The Last Days of Socrates

Apology

	Speech III: After the Trial
	(14) To the Jurors Who Acquitted Him 40a-42a

	Friends, who would have acquitted me, I would like also to		Jowett's Notes
	talk with you about the thing which has come to pass, while
	Odysseus and Others Heroes Will Be Waiting for Socrates in Hades The Vatican Exhibit	the magistrates are
		busy, and before I go
40a		to the place at which
		I must die. Stay then
		a little, for we may as
		well talk with one
		another while there is
		time. You are my friends,
		and I should like to show
		you the meaning of this
	event which has happened to me. O my judges - for you I may
	truly call judges - I should like to tell you of a wonderful
	circumstance. Hitherto the divine faculty of which the internal oracle		He believes that what is happening to him will be good, because the internal oracle gives no sign of opposition.
	is the source has constantly been in the habit of opposing me even
	about trifles, I was going to make a slip or error in any matter; and
	now as you see there has come upon me that which may be
40b	thought, and is generally believed to be, the last and worst evil. But
	the oracle made no sign of opposition, either when I was leaving
	my house in the morning, or when I was on my way to the
	court, or while I was speaking, at anything which I was going
	to say; and yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a
	speech, but now in nothing I either said or did touching the
	matter in hand has the oracle opposed me. What do I take to
40c	be the explanation of this silence? I will tell you. It is an
	intimation that what has happened to me is a good, and that
	those of us who think that death is an evil are in error. For the
	customary sign would surely have opposed me had I been
	going to evil and not to good.

	Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is		Death either a good or nothing: - a profound sleep.
	great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two
	things - either death is a state of nothingness and utter
40d	unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and
	migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you
	suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the
	sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be
	an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in
	which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to
	compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then
	were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the
	course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I
	think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the
40e	great king will not find many such days or nights, when
	compared with the others. Now if death be of such a nature, I
	say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night.
	But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men
	say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges,		How blessed to have a just judgment passed on us; to converse with Homer and Hesiod; to see the heroes of Troy, and to continue the search after knowledge in another world!
	can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in
41a	the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice
	in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give no
	judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and
	Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in
	their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What
	would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and
	Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me
	die again and again. I myself, too, shall have a wonderful
41b	interest in there meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and
	Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who has
	suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be
	small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with
	theirs. Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search
	into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the
	next; and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be
	wise, and is not. What would not a m an give, O judges , to be
	able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or
41c	Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women
	too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with
	them and asking them questions! In another world they do not
	put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not. For
	besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if
	what is said is true.

	Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and
	know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man,
41d	either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the
	gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere
	chance. But I see clearly that the time had arrived when it was
	better for me to die and be released from trouble, wherefore
	the oracle gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am not
	angry with my condemners, or with my accusers; they have
	done me no harm, although they did not mean to do me any
	good; and for this I may gently blame them.

41e	Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown		Do to my sons and I have done to you.
	up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I
	would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they
	seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about
	virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are
	really nothing, - then reprove them, as I have reproved you,
	for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and
	thinking that they are something when they are really.
42a	nothing. And if you do this, both I and my sons will have
	received justice at your hands.

	The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to
	die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.