would be unbecoming for me to oppose.
SOCRATES: Do you not remember saying that you were in great perplexity,
lest perchance you should ask for evil, supposing that you were asking for
good?
ALCIBIADES: I do.
SOCRATES: You see, then, that there is a risk in your approaching the God
in prayer, lest haply he should refuse your sacrifice when he hears the
blasphemy which you utter, and make you partake of other evils as well.
The wisest plan, therefore, seems to me that you should keep silence; for
your 'highmindedness'--to use the mildest term which men apply to folly--
will most likely prevent you from using the prayer of the Lacedaemonians.
You had better wait until we find out how we should behave towards the Gods
and towards men.
ALCIBIADES: And how long must I wait, Socrates, and who will be my
teacher? I should be very glad to see the man.
SOCRATES: It is he who takes an especial interest in you. But first of
all, I think, the darkness must be taken away in which your soul is now
enveloped, just as Athene in Homer removes the mist from the eyes of
Diomede that
'He may distinguish between God and mortal man.'
Afterwards the means may be given to you whereby you may distinguish
between good and evil. At present, I fear, this is beyond your power.
ALCIBIADES: Only let my instructor take away the impediment, whether it
pleases him to call it mist or anything else! I care not who he is; but I
am resolved to disobey none of his commands, if I am likely to be the
better for them.
SOCRATES: And surely he has a wondrous care for you.
ALCIBIADES: It seems to be altogether advisable to put off the sacrifice
until he is found.
SOCRATES: You are right: that will be safer than running such a
tremendous risk.
ALCIBIADES: But how shall we manage, Socrates?--At any rate I will set
this crown of mine upon your head, as you have given me such excellent
advice, and to the Gods we will offer crowns and perform the other
customary rites when I see that day approaching: nor will it be long
hence, if they so will.
SOCRATES: I accept your gift, and shall be ready and willing to receive
whatever else you may proffer. Euripides makes Creon say in the play, when
he beholds Teiresias with his crown and hears that he has gained it by his
skill as the first-fruits of the spoil:--
'An auspicious omen I deem thy victor's wreath:
For well thou knowest that wave and storm oppress us.'
And so I count your gift to be a token of good-fortune; for I am in no less
stress than Creon, and would fain carry off the victory over your lovers.
Apology
Also known as The Death of Socrates
by Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
INTRODUCTION.
In what relation the Apology of Plato stands to the real defence of
Socrates, there are no means of determining. It certainly agrees in tone
and character with the description of Xenophon, who says in the Memorabilia
that Socrates might have been acquitted 'if in any moderate degree he would
have conciliated the favour of the dicasts;' and who informs us in another
passage, on the testimony of Hermogenes, the friend of Socrates, that he
had no wish to live; and that the divine sign refused to allow him to
prepare a defence, and also that Socrates himself declared this to be
unnecessary, on the ground that all his life long he had been preparing
against that hour. For the speech breathes throughout a spirit of
defiance, (ut non supplex aut reus sed magister aut dominus videretur esse
judicum' (Cic. de Orat.); and the loose and desultory style is an imitation
of the 'accustomed manner' in which Socrates spoke in 'the agora and among
the tables of the money-changers.' The allusion in the Crito may, perhaps,
be adduced as a further evidence of the literal accuracy of some parts.
But in the main it must be regarded as the ideal of Socrates, according to
Plato's conception of him, appearing in the greatest and most public scene
of his life, and in the height of his triumph, when he is weakest, and yet
his mastery over mankind is greatest, and his habitual irony acquires a new
meaning and a sort of tragic pathos in the face of death. The facts of his
life are summed up, and the features of his character are brought out as if
by accident in the course of the defence. The conversational manner, the
seeming want of arrangement, the ironical simplicity, are found to result
in a perfect work of art, which is the portrait of Socrates.
Yet some of the topics may have been actually used by Socrates; and the
recollection of his very words may have rung in the ears of his disciple.
The Apology of Plato may be compared generally with those speeches of
Thucydides in which he has embodied his conception of the lofty character
and policy of the great Pericles, and which at the same time furnish a
commentary on the situation of affairs from the point of view of the
historian. So in the Apology there is an ideal rather than a literal
truth; much is said which was not said, and is only Plato's view of the
situation. Plato was not, like Xenophon, a chronicler of facts; he does
not appear in any of his writings to have aimed at literal accuracy. He is
not therefore to be supplemented from the Memorabilia and Symposium of
Xenophon, who belongs to an entirely different class of writers. The
Apology of Plato is not the report of what Socrates said, but an elaborate
composition, quite as much so in fact as one of the Dialogues. And we may
perhaps even indulge in the fancy that the actual defence of Socrates was
as much greater than the Platonic defence as the master was greater than
the disciple. But in any case, some of the words used by him must have
been remembered, and some of the facts recorded must have actually
occurred. It is significant that Plato is said to have been present at the
defence (Apol.), as he is also said to have been absent at the last scene
in the Phaedo. Is it fanciful to suppose that he meant to give the stamp
of authenticity to the one and not to the other?--especially when we
consider that these two passages are the only ones in which Plato makes
mention of himself. The circumstance that Plato was to be one of his
sureties for the payment of the fine which he proposed has the appearance
of truth. More suspicious is the statement that Socrates received the
first impulse to his favourite calling of cross-examining the world from
the Oracle of Delphi; for he must already have been famous before
Chaerephon went to consult the Oracle (Riddell), and the story is of a kind
which is very likely to have been invented. On the whole we arrive at the
conclusion that the Apology is true to the character of Socrates, but we
cannot show that any single sentence in it was actually spoken by him. It
breathes the spirit of Socrates, but has been cast anew in the mould of
Plato.
There is not much in the other Dialogues which can be compared with the
Apology. The same recollection of his master may have been present to the
mind of Plato when depicting the sufferings of the Just in the Republic.
The Crito may also be regarded as a sort of appendage to the Apology, in
which Socrates, who has defied the judges, is nevertheless represented as
scrupulously obedient to the laws. The idealization of the sufferer is
carried still further in the Gorgias, in which the thesis is maintained,
that 'to suffer is better than to do evil;' and the art of rhetoric is
described as only useful for the purpose of self-accusation. The
parallelisms which occur in the so-called Apology of Xenophon are not worth
noticing, because the writing in which they are contained is manifestly
spurious. The statements of the Memorabilia respecting the trial and death
of Socrates agree generally with Plato; but they have lost the flavour of
Socratic irony in the narrative of Xenophon.
The Apology or Platonic defence of Socrates is divided into three parts:
1st. The defence properly so called; 2nd. The shorter address in mitigation
of the penalty; 3rd. The last words of prophetic rebuke and exhortation.
The first part commences with an apology for his colloquial style; he is,
as he has always been, the enemy of rhetoric, and knows of no rhetoric but
truth; he will not falsify his character by making a speech. Then he
proceeds to divide his accusers into two classes; first, there is the
nameless accuser--public opinion. All the world from their earliest years
had heard that he was a corrupter of youth, and had seen him caricatured in
the Clouds of Aristophanes. Secondly, there are the professed accusers,
who are but the mouth-piece of the others. The accusations of both might
be summed up in a formula. The first say, 'Socrates is an evil-doer and a
curious person, searching into things under the earth and above the heaven;
and making the worse appear the better cause, and teaching all this to
others.' The second, 'Socrates is an evil-doer and corrupter of the youth,
who does not receive the gods whom the state receives, but introduces other
new divinities.' These last words appear to have been the actual
indictment (compare Xen. Mem.); and the previous formula, which is a
summary of public opinion, assumes the same legal style.
The answer begins by clearing up a confusion. In the representations of
the Comic poets, and in the opinion of the multitude, he had been
identified with the teachers of physical science and with the Sophists.
But this was an error. For both of them he professes a respect in the open
court, which contrasts with his manner of speaking about them in other
places. (Compare for Anaxagoras, Phaedo, Laws; for the Sophists, Meno,
Republic, Tim., Theaet., Soph., etc.) But at the same time he shows that
he is not one of them. Of natural philosophy he knows nothing; not that he
despises such pursuits, but the fact is that he is ignorant of them, and
never says a word about them. Nor is he paid for giving instruction--that
is another mistaken notion:--he has nothing to teach. But he commends
Evenus for teaching virtue at such a 'moderate' rate as five minae.
Something of the 'accustomed irony,' which may perhaps be expected to sleep
in the ear of the multitude, is lurking here.
He then goes on to explain the reason why he is in such an evil name. That
had arisen out of a peculiar mission which he had taken upon himself. The
enthusiastic Chaerephon (probably in anticipation of the answer which he
received) had gone to Delphi and asked the oracle if there was any man
wiser than Socrates; and the answer was, that there was no man wiser. What
could be the meaning of this--that he who knew nothing, and knew that he
knew nothing, should be declared by the oracle to be the wisest of men?
Reflecting upon the answer, he determined to refute it by finding 'a
wiser;' and first he went to the politicians, and then to the poets, and
then to the craftsmen, but always with the same result--he found that they
knew nothing, or hardly anything more than himself; and that the little
advantage which in some cases they possessed was more than counter-balanced
by their conceit of knowledge. He knew nothing, and knew that he knew
nothing: they knew little or nothing, and imagined that they knew all
things. Thus he had passed his life as a sort of missionary in detecting
the pretended wisdom of mankind; and this occupation had quite absorbed him
and taken him away both from public and private affairs. Young men of the
richer sort had made a pastime of the same pursuit, 'which was not
unamusing.' And hence bitter enmities had arisen; the professors of
knowledge had revenged themselves by calling him a villainous corrupter of
youth, and by repeating the commonplaces about atheism and materialism and
sophistry, which are the stock-accusations against all philosophers when
there is nothing else to be said of them.
The second accusation he meets by interrogating Meletus, who is present and
can be interrogated. 'If he is the corrupter, who is the improver of the
citizens?' (Compare Meno.) 'All men everywhere.' But how absurd, how
contrary to analogy is this! How inconceivable too, that he should make
the citizens worse when he has to live with them. This surely cannot be
intentional; and if unintentional, he ought to have been instructed by
Meletus, and not accused in the court.
But there is another part of the indictment which says that he teaches men
not to receive the gods whom the city receives, and has other new gods.
'Is that the way in which he is supposed to corrupt the youth?' 'Yes, it
is.' 'Has he only new gods, or none at all?' 'None at all.' 'What, not
even the sun and moon?' 'No; why, he says that the sun is a stone, and the
moon earth.' That, replies Socrates, is the old confusion about
Anaxagoras; the Athenian people are not so ignorant as to attribute to the
influence of Socrates notions which have found their way into the drama,
and may be learned at the theatre. Socrates undertakes to show that
Meletus (rather unjustifiably) has been compounding a riddle in this part
of the indictment: 'There are no gods, but Socrates believes in the
existence of the sons of gods, which is absurd.'
Leaving Meletus, who has had enough words spent upon him, he returns to the
original accusation. The question may be asked, Why will he persist in
following a profession which leads him to death? Why?--because he must
remain at his post where the god has placed him, as he remained at
Potidaea, and Amphipolis, and Delium, where the generals placed him.
Besides, he is not so overwise as to imagine that he knows whether death is
a good or an evil; and he is certain that desertion of his duty is an evil.
Anytus is quite right in saying that they should never have indicted him if
they meant to let him go. For he will certainly obey God rather than man;
and will continue to preach to all men of all ages the necessity of virtue
