I told him then. It had gone like this: Our circle had gathered in Socrates' cell. A number continued to urge escape. I added my voice. With an escort at arms our master need fear nothing on the highway. He could travel to any sanctuary we, or his friends of other nations, could provide him.
I had been foolish enough to look to a direct answer. Of course the philosopher accorded none. Rather he addressed himself to Crito's son, youngest among us, who sat at his knee along the wall.
“Advise me, Critobulus, may one make distinction between justice and the law?”
A groan escaped my lips of such violence as to evoke mirth from all, not least Socrates. Again I put my case. The time for philosophical debate was over! This was life-and-death. One must act!
It was not Socrates who admonished me, but Crito, his oldest and most devoted friend. “Is that what philosophy is to you, my dear Jason? A pastime for the parlor, with which we divert ourselves while fate clasps us in clemency, but in the hour of extremity cast aside?”
I told them to chastise me all they wished, only heed that course I exhorted. Socrates regarded me with patience, which infuriated me the more. “Do you remember, Crito,” he continued, still not addressing me, “the oration our friend Jason put to the people during the trial of the generals?”
“Indeed I do. And a fire-breather it was!”
Please, I urged our master, do not mock me. For the issue of that day proved my point precisely.
“And how is that, my friend?”
By miscarrying justice! By putting good men to death in madness.
“The demos may summon you back from Elis or Thebes, Socrates, but not from hell.”
“Yes, there's the fire, Jason! The flame you showed that day and the brightest you have burned in all your life. I was proud of you then as of few others before or since.”
This abashed me. I fell silent.
“You spoke of law and charged the people not to despoil it, following Euryptolemus, who had made such an intrepid speech in defense. This was the crime you charged the people with, if memory serves: you declared that jealousy drove the meaner man to destroy the better. Is this correct? I only wish to reiterate precisely, that we may examine the matter and perhaps gain illumination.”
I acknowledged that it was, desiring, however, to return to the matter of escape.
“I believe what distresses you now,” our master resumed, “is that you feel such miscarriage recurring. My own conviction, you warrant, has arisen not from merit of the case, but from hatred felt by men toward one who styles himself their better. Is this correct, Jason?”
“Is this not exactly what has happened?”
“Do you believe the people capable of ruling themselves?”
I replied in the negative, emphatically.
“And who would govern best, in your view?”
“You. Us. Anyone but them.”
“Let me phrase the question differently. Do we believe that the law, even an unjust law, must be obeyed? Or may the individual take it on himself to decide which laws are just and which unjust, which worthy of obedience and which not?”
I protested that it was not justice which Socrates had received, and thus its disallowance was legitimate.
“Let us hear your opinion, Jason. Is it better to perish through injustice inflicted upon one by others, or to live, having inflicted injustice on them?”
I had lost patience with this and remonstrated vehemently.
Socrates inflicted injustice on no one by taking to flight. He must live! And by the gods, each of us would move heaven and earth to secure this!
“You forget one, Jason, upon whom I would be inflicting injustice. The Laws. Suppose the Laws sat among us now. Might they not say something like this: 'Socrates, we have served you all your life. Beneath our protection you grew to manhood, married, and raised a family; you pursued your livelihood and studied philosophy. You accepted our boons and the security we provided.
Yet now, when our verdict no longer suits your convenience, you wish to put us aside.' How would we answer the Laws?”
“Some men must be set above the laws.”
“How can you strike this posture, my friend, who argued with such fervor, that day, the contravening course?”
Again abashment took me. I could not stand in the face of his conviction.
“Let me restore your memory, my dear Jason, yours and those of our friends who stood present that day, and bring to these here, who were then too young, enlightenment afresh.
“After Alcibiades' banishment following the defeat at Notium, the city sent out Conon to assume command. That authority not be concentrated in the hands of one man, however, the Council compassed him within a corps of ten generals, among whom were our friends Aristocrates and the younger Pericles. Under this collegial command, the fleet engaged the enemy in a great battle at the Arginousai Islands, destroying seventy of their warships, including nine of ten Spartan vessels, while losing twenty-five of our own. You were there, Jason. Do I recite accurately? Correct me please if I miscarry.
“At this hour, the close of fighting, all fortune had favored the Athenians. But in battle's aftermath a blow arose with terrible swiftness, as storms do in those seas at that time of year, so I am told, and the men in the water-our men, from those ships holed and sunk-could not be recovered. Those assigned by the generals, among them Thrasybulus and Theramenes, proven leaders, could not master the tempest. All in the water were lost. These comprised the crews of some twenty-five vessels, five thousand men. The city, when it learned of this, was riven in conflicting directions, the first in rage and horror clamoring for the blood of those who had failed to rescue the shipwrecked seamen, the second straining to absorb the calamity as one must all in war, acknowledging the severity of the storm, which was ratified by all reports, nor failing to recollect the greatness of the victory.
“It chanced, however-you who were there cannot but recall-that the Feast of the Apaturia fell proximately after the battle, that customarily joyous season when the brotherhoods assemble to rededicate their bonds and enroll the youths entering their fraternities. It happened, I say, that so many were the gaps in the ranks vacated by those sailors and marines lost at sea, that men broke down to behold the magnitude of the loss. And this despair, inflamed by the rhetoric of certain individuals, some of legitimate motive, others seeking to deflect blame from themselves, erupted to a conflagration. The city clamored for blood. Six of the generals were arrested (four received warning and fled first). The people proceeded against them at once, trying them not individually as the law prescribed, but in a block, as one. Pericles, Aristocrates, and the other four were made to defend themselves in chains, as traitors. Do I say true, Jason? And you, Crito and Cebes, who were there, draw me up if I narrate imprecisely.”
All concurred that Socrates' depiction was faithful in spirit and fact.
“The generals were tried in open Assembly. My tribe held the prytany; the lot of epistates chanced to have fallen to me. I was president of the Assembly, the lone occasion of my life on which I have held so lofty a post, and for one day only, as the laws prescribed.
“The prosecutors spoke first; then the generals, one after the other in their own defense, but refused by the mob's impatience the prescribed interval of the law. Only two spoke in their defense.
Axiochus first, then Euryptolemus, nor did he or any of his family ever honor their name more than by his gallantry in that hour. He confined his arguments, shrewdly in the face of the mob, to an exhortation to give each general his day in court. 'In this way you may be sure of exacting the fullest measure of justice, punishing the guilty to the maximum while avoiding the terrible crime of condemning those who are blameless.'
“The people listened, and even carried his motion, but then Menecles lodged an objection on a technicality and the motion was about to be put to a second vote, that vote which in fact overturned Euryptolemus' plea and doomed Pericles and the others. Before this ballot could be taken, however, you arose, Jason.
I, as chair, recognized you, though many attempted to shout you down, knowing the fellowship you bore for the younger Pericles, not to say your own record of valor with the fleet. Will you permit me, friends, to attempt to recapture the character, if not the text, of our comrade's plea? Or shall I quit this line of recital?”
The others desired most ardently that our master continue. He glanced once in my direction, then returned to them in sober mien.
