SOCRATES
of a judge, but of an orator to speak the truth.
Perhaps, however, some one may say, 'Are you not ashamed, Socrates, to have pursued a study from which you are now in danger of dying?' To such a person I should answer with good reason: You do not say well, friend, if you think that a man, who is even of the least value, ought to take into the account the risk of life or death, and ought not to consider that alone when he performs any action, whether he is acting justly or unjustly and the part of a good man or bad man.
I then should be acting strangely, O Athenians, if, when the generals whom you chose to command me assigned me my post at Potidaæ, at Amphipolis, and at Delium, I then remained where they posted me, like any other person, and encountered the danger of death, but when the deity, as I thought and believed, assigned it as my duty to pass my life in the study of philosophy, and in examining myself and others, I should on that occasion, through fear of death or anything else whatsoever, desert my post. Strange indeed would it be, and then in truth any one might justly bring me to trial, and accuse me of not believing in the gods, from disobeying the oracle, fearing death, and thinking myself to be wise when I am not.
For to fear death, O Athenians, is nothing else than to appear to be wise without being so: for it is to appear to know what one does not know. For no one knows but that death is the greatest
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