For the rest,* Athenians, if in the extreme danger in which I now am, I do not imitate the behaviour of those who upon less emergencies have implored and supplicated their judges with tears, and have brought before them their children, relations, and friends, it is not through pride and obstinacy, or any contempt for you, but solely for your honour, and for that of the whole city. It is fit that you should know, that there are among our citizens, those who do not regard death as an evil, and who give that name only to injustice and infamy. At my age, and with the reputation which I have, whether true or false, would it be consistent for me, after all the lessons I have given upon the contempt of death, to be afraid of it myself, and to belie by my last act all the principles and sentiments of my past life? But without speaking of my fame, which I should extremely injure by such a conduct, I do not think it allowable to entreat a judge, nor to procure an acquittal by supplications: he ought to be persuaded and convinced. The judge does not sit upon the bench to show favour by violating the laws, but to do justice by conforming to them. He did not take an oath to favour whom he pleases; but to do justice where it is due. We ought not therefore to accustom you to perjury, nor you to suffer yourselves to be accustomed to it; for in so doing, both the one and the other of us equally injure justice and religion, and both become criminal.

Do not therefore expect from me, Athenians, that I should have recourse among you to means which I believe neither honest nor lawful; especially upon this occasion, wherein I am accused of impiety by Melitus. For if I should influence you by my prayers, and thereby induce you to violate your oaths, it would be undeniably evident that I should teach you not to believe in the gods; and even in defending and justifying myself, should furnish my adversaries with arms against me, and prove that I believe no divinity. But I am very far from such thoughts. I am more convinced of the existence of God, than my accusers; and so convinced, that I abandon myself to God and you, that you may judge of me as you shall deem best for yourselves and me.

Socrates pronounced this discourse with a firm and intrepid tone. His air, his action, his visage, bore no resemblance to that of a person accused: he seemed the master of his judges, from the assurance and greatness of soul with which he spoke, without, however, losing any thing of the modesty natural to him. So noble and majestic a deportment displeased and gave offence. It is common for judges, who look upon themselves as the absolute dispensers of life or death to such as are before them, to expect, out of a secret tendency of mind, that they should appear in their

*Plat. p. 34, 35.

Socrates ita in judicio capitis pro se ipse dixit, ut non supplex aut reus, sed magister aut dominus videretur esse judicum. Cic. 1. i. de Orat. n. 231.

Odit judex ferè litigantis securitatem; cùmque jus suum intelligat, tacitus reverentiam postulat. Quint. I. iv. c. 1.

presence with humble submission and respectful awe; a homage which they think due to their supreme authority.

This was what happened now. Melitus, however, had not at first the fifth part of the voices. We have reason to suppose that the judges assembled upon this occasion might amount to 500, without reckoning the president. The law condemned the accuser to pay a fine of 1000 drachmas,* if he had not the fifth part of the suffrages. This law had been wisely established to check the boldness and impudence of calumniators. Melitus would have been obliged to pay this fine, if Anytus and Lycon had not joined him, and presented themselves also as the accusers of Socrates. Their influence drew over a great number of voices, and there were 281 against Socrates, and consequently only 220 for him. He wanted no more than thirty-one to have been acquitted;† for he would then have had 251, which would have been the majority.

By this first sentence the judges only declared Socrates guilty, without decreeing against him any penalty. For when the law did not determine the punishment, and when a crime against the state was not in question (in which manner I conceive Cicero's expression, fraus capitalis, may be understood,) the person found guilty had a right to choose the penalty he thought he deserved. Upon his answer the judges deliberated a second time, and afterwards passed their final sentence. Socrates was informed that he might demand an abatement of the penalty, and change the condemnation of death into banishment, imprisonment, or a fine. He replied generously, that he would choose neither of those punishments, because that would be to acknowledge himself guilty.— Athenians, said he, to keep you no longer in suspense, as you oblige me to sentence myself according to what I deserve, I condemn myself, for having passed my life in instructing yourselves and your children; for having neglected with that view my domestic affairs, and all public employments and dignities; for having devoted myself entirely to the service of my country, in labouring incessantly to render my fellow-citizens virtuous; I condemn myself, I say, to be maintained in the Prytaneum, at the expense of the republic, for the rest of my life. This last answer so much offended the judges, that they

* About 251.

The text varies in Plato: it says, thirty-three, or thirty; whence it is probably defective. Primis sententiis statuebant tantùm judices, damnarent an absolverent. Erat autem Athenis, reo damnato, si fraus capitalis non esset, quasi pœnæ æstimatio. Ex sententiâ, cùm judicibus daretur, interrogabatur reus, quam quasi æstimationem commeruisse se maximè confiteretur. Cic. 1. i. de Orat. n. 231, 232.

It appears in Plato, that after this discourse, Socrates, without doubt to remove from himself an imputation of pride and contumacy, modestly offered to pay a fine proportionate to his indigence, that is to say, one mina (fifty livres,) and that, at the solicitation of his friends, who had bound themselves for him, he rose in his offer to thirty minæ. Plat. in Apolog. Socrat. p. 38. But Xenophon positively asserts the contrary, p. 705. This difference may be reconciled, perhaps, by supposing that Socrates refused at first to make any offer, and that he suffered himself at length to be overcome by the earnest solicitations of

his friends.

HCujus responso sic judices exarserunt, ut capitis hominem innocentissimum condemnarent, Cic. 1. i. de Orat. n. 233.

condemned him to drink hemlock, a punishment very much in use among them.

This sentence did not shake the constancy of Socrates in the least.* I am going, said he, addressing himself to his judges, with a noble tranquillity, to suffer death by your order, to which nuture had condemned me from the first moment of my birth; but my accusers will suffer no less from infamy and injustice by the decrees of truth. Did you expect from me, that to extricate myself out of your hands, I should have employed, according to the custom, flattery and pathetic expressions, and the timorous and grovelling behaviour of a suppliant? But in trials, as well as war, an honest man ought not to use all sorts of means for the preservation of his life. It is equally dishonourable both in the one and in the other, to ransom it only by prayers and tears, and all those other abject methods which you see every day practised by people in my present condition.

Apollodorus, who was one of his friends and disciples, and having advanced to him to express his grief for his dying innocent: What, replied he, with a smile, would you have me die guilty?

Plutarch, to show that only our weakest part, the body, is in the power of man, but that there is another infinitely more noble part of us entirely superior to their threats, and inaccessible to their attacks, cites these admirable words of Socrates, which are more applicable to his judges than his accusers: Anytus and Melitus may kill me, but they cannot hurt me. As if he had said, in the language of the Pagans: Fortune may deprive me of my goods, my health, and my life; but I have a treasure within me, of which no external violence can deprive me; I mean vittue, innocence, fortitude, and greatness of mind.

This great man, fully convinced of the principle he had so often inculcated to his disciples;-that guilt is the only evil a wise man ought to fear,-chose rather to be deprived of some years which he might perhaps have to live, than to forfeit in an instant the glory of his whole past life, in dishonouring himself for ever by the shameful behaviour he was advised to observe towards his judges. Seeing that his contemporaries had but a slight knowledge of him, he referred himself to the judgment of posterity; and, by the generous sacrifice of the remnant of a life already far advanced, acquired and secured to himself the esteem and admiration of all succeeding ages.

* Plut. p. 39.

De anim. tranquil. p. 475.

Maluit vir sapientissimus quod superesset ex vitâ sibi perire, quàm quod præterisset: et quando ab hominibus sui temporis parùm intelligebatur, posterorum se judiciis reservavit, brevi detrimento jam ultima senectutis ævum seculorum omnium consecutus. Quint. 1. i. c. 1.

SECTION VII.

Socrates refuses to escape out of prison. He passes the last days of his life in discoursing with his friends upon the immortality of the soul. He drinks the poison. Punishment of his accusers. Honours paid to his memory.

After the sentence had been passed upon him, Socrates,* with the same intrepid aspect with which he had held tyrants in awe, went forward towards the prison, which lost that name, says Seneca, when he entered it, and became the residence of virtue and probity. His friends followed him thither, and continued to visit him during thirty days, which passed between his condemnation and death. The cause of that long delay was, the Athenians sent every year a ship to the isle of Delos, to offer certain sacrifices; and it was prohibited to put any person to death in the city, from the time that the priest of Apollo had crowned the poop of this ves sel, as a signal of its departure, till the same vessel should return. So that sentence having been passed upon Socrates the day after that ceremony began, it was necessary to defer the execution of it for thirty days, during the continuance of this voyage.

In this long interval, death had sufficient opportunity to present itself before his eyes in all its terrors, and to put his constancy to the proof, not only by the severe rigour of a dungeon, and the irons upon his legs, but by the continual prospect and cruel expectation of an event which nature always abhors. In this sad condition he did not cease to enjoy that profound tranquillity of mind which his friends had always admired in him. He conversed with them with the same temper he had always expressed; and Crito observes, that the evening before his death, he slept as peaceably as at any other time. He even at that time composed a hymn in honour of Apollo and Diana, and turned one of Æsop's fables into verse.

The day before, or the same day that the ship was to arrive from Delos, the return of which was to be followed by the death of Socrates, Crito, his intimate friend, came to him early in the morning to let him know that mournful news, and at the same time to inform him that it depended only upon himself to quit the prison; that the jailor was gained; that he would find the doors open, and offered him a safe retreat in Thessaly. Socrates laughed at this proposal, and asked him, whether he knew of any place out of Attica where people did not die? Crito urged the thing very seriously, and pressed him to take advantage of so precious an opportunity, adding arguments upon arguments to induce his consent, and to engage him to resolve upon his escape. Without mentioning the inconsolable grief he should suffer for the death of such a friend, how should

* Socrates eodem illo vultu, quo aliquando solus triginta tyrannos in ordinem redegerat, carcerem intravit, ignominiam ipsi loco detracturus. Neque enim poterat career videri, in quo Socrates erat. Senec. in Consol. ad Helvet. c. xiii.

Socrates careerem intrando purgavit, omnique honestiorem curià reddidit. Id. de vit † Plat. in Criton.

beat. c. xxvii.

he support the reproaches of an infinity of people, who would believe that it was in his power to have saved him, but that he would not sacrifice a small part of his wealth for that purpose? Could the people ever be persuaded that so wise a man as Socrates would not quit his prison, when he might do it with all possible security? Perhaps he might fear to expose his friends, or to occasion the loss of their fortunes, or even of their lives or liberty. Ought there to be any thing more dear and precious to them than the preservation of Socrates? Even strangers themselves dispute that honour with them; many of whom have come expressly with considerable sums of money to purchase his escape; and declare, that they should think themselves highly honoured to receive him among them, and to supply him abundantly with all he should have occasion for. Ought he then to abandon himself to enemies, who have occasioned his being condemned unjustly; and can he think it allowable to betray his own cause? Is it not essential to his goodness and justice, to spare his fellow-citizens the guilt of innocent blood? But if all these motives cannot alter him, and he is not concerned with regard to himself, can he be insensible to the interests of his children? In what a condition does he leave them? And can he forget the father, only to remember the philosopher?

Socrates, after having heard him with attention, praised his zeal, and expressed his gratitude; but before he could accede to his opinion, was for examining whether it was just for him to depart out of prison without the consent of the Athenians. The question therefore here is to know, whether a man condemned to die, though unjustly, can without a crime escape from justice and the laws? I do not know, whether, among us, there are many persons to be found who would believe that this could be made a question.

Socrates begins with removing every thing foreign to the subject, and comes immediately to the bottom of the affair. I should cer tainly rejoice extremely, my dear Crito, if you could persuade me to quit this place, but cannot resolve to do so without being first persuaded. We ought not to concern ourselves for what the people may say, but for what the sole Judge of all that is just or unjust, shall say, and that alone is truth. All the considerations you have alleged, as money, reputation, family, prove nothing, unless you show me that what you propose is just and lawful. It is a received and constant principle with us, that all injustice is shameful, and fatal to him that commits it, whatever men may say, or whatever good or evil may ensue from it. We have always reasoned from this principle even to our latest days, and have never departed in the least from it. Would it be possible, dear Crito, that at our age our most serious discourses should resemble those of infants, who say Yes and No, almost in the same breath, and have no fixed and determinate notion? At each proposition he waited Crito's answer and assent.

Let us, therefore, resume our principles, and endeavour to make use of them at this time. It has always been a maxim with us, that it