Socrates, in prison; Criton, his lifelong friend.
SOCRATES: Why have you come at this time of day, Criton? Isn’t it still early?
CRITON: Very early.
SOCRATES: About what time?
CRITON: Just before dawn.
SOCRATES: I wonder how the prison porter was willing to answer the door for you.
CRITON: He is used to me now, Socrates; I often come here, and I have done a little something for him.
SOCRATES: Have you just come? Been here long?
CRITON: A fairly long time.
SOCRATES: Then why didn’t you wake me up, instead of sitting by me silent?
CRITON: Oh, goodness, I couldn’t do that, Socrates; I wish I were not so sleepless and sad myself. But I have been wondering at you, ever so long, to see how sweetly you sleep. I took care not to wake you, that you might be as comfortable as possible. I have often thought hitherto what a happy disposition you have had all your life, but most of all in this present trouble. How easily and gently you bear it!
SOCRATES: Indeed, Criton, it would be quite out of tune to be vexed at my age if I must soon end.
CRITON: Many other people, Socrates, as old as you, are caught in troubles like this, but their age does not keep them from being vexed at their fortune.
SOCRATES: Yes, that’s true. But tell me, why have you come so early?
CRITON: With news, my dear Socrates, painful news—not for you, as it appears, but for me and all your friends painful and burdensome, and I think I shall find it heavier than anyone else.
SOCRATES: What’s the news? That the ship has come from Delos,* which means I must die?
CRITON: She has not come in yet, but I think she will today; that’s what we heard from some men who had come from Sunion and left her there. Clearly then, to judge from this, she will come in today; then tomorrow it will be necessary, my dear Socrates, for you to end your life.
SOCRATES: Well, my dear Criton, good luck come with her; if that is God’s will, so be it. However, I don’t think she will come in today.
CRITON: What makes you think that?
SOCRATES: I’ll tell you. I suppose I am to die the day after that ship comes in.
CRITON: That is what the authorities in these matters say.
SOCRATES: Thus I don’t think she’ll come on this day now beginning, but tomorrow. I infer this from a dream I had this very night just past, a little while ago. Really, it was most timely that you did not wake me!
CRITON: What was the dream, then?
SOCRATES: I thought a woman came to me, handsome and well grown, and dressed in white; she called to me and said, “Socrates,
“On the third day you’ll reach fertile Phthia.”†
CRITON: A strange dream, Socrates!
SOCRATES: Not at all, quite clear, Criton, as I think, anyhow.
CRITON: Too clear, it seems. But O you perverse man! Do let me persuade you, Socrates, even now, and save your life! For me it will be two troubles, not one; I shall lose such a friend as I never shall find again, and besides that, many people who do not know us well will think that I might have saved your life by spending money, and didn’t care. But what can be a worse reputation than to be thought to care more for money than friends? Most people will never believe that you yourself wouldn’t leave the place though we did our best!
SOCRATES: Bless you, my dear Criton, what matters it to us what the many think? All the most decent people, who are more worth consideration, will think things were done as they were done.
CRITON: But I suppose you see, Socrates, that we are bound also to care what the many think; even as what is happening now shows clearly that the many can work mischief—not trifles, but almost the greatest mischief possible, if one gets a bad name among them.
SOCRATES: My dear Criton, I only wish the many could do the greatest mischief, so that they could also do the greatest good! That would be well indeed. As it is, they can do neither; for they cannot make a man either wise or foolish; they do things quite at random.
CRITON: Then let that pass—be it so; but just tell me, Socrates, are you anxious about me and your other friends? Do you think that if you leave this place, the informers will give us trouble and say we stole you away, and we may be forced to lose great sums, perhaps all our property, or something worse may happen to us? If you are afraid of that, don’t worry; it is right for us to risk that danger and even worse than that if need be, so long as we save you. Let me persuade you, please do!
SOCRATES: Yes, I am anxious about that and many other things too.
CRITON: Then don’t be afraid about that. After all, it is no great sum they want in order to save your life and get you out of this. Those informers again—can’t you see how cheap they are? There’s no need of much money for them. And all my money is yours, quite enough as I think; next, if you are troubled about me a bit, and don’t think I ought to spend mine, there are these foreigners ready to help you. One has actually brought enough for the very purpose—Simmias the Theban; Cebes is ready, and plenty more. So don’t be afraid about that, I tell you, don’t give up trying to save yourself, and don’t worry about what to do with yourself when you get free, as you said in court. They will be glad of you in many other places, wherever you go. If you like to go to Thessaly, I have friends there who will make much of you and keep you safe, so that no one in Thessaly shall hurt you.
Then again, Socrates, I do not think you are undertaking a right thing by throwing yourself away when you can be free. What’s the good of taking pains to do for yourself exactly what your enemies would like to do, and what those who tried to destroy you want? Besides, I think you are betraying your own sons also; it is in your power to bring them up and educate them, and now you will go off and leave them, and so far as you are concerned, they must take their life as they find it; they will probably get only what orphans do get in their orphan state. Either one ought not to have sons, or one ought to share their hardships in training and educating them, and you seem to me to choose the easiest way. But you ought to choose what a good and brave man would choose, especially when you are forever telling us that you cared for virtue all your life. I am ashamed myself, for my own sake and our friends; I am afraid the whole business about you may be thought to have been done because we were cowards, that the case was brought into court when it need not have been, and the whole course of the case and this end of it will be like a piece of mockery, that we lost our chance by some baseness and cowardice in ourselves—because we did not save you and you did not save yourself, when it was possible and easy if there had been the least good in us. Then think, Socrates, whether this is not bad and disgraceful too, for both you and us. Consider then what to do—or rather, there is no time now to consider, the considering ought to have been done—and there is only one plan; for in this coming night this whole thing must be finished with, and if we delay, it is impossible and we can’t do it any longer. Do listen to me, Socrates, I beg and pray you—do not refuse!
SOCRATES: My dearest Criton, your anxiety would be precious if there were any right in it; otherwise, the greater it is, so much the harder to bear. Then we must examine whether we ought to do it or not; for my way is and always has been to obey no one and nothing, except the reasoning which seems to me best when I draw my conclusions. Well, what I have said in the past I must not throw overboard now because this fortune has come to me; it seems quite as reasonable to me now, I put the same things first and respect them as I did then. And if we do not find something better to say now, be sure I will not give way to you, not even if the power of the enemy plays the bugbear to us more than ever, as if we were so many children, sending us prisons and deaths and confiscations of goods. Then how could we most decently consider the matter? Let us first take up what you said about opinions, and ask whether it was always right or not—that we must attend to some opinions, but not to all? Or was it right before I was condemned to death, but now it becomes clear that we talked for the sake of talking, and it was really a game of nonsense? What I desire is, Criton, to examine along with you whether it will prove to be different now that I am in this case, or the same; and then we will say good-bye to it, or else obey it. This is very much what used to be said, I think, by those who believed they had something serious to say, and the same as I said just now: that of the opinions which people hold, we ought to value some highly, but not all. In heaven’s name, Criton, don’t you think that was right? For you, in all human probability, are outside; you are not going to die tomorrow; and you could not be led astray by the present circumstances. Think then: Don’t you believe it was right enough to say that we must not respect all the opinions of men, but only some? And not the opinions of all men, but only of some? What do you say? Was not this rightly said?
CRITON: Quite rightly.
SOCRATES: To respect the good opinions, and not the bad?
CRITON: Yes.
SOCRATES: The good ones are those of the wise, the bad ones those of the foolish?
CRITON: Of course.
SOCRATES: Very well, how did it go on? A man practising athletics, and making that his business—ought he to pay attention to everyone’s praise and blame and opinion, or only those of one, who happens to be a physician or a trainer?
CRITON: Only one.
SOCRATES: Then he ought to fear the blame and welcome the praise of that one, and not of the others.
CRITON: That is plain, surely.
SOCRATES: Then he must act and exercise and eat and drink following the opinion of that one, the overseer and expert, rather than all the others put together.
CRITON: That is true.
SOCRATES: Very well. But if he disobeys the one, and disregards his opinion and his praises, but regards those of the many who are not experts, will he not suffer harm?
CRITON: Surely he will.
SOCRATES: What is that harm, and where does it lead, and on what part of the disobedient man does it act?
CRITON: Clearly on the body, for that is what it ruins.
SOCRATES: True. Then in everything else, Criton—but we must not go into every detail—and in particular, the just and the unjust, the ugly and the beautiful, the good and the bad, which is what we now have in mind, are we to follow the opinion of the many, and to fear that, or the opinion of the one, if there is an expert whom we ought to respect and fear rather than all the others together? And if we do not follow him, we shall maltreat and destroy that which became better by justice and was ruined by injustice? Or is all this nothing?
CRITON: I think it true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Now then, if we ruin that which is made better by health and is destroyed by disease, by obeying the opinion which is not the expert’s, is life worth living when that has been destroyed? And that is the body, I suppose, isn’t it?
CRITON: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then is life worth living for us with a body miserable and destroyed?
CRITON: Not at all.
SOCRATES: But is life worth living for us, with that destroyed which injustice maltreats and justice benefits? Or do we think the body more important than that?—whatever part of us it is, which is concerned with justice and injustice?
CRITON: Not at all.
SOCRATES: But this part is more precious?
CRITON: Very much more.
SOCRATES: Then, my good friend, we must not consider at all what the many will say of us, but only the expert in justice and injustice, and what he will say, the one, and truth herself. So first of all you were wrong at the beginning, when you began by saying that we must consider the opinion of the many on the just and the beautiful and the good and their opposites. “But look here,” someone might say, “the many are able to put us to death.”
CRITON: That also is surely clear; he might say so, Socrates. Quite true.
SOCRATES: You surprise me, my friend! This argument we have just run through seems to be still much the same as before! Here is another. I want you to see whether this one still holds for us or not; that we must value most not living, but living well.
CRITON: Yes, that holds.
SOCRATES: Well and beautifully and justly are the same? Does that hold or not?
CRITON: It holds.
SOCRATES: Then after our admissions we must examine whether it is just that I try to get out of this, or not just; and if it seems just, let us try—if not, leave it alone. But the considerations which you speak of, about spending money and public opinion and bringing up children, perhaps these may really be, Criton, speculations of people—I mean the many—who lightly put to death and would as lightly bring to life again if they were able, all with no good reason. But for us, since the argument gives us no choice, it may be that we have nothing to examine except only what we said just now: shall we be doing right in paying money to any who will get me out of this, and in thanking them too, and in getting out or being got out ourselves, or in truth shall we be doing wrong in all this; and if it proves that we shall be acting wrongly, it may be that we ought not to consider whether we ought to stay here quietly and die or suffer anything and everything else—but only the question of doing wrong.
CRITON: I think you argue well, Socrates; what are we to do, then?
SOCRATES: Let us consider together, my good friend, and if you can contradict me when I speak, do, and I will obey; if not, then cease, bless you! Don’t go on singing the same old song, that I must get out of this against the will of the Athenians! I would give a great deal to act with your approval, and not against you. Look at the beginning of the investigation; see if you think it is good enough, and try to answer the question as you may think best.
CRITON: I will try.
SOCRATES: Do we say that no one should willingly do wrong in any way, or may he do wrong in some way but not in every way? That it is neither good nor beautiful to do wrong at all, as it was often admitted by us in time past? Or are all those past admissions of ours thrown away in these few days, and all this while, Criton, we old men conversing earnestly together were no better than children and never saw it? Is it not most assuredly exactly as we said then: Whether the many say so or not, and whether we may have to suffer things even harder than these or gentler than these, to do wrong is really both evil and ugly for the doer in every way—do we say this or not?
CRITON: We do.
SOCRATES: Then we must not do wrong at all.
CRITON: We must not.
SOCRATES: Not even, when wronged, wrong in return, as the many think, since we must do no wrong at all.
CRITON: It seems so.
SOCRATES: Very well. Must we injure, Criton, or not?
CRITON: We should not, I suppose, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Very well. To injure in turn when ill-treated—is that right, as the many say, or wrong?
CRITON: Certainly not right.
SOCRATES: For I suppose to do evil to people is the same as doing wrong.
CRITON: Truly said.
SOCRATES: Then we must not do wrong in return, or do evil to anyone in the world, however we may be treated by them. Take care, my dear Criton, when you agree to this, that you don’t agree against your real opinion; for I know that only a few do believe it, or ever will. Then those who believe it and those who do not have no common principle, but necessarily they must despise each other when they see their different principles. Consider them carefully yourself, whether you agree with mine and believe the same, and let us begin our deliberation from that: I mean, we start from this rule—it is never right to do any injustice, or to do injustice in return, or, when one is evilly treated, to defend oneself by doing evil in return; or do you back out and deny my principle? I have always believed it, and so I do now; but if you think something else, speak up and tell me. If you abide by what we used to think, hear what follows.
CRITON: I do abide by that, I do think the same: please go on.
SOCRATES: Then I say again, the next thing—or rather I ask—Should a man do what he has agreed with someone to be right, or may he break his agreement?
CRITON: He should do it.
SOCRATES: That granted, then, look here: If we clear out from here without first getting the city’s consent, are we doing evil, or not, to some people, and that, too, to people we least ought to harm?
CRITON: I cannot answer your question, Socrates; I don’t understand it.
SOCRATES: Well, look at it like this. Suppose, just as I was about to run away from here (or whatever it should be called), the Laws and the Commonweal of the state were to appear and ask: “Tell me, Socrates, what have you in mind to do? In trying to do this, can’t you see that you are trying to destroy us, the Laws, and the whole state, as far as you can do it? Or do you think it possible that a city can exist and not be overturned, where sentence given has no force but is made null by private persons and destroyed?” What shall I say, Criton, to this and other such things? For one could say much, especially an orator, in pleading about the destruction of the law which lays down that sentences given must be carried out. Or shall I answer the Laws, “The reason is that the state wronged me, and did not judge the case right”? Shall we say this, or what?
CRITON: This, of course, Socrates.
SOCRATES: What then, suppose the Laws reply, “Was that the agreement between us, Socrates? Or was it to abide by whatever judgments the state may make?” If I should be surprised at their saying this, perhaps they might say: “Socrates, do not be surprised at what we say, but answer, since you are accustomed to the use of questions and answers. If you please, what do you complain of in us and the state that you try to destroy us? First of all, did we not bring you into life, and through us your father took your mother, and begat you? Tell us then, are the marriage laws those of us you find fault with? Do you think there is something wrong with them?” “I have no fault to find,” I should say. “Well, the laws about feeding the child and the education in which you were brought up. Did not those which had that duty do well in directing your father to educate you in mind and body?” “Yes,” I should say. “Very well. When you had been born and brought up and educated, could you say in the first place that you were not our offspring and our slave, you and your ancestors also? And if this is so, do you think you have equal rights with us, and whatever we try to do to you, do you think you also have a right to do to us? Why, against your father you had no equal rights, or against a master, if you had one, so that you might do back whatever was done to you; if you were scolded you could not scold back, if beaten you could not beat back, and there were many other such things: but against your country, it seems, and the Laws, you shall be allowed to do it! So that, if we try to destroy you because we think it right, then you shall try to destroy us the Laws and your country, as far as you can, and you will say you do right in this, you whose care is set upon virtue in very truth? Are you so wise that you failed to see that something else is more precious than father and mother and all your ancestors besides—your country, something more reverend, more holy, of greater value, as the gods judge, and any men that have sense? You must honour and obey and conciliate your country when angry, more than a father; you must either persuade her, or do whatever she commands; you must bear in quiet anything she bids you bear, be it stripes or prison; or if she leads you to war, to be wounded or to die, this you must do, and it is right; you must not give way or retreat or leave your post, but in war and in court and everywhere you must do whatever city and country commands, or else convince her where the right lies. Violence is not allowed against mother or father, much less against your country.” What shall we answer to this, Criton? Shall we say the Laws are speaking the truth, or not?
CRITON: I think they are.
SOCRATES: The Laws might say, perhaps, “See then, Socrates, whether we are speaking the truth when we say that you do wrong to us now in this attempt. We who brought you into being, who brought you up, educated you, gave you and all the other citizens a share of all the beautiful things we could, yet we proclaim, by granting permission to any of the Athenians who wishes that when he has passed the muster* and sees the public business and us the Laws, anyone who does not like us has leave to take what is his and go where he will. None of us Laws will stand in the way or dissuade him; if one of you does not like us and the city and wishes to go to a colony, or if he prefers to emigrate somewhere else, he may go wherever he wishes and take whatever is his. But if any one of you remains, when he sees in what manner we decide lawsuits and manage other public business, we say that he has now agreed in fact to do whatever we command; and we say that the disobedient man does wrong in three ways when he disobeys us: firstly, because we are his parents, secondly because we are his nurturers, and thirdly, because he agreed to obey us and neither obeys us nor convinces us if we do anything not right; although we give him his chance, and we do not savagely command him to do what we bid, but we leave him a choice, either to do it or to convince us—and he does neither. These charges will lie upon you also, Socrates, if you do what you design; and on you more than anyone else in the whole country.” Suppose I say then, “Why so, pray?”—perhaps they might retort that I have made this agreement with them more completely than anyone else in the city. “Socrates,” they would say, “we have great proofs that you are pleased with us and the city. You would never have been so remarkably more constant in living here than the other Athenians, if you had not been remarkably more pleased with us. You never went out of the city to a holy festival, or anywhere else at all, except sometimes on campaign; you never made any other journey abroad like other people; you had no desire to see other cities or to know other laws, but we and our city were enough for you: so completely you chose us and agreed to live as a citizen under us, and indeed got your family in the city, which obviously pleased you. Further, in the court itself, it was open to you to propose the penalty of banishment, if you wished, and to do with the consent of the city what you now attempt to do without it. Then you gave yourself airs, and pretended that you did not object to die, but you chose death before banishment, as you said; and now are you not ashamed of that talk, when you do not respect us Laws, trying as you are to destroy us, but you do what the commonest slave would do, you try to take to your heels, contrary to the agreements and contracts by which you consented to live as a citizen with us. First then, answer us even this, whether we tell the truth when we say you agreed to live in conformity with us, in fact although not in word, or whether that is not true.” What are we to say to this, Criton? Must we not agree?
CRITON: We must indeed, Socrates.
SOCRATES: They would say then: “And so you are breaking your bargains and agreements with us, which you made under no compulsion, and not deceived; you were not compelled to decide in a short time, but you had seventy years in which you could have gone away, if you did not like us, or if the agreements did not seem to you just. But you did not prefer Lacedaimon* or Crete, which you always declare to be under good laws, nor any other city, Hellenic or barbarian; but you were less out of town than the lame or the blind or the others who are maimed: so much more remarkably than the other Athenians you liked the city and us, the Laws, that is clear—for what city could please without laws? And now then, will you not abide by your agreements? Yes, if you obey us, Socrates, and do not make yourself ridiculous by leaving the city.
“For consider again: Suppose you do thus break and violate any bit of them, what good will you do to yourself or your friends? It is plain enough that your friends themselves also will risk being banished and deprived of their citizen’s rights, or losing all their property. And you yourself, if you go to one of the cities nearest, Thebes or Megara—for both are under good laws—you will come as an enemy, Socrates, to their constitution, and whoever have care for their own cities will think you a destroyer of laws, and look askance at you, and you will confirm the judges in their opinion, so that they will believe they decided aright in their judgment; for whoever is a destroyer of laws would surely be thought to be a corrupter of young men and foolish people. Then will you avoid well-governed cities and the most decent men? If you do, will your life be worth living? Or will you approach these, and will you be shameless enough to talk—how, Socrates? The same sort of talk as here, how virtue and justice is most precious for mankind, and law and order? Don’t you think that the whole business of Socrates will be a notorious, nasty story? You must think so. And suppose you decamp from these places, and go to the friends of Criton in Thessaly. The greatest disorder and laxity is found there, and perhaps they would like to hear from you how comically you played truant from that prison with some disguise on, how you changed your looks with a rough cloak or such things as runaways wrap round them. Won’t someone say, ‘You, an old man, with probably only a short time left for life; did you dare to break the greatest laws and do you still shamefully desire to live?’ Perhaps no one will, if you do not make yourself disagreeable to anyone; if you do, Socrates, you will hear plenty of ugly names to your disgrace. So you will live, at every creature’s beck and every creature’s slave; and what will be your business?—eating and drinking in Thessaly, as if you had travelled abroad to dine in Thessaly! Where will your talks be, your talks about justice and all the other virtues? Suppose you want to live for the children’s sake, to bring them up and educate them. Will you take them to Thessaly, and bring them up and educate them there, and make them foreigners, that they may enjoy that too? Perhaps not, but if they are brought up here while you live, will they be better brought up and educated better while you are separated from them? Yes, for your friends will care for them. Will they care for them then if you migrate to Thessaly, but not if you migrate to Hades? Oh yes, we must believe that they will, if there is any good in those who say they are your friends.
“Then listen to us, Socrates, who reared you; do not value children or life or anything else above the right, so that when you come to the world below you may have all these things to plead before the magistrates there. For if you do what you intend, things clearly do not seem any better for you in this world, and you will find no more justice and piety here, nor will any of your people; and when you come to the next world it will be no better. As things are, if you depart, you will depart wronged not by us, the Laws, but by human beings; but if you escape in this ugly way, after requiting wrong with wrong and damage with damage, and after breaking your own bargains and agreements with us, and doing evil to those you least ought to wrong, yourself and your friends and your country and us, then we shall be angry with you living, and in the next world our brothers the Laws in the house of Hades will not receive you as a friend, for they will know that you tried to destroy us as far as you could. But do not let Criton persuade you to do what he said; let us rather persuade you.”
This, I assure you, my dear comrade Criton, is what I seem to hear, as the mystic revellers think they hear the pipes; so in my ears the sound of these words keeps humming and makes me deaf to other things. As far as I can see, you may be sure that whatever you say contrary to this, you will say in vain. However, if you think you can do any good, speak.
CRITON: But, my dear Socrates, I have nothing to say.
SOCRATES: Then let it be, Criton, and let us do in this way, since in this way God is leading us.