CONDEMNED
To Die

O, ye foolish ones.  If only you had waited for a short time, my natural death would have happened of its own accord; for this truth to be made manifest you have only to observe the shakiness of my age, that I am even now far advanced in life, and near a certain death. But I say this not to all of you, but only to those who have voted openly to condemn me to die.

Perhaps you think, 0 foolish Athenians, that I have been convicted through the want of bold arguments, by which I might have persuaded you to let me live on, had I thought it right to do and say anything so that I might escape that punishment. Far otherwise: I have been convicted through want indeed, yet not of arguments, but of audacity and impudence, and of the inclination to say such things to you as you would have been so vain and agreeable to hear. 

Had I lamented and bewailed and done and said many other things unworthy of me, as I affirm, but such as you are so accustomed to hear from others. But neither did I then think that I ought, for the sake of avoiding danger, to do anything unworthy of a freeman in our city, nor do I now repent of having so defended myself; but I should much rather choose to die nobly, having so defended myself than to retreat in fear and live on in that way.

For neither in a trial nor in battle is it right that I {or anyone else} should employ every possible means in order to avoid death; for in battle it is frequently seen that a man might escape death simply by laying down his arms and throwing himself on the mercy of his pursuers. Then too there are many other devices available to us in every danger, by which we might avoid death, if a man dares to do and say everything available to him.

But to escape death is not difficult, 0 Athenians, but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but you -- my accusers -- being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter of that wickedness. And now I depart with head still held high, condemned by you to death; as being guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence and so must you. These things, perhaps, ought so to be happening, and I think that they are happening to me for the best in the next place after this one.

I desire to predict to you who have condemned me, this is what I see will be your fate: for I am now in that position from which men most frequently prophesy true, namely, when they are about to die and the heavens are opened unto them. I say then to you, the Athenians who have condemned me to death, that immediately after my death a punishment will overtake you, far more severe, by Zeus, than that which you have hoped to inflict upon me. For you have done this expedience, thinking you should be freed from the necessity of giving Athens an account of your hidden actions and thoughts.

The very opposite however, as I affirm now, will happen to you. Your accusers will be hounding you soon, more numerous than ever -- for while I yet lived the very acts you condemned in me served to restrain them, though you did not perceive it in these days gone past, or yet believe it even now; and your accusers will be more severe, inasmuch as they are younger and you will halt in confusion being more indignant. For, if you think that simply by putting gadflies like me to death that you will restrain anyone else from upbraiding you for not living honorably, you are much mistaken; for this method of escape is neither possible nor honorable, but that other avenue is most honorable and most easy, not to put a check upon others, but for a man to take heed to himself, how he may be most perfect.

Having predicted thus much to those of you who have condemned me, I take my leave of you without further thought for your welfare. But with you who have voted openly for my acquittal, I would gladly hold converse on what has now taken place, while the magistrates are busy and I am not yet carried to the place where I must die. Stay with me then, so long, 0 Athenians, for nothing hinders our conversing with each other, whilst we are permitted to do so; for I wish to make known to you, as being my friends, the meaning of that which has just now befallen me. To me then, 0 my judges, —and in calling you judges I call you rightly,—a strange thing has happened here. For the wonted prophetic voice of my guardian deity, on every former occasion, even in the most trifling affairs, opposed me, if I was about to do anything wrong; but now, that this has so publicly befallen me which ye yourselves behold, and which anyone would think and which is supposed to be the extremity of evil, yet neither when I departed from home in the morning did the warning of the god oppose me, nor when I came up here to the place of my trial, nor in my address when I was about to say anything; yet on other occasions it has frequently restrained me in very the midst of my speaking.  While I yet had hope of life I spoke with some faint, unknowing caution. 

But now that the hope of life has expired, that deity has never throughout this proceeding opposed me, either in what I did or said. Therefore I will tell you: what has befallen me now appears to be a blessing in my eyes; and it is impossible that we think rightly who suppose that death is an evil to be avoided. A great proof of this to me is the fact that it is impossible but that the accustomed signal should have opposed me, unless I had been about to meet with some good.  Moreover, we may hence conclude that there is great hope that any form of death is a blessing for us to embrace. For to die must be one of two things: for either the dead may be annihilated and have no sensation of anything what-ever; or, as it is said, there is a certain change and passage of the soul from one place and condition to another place and condition. And if it is a privation of all sensation, as it were, a sleep in which the sleeper has no dream, death would be a wonderful gain.

For I think that if anyone, having selected a night in which he slept so soundly as not to have had a dream, and having compared this night with all the other nights and days of his life, should be required on consideration to say how many days and nights he had passed better and more pleasantly than this night throughout his life, I think that not only a private person, but even a great king himself would find them easy to number in comparison with other days and nights.

If, therefore, death is a thing of this kind, I say it is a gain; for thus all futurity appears to be nothing more than one night. But if, on the other hand, death is a removal from hence to another place, and what is said be true, that all the dead are there waiting, what greater blessing can there be than this, my judges?

For if, on arriving at Hades, released from these who pretend to be judges, one shall find those who are true judges, and who are said to judge us there, Minos and Rhadamanthus, .(Eacus and Triptolemus, and such others of the demigods as were just during their own life, would this be a sad removal?

Consider this: At what price would you not estimate a conference with Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer? I indeed should be willing to die often, for an opportunity like that if this be true. For to me the sojourn there would be admirable, when I should meet with Palamedes, and Ajax, son of Telamon, and any other of the ancients who has died by an unjust sentence of their peers. The comparing my sufferings with theirs would, I think, be no unpleasing occupation. But the greatest pleasure would be to spend my time in questioning and examining the people there as I have done some of you here, and discovering who among them is wise, and who only fancies himself to be so but is not.

At what price, my judges, would not any one estimate the opportunity of questioning him who led that mighty army against Troy, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, or ten thousand others, whom one might mention, both men and women? with whom to converse and associate, and to question them and enlighten ourselves, would be an inconceivable happiness to any valiant soul.

Surely for that the judges there do not condemn us to further death; for in all other respects those who live there are more happy than those that are lingering here, and they are henceforth immortal, if at least half what is said on earth be true. You, therefore, 0 my judges, ought to entertain good hopes with respect to death, and to meditate on this one truth, that to a good man nothing is evil, neither while living nor when dead, nor are his concerns neglected by the gods that govern in our affairs. And what has befallen me is not the effect of chance; but this is clear to me, that now to die, and be freed from my cares, is better for me.

On this account the warning in no way has turned me aside; and I bear no resentment toward those who condemned me, or against my accusers, although they did not condemn and accuse me with this intention, but they have done so, thinking to injure me: and in this intent they deserve to be blamed.

Thus much, however, I beg of them. Take care to similarly punish my sons, when they grow up, 0 judges, pain them as I have pained you, if they appear to you to treasure up more care for riches -- or anything else -- before virtue, and if they vaunt themselves to be something when they are nothing, reproach them even as I have done you, for not attending to the duties they ought, and for conceiving themselves to be something grander when they. are worth nothing.

If ye will only do this, both I and my sons shall have met with just treatment at your hands. But I see it is now time to depart, me to die, and you to live. But which of us is going to a better state is known only by God.