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Cr. There is no help, Socrates.
Soc. Then will they not say: "You, Socrates, are breaking the
covenants and agreements which you made with us at your leisure, not
in any haste or under any compulsion or deception, but having had
seventy years to think of them, during which time you were at
liberty to leave the city, if we were not to your mind, or if our
covenants appeared to you to be unfair. You had your choice, and might
have gone either to Lacedaemon or Crete, which you often praise for
their good government, or to some other Hellenic or foreign State.
Whereas you, above all other Athenians, seemed to be so fond of the
State, or, in other words, of us her laws (for who would like a
State that has no laws?), that you never stirred out of her: the halt,
the blind, the maimed, were not more stationary in her than you
were. And now you run away and forsake your agreements. Not so,
Socrates, if you will take our advice; do not make yourself ridiculous
by escaping out of the city.
"For just consider, if you transgress and err in this sort of way,
what good will you do, either to yourself or to your friends? That
your friends will be driven into exile and deprived of citizenship, or
will lose their property, is tolerably certain; and you yourself, if
you fly to one of the neighboring cities, as, for example, Thebes or
Megara, both of which are well-governed cities, will come to them as
an enemy, Socrates, and their government will be against you, and
all patriotic citizens will cast an evil eye upon you as a subverter
of the laws, and you will confirm in the minds of the judges the
justice of their own condemnation of you. For he who is a corrupter of
the laws is more than likely to be corrupter of the young and
foolish portion of mankind. Will you then flee from well-ordered
cities and virtuous men? and is existence worth having on these terms?
Or will you go to them without shame, and talk to them, Socrates?
And what will you say to them? What you say here about virtue and
justice and institutions and laws being the best things among men?
Would that be decent of you? Surely not. But if you go away from
well-governed States to Crito's friends in Thessaly, where there is
great disorder and license, they will be charmed to have the tale of
your escape from prison, set off with ludicrous particulars of the
manner in which you were wrapped in a goatskin or some other disguise,
and metamorphosed as the fashion of runaways is- that is very
likely; but will there be no one to remind you that in your old age
you violated the most sacred laws from a miserable desire of a
little more life? Perhaps not, if you keep them in a good temper;
but if they are out of temper you will hear many degrading things; you
will live, but how?- as the flatterer of all men, and the servant of
all men; and doing what?- eating and drinking in Thessaly, having gone
abroad in order that you may get a dinner. And where will be your fine
sentiments about justice and virtue then? Say that you wish to live
for the sake of your children, that you may bring them up and
educate them- will you take them into Thessaly and deprive them of
Athenian citizenship? Is that the benefit which you would confer
upon them? Or are you under the impression that they will be better
cared for and educated here if you are still alive, although absent
from them; for that your friends will take care of them? Do you
fancy that if you are an inhabitant of Thessaly they will take care of
them, and if you are an inhabitant of the other world they will not
take care of them? Nay; but if they who call themselves friends are
truly friends, they surely will.
"Listen, then, Socrates, to us who have brought you up. Think not of
life and children first, and of justice afterwards, but of justice
first, that you may be justified before the princes of the world
below. For neither will you nor any that belong to you be happier or
holier or juster in this life, or happier in another, if you do as
Crito bids. Now you depart in innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of
evil; a victim, not of the laws, but of men. But if you go forth,
returning evil for evil, and injury for injury, breaking the covenants
and agreements which you have made with us, and wronging those whom
you ought least to wrong, that is to say, yourself, your friends, your
country, and us, we shall be angry with you while you live, and our
brethren, the laws in the world below, will receive you as an enemy;
for they will know that you have done your best to destroy us. Listen,
then, to us and not to Crito."
This is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like
the sound of the flute in the ears of the mystic; that voice, I say,
is humming in my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other. And I
know that anything more which you will say will be in vain. Yet speak,
if you have anything to say.
Cr. I have nothing to say, Socrates.
Soc. Then let me follow the intimations of the will of God.
-THE END-
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