Apology

​For if someone, having arrived in Hades, having got rid of these who claim to be judges, will find the true judges, who indeed are said to judge there, Minos and Rhadamanthys and Aeacus and Triptolemus and all the other demigods who were just in their own lives, would the journey be a bad one? Or again, to associate with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer, at what price would any of you accept this? For I am willing to die many times if these things are true. Since for me myself also, the stay there would be wonderful, whenever I should meet Palamedes and Ajax the son of Telamon, and if any other of the ancients has died because of an unjust judgment, comparing my own experiences with theirs—as I think, it would not be unpleasant—and especially, the greatest thing, to spend time examining and searching those there just like those here, as to who among them is wise and who thinks he is, but is not. At what price, gentlemen of the jury, would one accept to examine the one who led the great army against Troy, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, or countless others whom one might mention, both men and women, with whom to converse and to associate and to examine there would be an inconceivable happiness? In any case, surely they do not put people to death there for this; for not only are those there happier than those here in other respects, but they are also immortal for the rest of time, if indeed what is said is true. But you too, gentlemen of the jury, must be of good hope towards death, and keep this one thing in mind as true, that nothing bad can happen to a good man, either in life or after death, nor are his affairs neglected by the gods. Nor have my own affairs now happened by chance, but this is clear to me, that to die now and to be released from troubles was better for me. For this reason, too, the sign did not turn me back anywhere, and I, for my part, am not at all angry with those who voted to condemn me and with my accusers. And yet they did not vote to condemn me and accuse me with this intention, but thinking to harm me; this is worthy of blame in them. This much, however, I beg of them: when my sons grow up, punish them, gentlemen, by causing them the very same pain that I caused you, if they seem to you to care for money or anything else before virtue, and if they think they are something when they are nothing, reproach them just as I reproached you, because they do not care for what they ought, and they think they are something when they are worthy of nothing.

​And if you do this, I shall have received justice from you, both myself and my sons. But indeed it is now time to go, for me to die, and for you to live; but which of us goes to a better thing is hidden from everyone except the god.