Apology
the evil do them evil. Now, is that a truth which your superior wisdom
has recognized thus early in life, and am I, at my age, in such
darkness and ignorance as not to know that if a man with whom I have to
live is corrupted by me, I am very likely to be harmed by him; and yet
I corrupt him, and intentionally, too—so you say, although neither I
nor any other human being is ever likely to be convinced by you. But
either I do not corrupt them, or I corrupt them unintentionally; and on
either view of the case you lie. If my offence is unintentional, the
law has no cognizance of unintentional offences: you ought to have
taken me privately, and warned and admonished me; for if I had been
better advised, I should have left off doing what I only did
unintentionally—no doubt I should; but you would have nothing to say to
me and refused to teach me. And now you bring me up in this court,
which is a place not of instruction, but of punishment.
It will be very clear to you, Athenians, as I was saying, that Meletus
has no care at all, great or small, about the matter. But still I
should like to know, Meletus, in what I am affirmed to corrupt the
young. I suppose you mean, as I infer from your indictment, that I
teach them not to acknowledge the gods which the state acknowledges,
but some other new divinities or spiritual agencies in their stead.
These are the lessons by which I corrupt the youth, as you say.
Yes, that I say emphatically.
Then, by the gods, Meletus, of whom we are speaking, tell me and the
court, in somewhat plainer terms, what you mean! for I do not as yet
understand whether you affirm that I teach other men to acknowledge
some gods, and therefore that I do believe in gods, and am not an
entire atheist—this you do not lay to my charge,—but only you say that
they are not the same gods which the city recognizes—the charge is that
they are different gods. Or, do you mean that I am an atheist simply,
and a teacher of atheism?
I mean the latter—that you are a complete atheist.
What an extraordinary statement! Why do you think so, Meletus? Do you
mean that I do not believe in the godhead of the sun or moon, like
other men?
I assure you, judges, that he does not: for he says that the sun is
stone, and the moon earth.
Friend Meletus, you think that you are accusing Anaxagoras: and you
have but a bad opinion of the judges, if you fancy them illiterate to
such a degree as not to know that these doctrines are found in the
books of Anaxagoras the Clazomenian, which are full of them. And so,
forsooth, the youth are said to be taught them by Socrates, when there
are not unfrequently exhibitions of them at the theatre (Probably in
allusion to Aristophanes who caricatured, and to Euripides who borrowed
the notions of Anaxagoras, as well as to other dramatic poets.) (price
of admission one drachma at the most); and they might pay their money,
and laugh at Socrates if he pretends to father these extraordinary
views. And so, Meletus, you really think that I do not believe in any
god?
I swear by Zeus that you believe absolutely in none at all.
Nobody will believe you, Meletus, and I am pretty sure that you do not
believe yourself. I cannot help thinking, men of Athens, that Meletus
is reckless and impudent, and that he has written this indictment in a
spirit of mere wantonness and youthful bravado. Has he not compounded a
riddle, thinking to try me? He said to himself:—I shall see whether the
wise Socrates will discover my facetious contradiction, or whether I
shall be able to deceive him and the rest of them. For he certainly
does appear to me to contradict himself in the indictment as much as if
he said that Socrates is guilty of not believing in the gods, and yet
of believing in them—but this is not like a person who is in earnest.
I should like you, O men of Athens, to join me in examining what I
conceive to be his inconsistency; and do you, Meletus, answer. And I
must remind the audience of my request that they would not make a
disturbance if I speak in my accustomed manner:
Did ever man, Meletus, believe in the existence of human things, and
not of human beings?...I wish, men of Athens, that he would answer, and
not be always trying to get up an interruption. Did ever any man
believe in horsemanship, and not in horses? or in flute-playing, and
not in flute-players? No, my friend; I will answer to you and to the
court, as you refuse to answer for yourself. There is no man who ever
did. But now please to answer the next question: Can a man believe in
spiritual and divine agencies, and not in spirits or demigods?
He cannot.
How lucky I am to have extracted that answer, by the assistance of the
court! But then you swear in the indictment that I teach and believe in
divine or spiritual agencies (new or old, no matter for that); at any
rate, I believe in spiritual agencies,—so you say and swear in the
affidavit; and yet if I believe in divine beings, how can I help
believing in spirits or demigods;—must I not? To be sure I must; and
therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent. Now what are
spirits or demigods? Are they not either gods or the sons of gods?
Certainly they are.
But this is what I call the facetious riddle invented by you: the
demigods or spirits are gods, and you say first that I do not believe
in gods, and then again that I do believe in gods; that is, if I
believe in demigods. For if the demigods are the illegitimate sons of
gods, whether by the nymphs or by any other mothers, of whom they are
said to be the sons—what human being will ever believe that there are
no gods if they are the sons of gods? You might as well affirm the
existence of mules, and deny that of horses and asses. Such nonsense,
Meletus, could only have been intended by you to make trial of me. You
have put this into the indictment because you had nothing real of which
to accuse me. But no one who has a particle of understanding will ever
be convinced by you that the same men can believe in divine and
superhuman things, and yet not believe that there are gods and demigods
and heroes.
I have said enough in answer to the charge of Meletus: any elaborate
defence is unnecessary, but I know only too well how many are the
enmities which I have incurred, and this is what will be my destruction
if I am destroyed;—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 right or wrong—acting
the part of a good man or of a bad. Whereas, upon your view, the heroes
who fell at Troy were not good for much, and the son of Thetis above
all, who altogether despised danger in comparison with disgrace; and
when he was so eager to slay Hector, his goddess mother said to him,
that if he avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he would
die himself—“Fate,” she said, in these or the like words, “waits for
you next after Hector;” he, receiving this warning, utterly despised
danger and death, and instead of fearing them, feared rather to live in
dishonour, and not to avenge his friend. “Let me die forthwith,” he
replies, “and be avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by the
beaked ships, a laughing-stock 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; 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 to command me at Potidaea
and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any
other man, facing death—if now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God
orders me to fulfil 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, fancying that I was
wise when I was not wise. For the fear of death is indeed the pretence
of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretence of knowing the
unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear
apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is not
this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the
conceit that a man knows what he does not know? And in this respect
only I believe myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps
claim to be wiser than they are:—that whereas I know but little of the
world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice
and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and
dishonourable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather
than a certain evil. And therefore if you let me go now, and are not
convinced by Anytus, who said that since I had been prosecuted I must
be put to death; (or if not that I ought never to have been prosecuted
at all); 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 you shall be let off, but upon one condition, that
you are not to enquire and speculate in this way any more, and that if
you are caught doing so again you shall die;—if this was the condition
on which you let me go, I should reply: Men of Athens, I honour and
love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life
and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of
philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet and saying to him after my
manner: You, my friend,—a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city
of Athens,—are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of
money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and
truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard
or heed at all? And if the person with whom I am arguing, says: Yes,
but I do care; then I do not leave him or let him go at once; but I
proceed to interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I
think that he has no virtue in him, but only says that he has, I
reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less.
And I shall repeat the same words to every one whom I meet, young and
old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as
they are my brethren. For know that this is the command of God; and I
believe that 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 virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as
well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which
corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. But if any one says that
this is not my teaching, he is speaking 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 whichever you do, understand that I shall