Melitus brought the original charge against Socrates:
"Melitus, Anytus, and Lycon, have attacked me; Melitus indeed being my enemy on account of the poets;"
Scorates quoted Homer in his defence:
"For, as Homer says, I am not sprung from an oak, nor from a rock, but from men."
and more:
Perhaps, however, some one will say, Are you not ashamed, Socrates, to have applied yourself to a study, through which you are now in danger of being put to death? To this person I shall justly reply, That you do not speak well, O man, if you think that life or death ought to be regarded by the man who is capable of being useful though but in a small degree; and that he ought not to consider this alone when he acts, whether he acts justly, or unjustly, and like a good or a bad man. For those demigods that died at Troy would, according to your reasoning, be vile characters, as well others as the son of Thetis, who so much despised the danger of death when compared with disgraceful conduct, that when his mother, who was a goddess, on his desiring to kill Hector, thus I think addressed him - My son, if you revenge the slaughter of your friend Patroclus, and kill Hector, you will yourself die, for said she, death awaits you as soon as Hector expires: - Notwithstanding this, he considered the danger of death as a trifle, and much more dreaded living basely, and not revenging his friends. For he says, May I immediately die, when I have inflicted just punishment on him who has acted unjustly, and not stay here an object of ridicule, by the crooked ships, and a burden to the ground? Do you think that he was solicitous about death and danger? For this, O Athenians, is in reality the case: wherever any one ranks himself, thinking it to be the best for him, or wherever he is ranked by the ruler, there as it appears to me he ought to abide, and encounter danger, neither paying attention to death nor to any thing else before that which is base. |
