The Apology

The jury has voted. Socrates is condemned. His first observation is that the vote was closer than he expected — had thirty ballots gone the other way, he would have been acquitted. He notes with some satisfaction that Meletus alone would not have received a fifth of the votes required to avoid a penalty fine. He has, in that narrow sense, escaped his most recent accuser. Now comes the counter-penalty. Meletus has proposed death. What does Socrates propose in return? He works through the question with infuriating logic. He cannot propose imprisonment — to be slave to the magistrates of the year would be a life not worth living. He cannot propose exile — if his own citizens cannot endure his conversations, other cities will not either. Wherever he goes, the young men will flock to him, and their fathers will drive him out. And he cannot propose simply holding his tongue: daily discourse about virtue and truth, he says, is the greatest good of man. The unexamined life is not worth living — and he will not pretend otherwise to save himself. What does he actually deserve? He considers his life's work honestly: he has neglected his own affairs entirely, refused the paths of wealth and politics and military command, and spent his days persuading every man he met to care first for wisdom and virtue. An Olympic chariot-race winner gets free meals in the Prytaneum for life. He proposes the same. He is only half-joking. Pressed for a realistic figure, he offers one mina — all he can afford. His friends Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus intervene and bid thirty. Thirty minae it is, with them as sureties. The death sentence comes. Socrates now addresses each group separately. To those who condemned him he speaks with prophetic clarity. They have not gained much time — he is old and would have died soon in any case. And they have gained nothing else. His accusers will be called murderers by every city that wishes to reproach Athens, and history will oblige them. More: the accusers who remain alive, younger and less restrained than he has been, will be harsher on them than he ever was. Killing a man does not silence the question he raises. The only escape from censure is not to disable others but to improve oneself. To his friends — those who would have acquitted him — he speaks differently, while there is still time. He shares a remarkable observation: his divine sign, which has always warned him away from any error, remained silent throughout the entire day. It did not stir when he left his house that morning. It did not stop him in court. It said nothing. This silence, he argues, is itself a sign. If what was coming were evil, the oracle would have opposed it. It did not. Therefore what is coming is good. He then offers two possibilities about death, and finds neither troubling. If death is unconsciousness — dreamless sleep — then it is gain; most men cannot find many nights in their lives more peaceful than one of true sleep, and eternity of such rest is nothing to fear. If death is a journey to another place where the dead abide, it is better still. He would meet the great judges — Minos, Rhadamanthus, Aeacus — and the heroes of antiquity: Orpheus, Hesiod, Homer. He could speak to Palamedes and Ajax, who suffered unjust judgments, and compare notes. He could question Odysseus, Sisyphus, the leaders of Troy. And in that world, he adds with quiet wit, they do not put a man to death for asking questions. He could continue his search there without interruption, forever. No evil, he concludes, can happen to a good man, in life or after death. He is not angry with his accusers. They have done him no harm, though they did not mean to do him any good. For that, he may gently blame them. One final request. When his sons are grown, he asks his friends to treat them as he has treated Athens — to trouble them, to reproach them, if they seem to care more for riches than for virtue, or to think themselves something when they are nothing. Then the last line: the hour of departure has arrived. He goes to die. They go to live. Which is better, God only knows.