off to Troy during her husband's absence, by
Paris, son of King Priam of Troy. Under the leadership of Agamemnon
(ag'a-mem'n5n) brother of Menelaus, the Greeks went to Troy and besieged
the city for ten years before it was finally taken and Helen recovered. This
war is the subject of Homer's Iliad. Achilles (a-kfl'lez), son of the sea-
nymph Thetis (the'tis), was the bravest of the Greek heroes. His friend
Patroclus (pat-ro'klus) fell by the spear of the Trojan warrior Hector. To
avenge this death, Achilles engaged in combat with Hector and slew him.
APOLOGY 1 5
to command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, 22
remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing
death, — if, I say, now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God
orders me to fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into
myself and other men, I were to desert my post through
fear of death, or any other fear ; that would indeed be
strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying
the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I
was afraid of death : then I should be fancying that I was
wise when I was not wise. For this fear of deat his indeed
the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the
appearance of knowing the unknown ; since no one knows
whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the
greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here
conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance ?
And this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to
men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself
wiser than other men, — that whereas I know but little of the
world below, 23 I do not suppose that I know i^'but I do knows^k^^y^ *
that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or P
man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a
possible good rather than a certain evil." And therefore if you
22 In the hostilities preceding and during the Peloponnesian War (see note
14), Socrates served as foot soldier in battles at Potidaea (pot'i-de'a) in Mace-
donia in 432 B.C.; at Delium (de'li-um) in Boeotia (be-o'shl-a) in 424 B.C.; at
Amphipolis (am-ffp'o-lis) in Macedonia, in 422 B. c.
23 The Greeks believed that the world of the dead was in the depths of the
earth. In the most ancient usage, Hades meant simply the world of the
dead, inhabited by incorporeal images having the form of the earthly body
and following the occupations of the earthly life, but, except by special favor
of the gods, without consciousness. Later, Hades was made to include a
place for the blessed (Elysium, or the Islands of the Blest), and a place for
the damned, Tartarus (tar'ta-rus), the inhabitants of both being of course con-
scious of their states. The Hebrew word Sheol (she'ol) made familiar by
its use in the revised version of the English Bible, passed through a some-
what similar change of meaning and in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek
translation of the Old Testament, is usually translated by the Greek word
Hades. When the authorized version of the English Bible was made in
1611, the word hell still sometimes retained the meaning, the place of the
dead, although it had also the meaning, the place of the damned. The word
hell was therefore, as a rule, properly used to translate Sheol and Hades.
Now that our word hell has lost its general meaning, the place of the dead,
it is no longer equivalent to Sheol and Hades ; and since we have now no
English word for the place of the dead, the revised version of the English
Bible simply transfers Sheol (nearly always) and Hades (always) into Eng-
lish spelling. This explanation of a word much used by Plato is made
necessary because of the popular misconception that Hades is a mild term
for the place of eternal torment.
l6 PLATO THE TEACHER
let me go now, and reject the counsels of Anytus, who said
that if I were not put to death I ought not to have been prose-
cuted, and that if I escape now, your sons will all be utterly
ruined by listening to my words, — if you say to me, Socrates,
this time we will not mind Anytus, and will let you off, but
upon one condition, that you are not to inquire and speculate
in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing this
again you shall die, — if this was the condition on which you
let me go, I should reply : Men of Athens, I honor and love
you ; but I shall obey God rather than you, 24 and while I have
life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and
teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet after
my manner, and convincing him, saying : O my friend, why
do you, who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise
- /city of Athens, care so much about laving up. the greatest
^* itf '*****' Amount , of money a nd honor and reputation, and so little
V ,/about wisdom and truth and the greatest im provement of the
^ l ^^^^ a ^\souL 23 which you never regard or heed at all ? Are you not
ashamed of this ? And if the person with whom I am argu-
ing, says, Yes, but I do care : I do not depart or let him go at
once ; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and
if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I
reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing
the less. And this I should say to every one whom I
meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially
to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For this
is the command to God, as I would have you know ; and I
believe that to this day no greater good has ever happened in
the State than my service to the God. For I do nothing but
, go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take
thought for your persons or your properties, but first and
chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I
tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virt-
ue come money and every other good of man, public as well
as private. 36 This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine
which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed.
But if any one says that this is not my teaching, he is speak-
M "We ought to obey God rather than men.''— Acts v. 29.
38 " For a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which
he possesseth." — Luke xii. 15.
a« " But rather seek ye the kingdom of God ; and all these tilings shall be
added unto you." — Luke xii. 31.
APOLOGY , 17
ing an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you,
do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me
or not ; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter
my ways, not even if I have to die many times.
Men of Athens, do not interrupt, but hear me ; there was
an agreement between us that you should hear me out. And
I think that what I am going to say will do you good : for I
have something more to say, at which you may be inclined to
cry out ; but I beg that you will not do this. I would have
you know, that if you kill such a one as I am, you will
injure yourselves more than you will injure me. Meletus and
Anytus will not injure me : they cannot ; for it is not in the
nature of things that a bad man should injure a better than
himself. I do not deny that he may, perhaps, kill him, or
drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights ; and he
may imagine, and others may imagine, that he is doing him a
great injury : but in that I do not agree with him ; for the evil
of doing as Anytus is doing — of unjustly taking away another
man's life — is greater far. And now, Athenians, I am not
going to argue for my own sake, as you may think, but for
yours, that you may not sin against the God, or lightly reject
his boon by condemning me. For if you kill me you will not
easily find another like me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous
figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the State by the
God ; and the State is like a great and noble steed who is tardy
in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred
into life. I am that gadfly which God has given the State, and
all day long and in all places am always fastening upon
you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. And
as you will not easily find another like me, I would advise you
to spare me. I dare say that you may feel irritated at being
suddenly awakened when you are caught napping ; and you may
think that if you were to strike me dead as Anytus advises,
which you easily might, then you would sleep on for the
remainder of your lives, unless God in his care of you gives you
another gadfly. And that I am given to you by God is proved
by this : that if I had been like other men, I should not have
neglected all my own concerns, or patiently seen the neglect of
them during all these years, and have been doing yours, coming
to you individually, like a father or elder brother, exhorting
you to regard virtue ; this, I say, would not be like human
18 PLATO THE TEACHER
nature. And had I gained anything, or if my exhortations
had been paid, there would have been some sense in that : but
now, as you will perceive, not even the impudence of my accus-
ers dares to say that I have ever exacted or sought pay of any
one ; they have no witness of that. And I have a witness of
the truth of what I say ; my poverty is a sufficient witness.
Some one may wonder why I go about in private, giving
advice and busying myself with the concerns of others, but do
not venture to come forward in public and advise the State. I
will tell you the reason of this. You have often heard me
speak of an oracle or sign 27 which comes to me, and is the divin-
ity which Meletus ridicules in the indictment. This sign I have
had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes
to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going
to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what
stands in the way of my being a politician. And rightly, as I
think. For I am certain, O men of Athens, that if I had en-
gaged in politics, I should have perished long ago, and done no
good either to you or to myself. And don't be offended at my
telling you the truth : for the truth is, that no man who goes to
war with you or any other multitude, honestly struggling against
the commission of unrighteousness and wrong in the State, will
save his life ; he who will really fight for the right, if he
would live even for a little while, must have a private sta-
tion and not a public one. 28
I can give you as proofs of this, not words only, but deeds,
which you value more than words. Let me tell you a passage
of my own life, which will prove to you that I should never
have yielded to injustice from any fear of death, and that if I
had not yielded I should have died at once. I will tell you a
story — tasteless, perhaps, and commonplace, but nevertheless
true. The only office of state which I ever held, O men of
Athens, was that of senator 29 ; the tribe Antiochis, which is my
27 Socrates frequently speaks of this sign or voice. He seems to have re-
garded it not as a personal divinity, but as a divine influence.
2 * Compare Rep. VI., 496.
28 At the time of Socrates, Attica, the Athenian State, was divided into ten
tribes. The senate consisted of five hundred members, chosen by lot, fifty
from each tribe. " Its sittings became constant, with the exception of special
holidays. The year was distributed into ten portions called Prytanies— the
fifty senators of each tribe taking by turns the duty of constant attendance
during one prytany, and receiving during that time the title of The Prytanes
(pryt'a-nez). ... A further subdivision of the prytany into five periods
of seven days each, and of the fifty tribe senators into five bodies of ten
APOLOGY 19
tribe, had the presidency at the trial of the generals who had not
taken up the bodies of the slain after the battle of Arginusae ; co
and you proposed to try them all together, which was illegal, as
you all thought afterwards j but at the time I was the only one
of the prytanes who was opposed to the illegality, and I gave
my vote against you ; and when the orators threatened to im-
peach and arrest me, and have me taken away, and you called
and shouted, I made up my mind that I would run the risk,
having law and justice with me, rather than take part in your
injustice because I feared imprisonment and death. This
happened in the days of the democracy. But when the oli-
garchy of the Thirty 31 was in power, they sent for me and four
others into the rotunda, 32 and bade us bring Leon the Salami n-
ian from Salamis, 33 as they wanted to execute him. This was
a specimen of the sort of commands which they were al-
ways giving with the view of implicating as many as possible
in their crimes ; and then I showed, not in word only but in
deed, that, if I may be allowed to use such an expression ~lS/^l^
cared not a straw for death, and that my only fear was the fear u
of doing an unrighteous or unholy thing." For the strong arm
of that oppressive power did not frighten me into doing wrong;
each, was recognized. Each body of ten presided in the senate for one period
of seven days, drawing lots every day among their number for a new chair-
man." — Grote's History of Greece, chap. xxxi.
Part of the business of the senate was to prepare resolutions to be laid be-
fore the general assembly of all the citizens, which, in cases like the one re-
ferred to by Socrates, had, with the senate, the power of final decision.
30 Arginusae (ar'ji-nu'se) : a naval battle of the Poloponnesian War, occur-
ring in 406 B.C. Although victorious, the Athenian generals left their dead
unburied and abandoned the living on the wrecked vessels. This neglect
and cruelty aroused great indignation at Athens. The generals were illegally
tried, condemned and executed.
" So intimidated were the Prytanes by the incensed manifestations of the
assembly that all of them, except one, relinquished their opposition and
agreed to put the question " [as to the guilt and condemnation of the generals
in a body]. The single obstinate Prytanis, whose refusal no menace could
subdue, was a man whose name we read with peculiar interest, and in whom
an impregnable adherence to law and duty was only one among many other
titles to reverence. It was the philosopher Socrates ; on this trying occasion,
once throughout a life of seventy years, discharging a political office, among
the fifty senators taken by lot from the tribe Antiochus. Socrates could not
be induced to withdraw his protest, so that the question was ultimately put
by the remaining Prytanes without his concurrence."— Grote's History of
Greece III., chap. lxiv.
31 See Apology, note 14.
32 The office of the Prytanes at the Prytaneum (pryt'a-ne'um) where they
also dined at public cost. See Apology, note 43.
33 Salamis (saTa-mis): an island of the ALgean, near Athens.
20 PLATO THE TEACHER
and when we came out of the rotunda the other four went to
Salamis and fetched Leon, but I went quietly home. For
which I might have lost my life, had not the power of the
Thirty shortly afterwards come to an end. And to this many
will witness.
Now do you really imagine that I could have survived all
these years, if I had led a public life, supposing that like a good
man I had always supported the right and had made justice, as
I ought, the first thing ? No indeed, men of Athens, neither I
nor any other. But I have been always the same in all
my actions, public as well as private, and never have I
yielded any base compliance to those who are slanderously
termed my disciples, 34 or to any other. For the truth is that I
have no regular disciples : but if any one likes to come and
hear me while I am pursuing my mission, whether he be young
or old, he may freely come. Nor do I converse with those who
pay only, and not with those who do not pay ; but any one,
whether he be rich or poor, may ask and answer me and listen
to my words ; and whether he turns out to be a bad man or a
good one, that cannot be justly laid to my charge, as I never
taught him anything. And if any one says that he has ever
learned or heard anything from me in private which all the
world has not heard, I should like you to know that he is
speaking an untruth.
But I shall be asked, Why do people delight in continually
conversing with you? I have told you already, Athenians, the
whole truth about this : they like to hear the cross-examination
of the pretenders to wisdom ; there is amusement in this. And
this is a duty which the God has imposed upon me, as I am
assured by oracles, visions, and in every sort of way in which
the will of divine power was ever signified to any one. This is
true, O Athenians ; or, if not true, would be soon refuted.
For if I am really corrupting the youth, and have corrupted
some of them already, those of them who have grown up and
have become sensible that I gave them bad advice in the days
of their youth should come forward as accusers and take their
revenge; and if they do not like to come themselves, some of
84 Probably an allusion to Critias, the most unscrupulous and most hated
of the Thirty Tyrants, and Alcibiades, a corrupt general and politician, both
of whom had in youth associated with Socrates, and for whose evil doing he
was sometimes held responsible. See Protagoras, note i ; Symposium, 212
and following.
APOLOGY 21
their relatives, fathers, brothers, or other kinsmen, should say
what evil their families suffered at my hands. Now is their
time. Many of them I see in the court. There is Crito, 35 who
is of the same age and of the same deme 36 with myself; and
there is Critobulus 37 his son, whom I also see. Then again
there is Lysanias of Sphettus, who is the father of yEschines, —
he is present ; and also there is Antiphon of Cephisus, who is
the father of Epigenes ; and there are the brothers of several
who have associated with me. There is Nicostratus the son of
Theosdotides, and the brother of Theodotus (now Theodotus
himself is dead, and therefore he, at any rate, will not seek to
stop him) ; and there is Paralus the son of Demodocus, who
had a brother Theages, and Adeimantus the son of Aris-
ton, whose brother Plato is present ; and ^Eantodorus, 34
who is the brother of Apollodorus, whom I also see. I might
mention a great many others, any of whom Meletus should have
produced as witnesses in the course of his speech ; and let him
still produce them, if he has forgotten j I will make way for
him. And let him say, if he has any testimony of the sort
which he can produce. Nay, Athenians, the very opposite is
the truth. For all these are ready to witness on behalf of the
corrupter, of the destroyer of their kindred, as Meletus and