The Apology of Socrates : Men of Athens, do not interrup - to- to be determined by you as is best for you and me.

Episode Transcript

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Part three of the Apology of Socratesby Plato in the translation of Benjamin Jowat.
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by Father Ziley of Detroit, Michigan, June two thousand and seven. Part
three of the Apology of Socrates byPlato, in the translation by Benjamin Jowat.
Men of Athens do not interrupt,but hear me. There was an

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agreement between us that you should hearme out. And I think that what
I am going to say will doyou good, Or I have something more
to say at which you may beinclined to cry out. I beg that
you will not do this. Iwould have you know that if you kill
such a one as I am,you will injure yourselves more than you will

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injure me. Beltus and annotas willnot injure me. They cannot, for
it is not in the nature ofthings that a bad man should injure a
better than himself. I do notdeny that he may perhaps kill him,
or drive him into exile, ordeprive him of civil rights and he may
imagine, and others may imagine,that he is doing him a great injury.

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But in that I do not agreewith him, for the evil of
doing as annotas is doing, ofunjustly 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 lightlyreject his boon by condemning me. For

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if you kill me, you willnot easily find another like me, who,
if I may use such a ludicrousfigure of speech, am a sort
of gadfly given to the state bythe God. And the State is like
a great and noble steed, whois tardy in his motions owing to his
very size, and requires to bestirred into life. I am that gadfly

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which God has given the State,And all day long and in all places,
am always fasting upon you, arousingand persuading and reproaching you. And
as you will not easily find anotherlike me, I would advise you to
spare me. I dare say thatyou may feel irritated at being suddenly awakened
when you are caught napping and youmay think that if you were to strike

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me dead, as Annatus advises,which you easily might, then you would
sleep on for the remainder of yourlives 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 ifI had been like other men, I
should not have neglected all my ownconcerns or patiently seen the neglect of them

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during all these years, and havebeen doing yours, coming to you individually
like a father or elder brother,exhorting you to regard virtue. This I
say, would not be like humannature. And had I gained anything,
or if my exhortations had been paid, there would have been some sense in
that. But now, as youwill perceive, not even the impudence of

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my accusers dares to say that Ihave ever exacted or sought any pay of
any one. They have no witnessesof 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 goabout in private giving advice and busying myself

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with the concerns of others, butdo not venture to come forward in public
and advise the state. I willtell you the reason of this. You
have often heard me speak of anoracle or sign which comes to me and
is the divinity which Melitus ridicules inthe indictment. This sign I have had
ever since I was a child.The sign is a voice which comes to

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me and always forbids me to dosomething 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 of men of Athens thatif I had engaged in politics, I
should have perished long ago and doneno good either to you or to myself.

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And don't be offended at my tellingyou the truth, for the truth
is that no man who goes towar with you or any other multitude,
honestly struggling against the commission of unrighteousnessand wrong in the state, will save
his life. He who will reallyfight for the right, if he would
live even for a little while,must have a private station, and not

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a public one. I can giveyou as proofs of this, not words
only, but deads, which youvalue 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 fromany fear of death, and that if
I had not yielded, I wouldhave died at once. I will tell
you a story tasteless, perhaps incommonplace, but nevertheless true. The only

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office of state which I ever helda man of Athens was that of senator.
The tribe Antiochus, which is mytribe, had the presidency at the
trial of the generals who had nottaken up the bodies of the slain after
the Battle of Arganevesaie. And youpropose to try them all together, which
was illegal, as you all thoughtafterwards. But at the time I was

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the only one of the Ritanes whowas opposed to the illegality, and I
gave my vote against you. Andwhen the orators threatened to impeach and arrest
me and have me take away,and you called and shouted, I made
up my mind that I would runthe risk having law and justice with me,
rather than take part in your injustice, because I feared imprisonment and death.

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This happened in the days of thedemocracy, but when the oligarchy of
the thirty was in power, theysent for me and four others into the
rutunda and bade us bring Leon Salaminianfrom Salamis, as they wanted to execute
him. This was a specimen ofthe sort of commands which they were always
giving, with the view of implicatingas many as possible in their crimes.

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And then I showed, not inwords only, but indeed, that if
I may be allowed to use suchan expression, I cared not a straw
for death, and that my onlyfear was the fear of doing an unrighteous
or unholy thing. For the strongarm of that oppressive power did not frighten
me into doing wrong. And whenwe came out of the rutunda, the

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other 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 couldhave survived all these years if I
had led a public life, supposingthat like a good man, I had

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always supported the right and had madejustice as I ought the first thing.
No, indeed, men of Athens, neither I nor any other, but
I have been always the same inall my actions, public as well as
private. And never have I yieldedany base compliance to those who are slanderously
termed my disciples, or to anyother. For the truth is that I

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have no regular disciples. But ifanyone likes to come and hear me while
I am pursuing my mission, whetherhe be young or old, he may
freely come. Nor do I conversewith those who pay only, and not
with those who do not pay.But any one, whether he be rich
or poor, may ask and answerme and listen to my words. And

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whether he turns out to be abad 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 hehas ever learned or heard anything from me
in private, which all the worldhas not heard, I should like you
to know that he is speaking anuntruth. But I shall be asked,

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why do people delight in continually conversingwith 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 isamusement in this, and this is a
duty which the God has imposed uponme, as I am assured by oracles,

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visions, and in every sort ofway in which the will of divine
power was ever signified to any one. This is true, O Athenians,
or if not true, would besoon refuted. For if I am really
corrupting the youth, and have corruptedsome of them already, those of them
who have grown up and have becomesensible that I gave them bad advice in

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the days of their youth, shouldcome forward as accusers and take their revenge.
And if they do not like tocome themselves, some of their relatives,
fathers, brothers, or other kinsmenshould say what evil their families suffered
at my hands? Now is theirtime. Many of them I see in
the court. There is Creto,who is of the same age and the
same deem with myself. And thereis Critobulus, his son, whom I

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also see. Then again there isLysanius a Spatus, who is the father
of Esquines. He is present.And also there is Antiphon of Cesiphus,
who is the father of Epignies.And there are the brothers of several who
have associated with me. There isNecostratus, the son of theos Stottideyes,

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and the brother of Theodotus. NowTheodotus himself is dead, and therefore he
at any rate will not seek tostop him. And there is Paralus,
the son of Nemodocus, who hada brother the Ages, and Adeimantus,
the son of Ariston, whose brotherPlato is present. And Eontodorus, who
is the brother of Apollodorus, whomI also see. I might mention a

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great many others, any of whomAlitus should have produced as witnesses in the
course of his speech. And lethim still produce them. If he has
forgotten, I will make way forhim. Let him say if he has
any testimony of the sort which hecan produce na Athenians, the very opposite
is the truth. For all theseare ready to witness on behalf of the

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corruptor, of the destroyer of theirkindred. As Melitus and Anatus call me,
not the corrupted youth. Only theremight have been a motive for that,
But their uncorrupted elder relatives. Whywould they too support me with their
testimony? Why indeed, except forthe sake of truth and justice, and
because they know that I am speakingthe truth, and that Melitus is lying

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well, Athenians. This and thelike of this is nearly all the defense
which I have to offer. Yeta word more. Perhaps there may be
some one who is offended at mewhen he calls to mind how he himself,
on a similar or even a lessserious occasion, had recourse to prayers
and supplications with many tears, andhow he produced his children in court,

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which was a moving spectacle, togetherwith a posse of his relations and friends.
Whereas I, who am probably indanger of my life, will do
none of these things. Perhaps thismay come into his mind, and he
may be set against me and votein anger, because he is displeased at
this. Now, if there besuch a person among you, which I

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am far from affirming, I mayfairly reply to him, my friend,
I am a man like other men, a creature of flesh and blood,
and not of water stone, asHomer says. And I have a family,
yes, and sons, o Athenians, three in number, one of
whom is growing up, and thetwo others are still young. And yet

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I will not bring any of themhither in order to petition you for an
acquittal. And why not not fromany self will or disregard of you.
Whether I am or am not afraidof death is another question of which I
will not now speak. But myreason simply is that I feel such conduct
to be discreditable to myself and youand the whole state. One who has

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reached my years, and who hasa name for wisdom, whether deserved or
not, ought not to debase himselfat any rate. The world has decided
that Socrates is in some way superiorto other men. And if those among
you, who are said to besuperior in wisdom and courage and in any
other virtue, demean themselves in thisway, how shameful is their conduct.

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I have seen men of reputation,when they have been condemned, behaving in
the strangest manner. They seemed tofancy that they were going to suffer something
dreadful if they died, and thatthey could be immortal if you only allowed
them to live. And I thinkthat they were a dishonor to the state,
and that any stranger coming in wouldsay of them that the most eminent

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men of Athens, to whom theAthenians themselves give honor and command, are
no better than women. And Isay that these things ought not to be
done by those of us who areof reputation, And if they are done,
you ought not to permit them.You ought rather to show that you
are more inclined to condemn not theman who is quiet, but the man

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who gets up a doleful scene andmakes the city ridiculous. But setting aside
the question of dishonor, there seemsto be something wrong in petitioning a judge
and thus procuring an acquittal instead ofinforming and convincing him. For his duty
is not to make a present ofjustice, but to give judgment. And

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he has sworn that he will judgeaccording to the laws and not according to
his own good pleasure. And neitherhe nor we should get into the habit
of perjuring ourselves. There can beno piety in that. Do not then
require me to do what I considerdishonorable and impious and wrong, especially now
when I am being tried for impietyon the indictment of Melitus. For if

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o men of Athens, by forceof persuasion and entreaty, I could overpower
your oaths, then I should beteaching you to believe that there are no
gods, and convict myself in myown defense of not believing in them.
But that is not the case,for I do believe that there are gods,
and in a far higher sense thanthat in which any of my accusers

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believe in them. And to Youand to God, I commit my cause
to be determined by You as isbest for you and me. And of
Part three of the Apology of Socratesby Plato in the translation by Benjamin Jowat

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recording by Father Zili Detroit, Michigan,