when on service at Potidaca, but have failed through fear of
death when the deity imposed on me a certain course of action? Whether
to die be evil or good, I know not, though many think they know it to be
evil. But to disobey authority, human or divine, I know to be evil; and
I will not do what I know to be evil to avoid what may in fact be a
good. Insomuch that if you now offer to set me free on condition that I
should cease from these pursuits on pain of death, I should reply: "Men
of Athens, I love and honour you, but I will obey the god rather than
you; and while I breathe and have the power I will not cease from the
pursuit of philosophy, or from exhorting and warning you as I have done
hitherto, against caring much for riches and nothing for the perfecting
of your souls. This is the bidding of the god. If to speak thus be to
corrupt youth, then I corrupt youth. But he who says I speak other
things than this talks vanity; and this I will do, though the penalty
were many deaths."

Do not murmur, but listen, for you will profit. If you put me to death,
you will harm yourselves more than me, for it is worse to do wrong than
to suffer it. You will not easily find another to serve as the gadfly
which rouses a noble horse--as I have done, being commissioned thereto
by the god. For that I have made no profit for myself from this course,
my poverty proves. If it seems absurd that I should meddle thus with
each man privately, but take no part in public affairs, that is because
of the divine or daemonic influence of which I have spoken, named also in
mockery by Meletus in the indictment. This is a voice which checks but
never urges me on. Indeed, had I meddled with politics, I should have
been dead long ago.

That I will prove by facts. When you chose to condemn the ten generals,
my phyle supplied the Prytanes, and I alone stood out against you. And
in the time of the thirty, I was ordered with four others to bring Leon
from Salamis to be executed, and I alone would not; and it may be that
my own life was saved only because that government was broken up. Judge,
then, if my life would not have been shorter, had I taken part in public
life.

But I have never posed as an instructor or taken money for giving
instruction. Anyone who chooses can question me and hear what I have to
say. People take pleasure in my society, because they like to hear those
exposed who deem themselves wise but are not. This duty the god has laid
on