g that I deserve
punishment by a fine. What have I to fear? The penalty fixed by Meletus,
as to which I do not know whether it is good or bad? Shall I, to escape
this, choose something which is certainly bad? Imprisonment, to be the
slave of the Eleven? A fine, to be a prisoner till I pay it?--which
comes to the same thing, as I cannot pay. Exile? If my fellow-citizens
cannot put up with me, how can I expect strangers to do so? The young
men will come to listen to me. If I repulse them, they will drive me
out; and if I do not their elders will drive me out, and I shall live
wandering from city to city.

Why cannot I go and hold my tongue, you may ask. That is the one thing
which I cannot do. That would be to disobey the god, and the life would
not be worth living, though you do not believe me. I might undertake to
pay a mina. However, as Plato and Crito and Apollodorus urge me to name
thirty minae, for which they will be security, I propose thirty minae.

* * * * *

Your enemies will reproach you, Athenians, for having put to death that
wise man Socrates. Yet you would have had but a short time to wait, for
I am old. I speak to those of you who have condemned me. I am condemned,
not for lack of argument, but because I have not chosen to plead after
the methods that would have been pleasant and flattering to you, but
degrading to me. There are things we may not do to escape death, for
baseness is worse than death, and swifter. Death has overtaken me, who
am old, but baseness my accusers, who are strong. Truth condemns them,
as you have condemned me, and each of us abides sentence, And for you
who have condemned me there will be a penalty swift and sure, and so I
take my leave of you.

But to you, my true judges, who voted for my acquittal, I would speak
while yet we may. I have to tell you that my warning daemon has in no way
withstood the course I have taken, and the reason, assuredly, is that I
have done what is best, gaining blessing, death being no evil at all.
For death is either only to cease from sensations altogether as in a
dreamless sleep, and that is no loss; or else it is a passing to another
place where all the dead are--the heroes, the poets, the wise men of
old. How priceless were it to hold converse with them and question them!
And surely the judges there pass no death-sentences!

But be you hopeful with regard to death, for to the good man, neither in
life nor in death