“They may not find him guilty.”
“But what — ”
“I won’t lie to you. The charges are serious.
They could put him to death.
More likely, he’ll have to pay a fine. They might exile him,
strip him of his citizen’s rights and make him leave the city.”
I sank my fist into the clay. Pounded it.
It was shameful for a man to lose his rights,
and Sokrates had no money to pay a fine —
he’d shared his bread with me, but he was poor.
As for his death —
I shoved the table away from me.
Made for the door —
Phaistus snatched me back.
“I thought it might come to this —
you wanting to rush off to the Agora
and upset the trial! Forget it.
You have to be called to testify in court,
and nobody’s called for you. Nobody wants your opinion,
and you’re lucky they don’t.
No court accepts the word of a slave
unless he’s been tortured first;
that guarantees he’ll tell the truth.
You don’t want that, do you?”
My heart was in my mouth. I had meant to run outside,
push my way through the crowd until I found him.
I wanted to shout out his innocence,
to deafen the jury, awaken the gods!
Now I was afraid. Sometimes, near the prison,
they lashed men to planks, cruelly tight.
They tossed them in pits and left them to die.
I kept away from that place,
but I heard them screaming.
“Other men will help him, Pyrrhos.
Rich men. It’s beyond you.
You’re still a boy.
You and me, we’re little people.
If we keep our heads down, and our mouths shut,
we might make it through hard times.
The glory days of Athens are over.
The good times were forty, fifty years ago —
Sokrates can remember those days.
People laughed at him,
but they liked hearing him ask his questions;
even his enemies thought he was harmless.
“Since then we’ve suffered nigh on thirty years of war,
plague,
defeat.
We lost our democracy to tyrants. Twice.
We’ve lost the Long Walls that kept us safe.
Even the rich have less, and the poor are poorer.
Everyone’s afraid,
and worn out,
and there’s Sokrates, still asking questions.
It no longer seems harmless. He ought to shut up,
but he won’t. He can’t be silenced.
It doesn’t matter whether the charges are true or false.
If they want to get rid of him, they will.”
I was back at the table.
I don’t know whether Phaistus led me there,
or shoved me, or tugged me,
but there I was, with my belly against the table’s edge,
and there was the clay, with the deep hollows
where my knuckles had punched.
I slid one hand under the clay
and flipped it, smothering the air bubbles.
“Listen to me, Pyrrhos!
Worse may not come to worst.
Sokrates has rich men on his side,
aristocrats like Plato and Krito.
He’s a good speaker. He’ll defend himself.
If all else fails, they’ll bring in the family:
go for pity. A weeping wife to touch the jury’s heart,
or children, pleading not to be orphaned.
That kind of thing goes over well.
The point is, you have to go back to work.
It’s not your battle to fight.”
I don’t think a long speech is necessary to point out that I’m innocent of these charges. But it is true that over the years, many men have come to hate me. This kind of hatred has doomed other good men. If I’m convicted, I won’t be the last.
So now perhaps someone will say, Aren’t you ashamed, Sokrates, to have devoted your life to asking questions that may get you killed? And here’s my answer: When someone takes a stand, he has to hold his ground and face the danger. When I fought in the battles of Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delion, I held my ground and obeyed my commanders. And when the god tells me to live a life in pursuit of wisdom, questioning myself and others, I cannot desert my post.
And when we fear death, gentlemen, once again we are thinking we know something we don’t know. Death may be the greatest good we can imagine. I must not disobey the god — an act that I know to be disgraceful — in order to escape death, which might be something good.
Gentlemen of Athens, I salute you, and I am your friend. But as long as I draw breath, I will listen to the god rather than to you. If you release me, I will go on saying the things I say, and asking the questions I ask.
You are Athenian, and your city is the greatest and most famous in the world. But aren’t you ashamed when you worry about having as much money as possible, and piling up glories and honors, instead of making your soul the best that it can be? This is what I say to anyone I meet: the god commands me to persuade you not to put the care of your bodies above the care for your soul.
Order please, gentlemen! I am about to say something that will raise a storm of protest! If you kill me, you will harm yourselves more than you harm me. Meletus and Anytus can’t harm me. The law of the god doesn’t permit a better man to be harmed by a worse one. They can kill me, of course, but what they are doing is damaging to their souls: they are trying to kill an innocent man.
I’m not speaking in my own defense. I’m defending you, so you won’t make a mistake by killing me. Athens is like a large, noble horse — a horse that is lazy and needs to be awakened by a horsefly. I’m the fly. The god placed me in this city to wake you up and land on top of you all day long. But perhaps you find me irritating: you’ll finish me off with a single swat and try to spend the rest of your lives asleep.
If you don’t know whether I really am a gift to the city, here’s how you can tell. I am always coming up to you, like a father or an older brother, and reminding you to concern yourself with ἀρετή. If I got something out of this — if
