Memorabilia

When anyone was in need of help that human wisdom was unable to give he advised him to resort to divination; for he who knew the means whereby the gods give guidance to men concerning their affairs never lacked divine counsel.

As for his claim that he was forewarned by the deity what he ought to do and what not to do, some may think that it must have been a delusion because he was condemned to death. But they should remember two facts. First, he had already reached such an age, that had he not died then, death must have come to him soon after. Secondly, he escaped the most irksome stage of life and the inevitable diminution of mental powers, and instead won glory by the moral strength revealed in the wonderful honesty and frankness and probity of his defence, and in the equanimity and manliness with which he bore the sentence of death.

In fact it is admitted that there is no record of death more nobly borne. For he was forced to live for thirty days after the verdict was given, because it was the month of the Dêlia,[*](See Plato, Phaedo, p. 58 b. The festival was held in the month Thargelion, our May.) and the law did not allow any public execution to take place until the sacred embassy had returned from Delos. During this interval, as all his intimate acquaintances could see, he continued to live exactly as before; and, in truth, before that time he had been admired above all men for his cheerfulness and serenity.

How, then, could man die more nobly? Or what death could be nobler than the death most nobly faced? What death more blessed than the noblest? Or what dearer to the gods than the most blessed?

I will repeat what Hermogenes, son of Hipponicus, told me about him. When Meletus had actually formulated his indictment, he said, Socrates talked freely in my presence, but made no reference to the case. I told him that he ought to be thinking about his defence. His first remark was, Don’t you think that I have been preparing for it all my life? And when I asked him how, he said that he had been constantly occupied in the consideration of right and wrong, and in doing what was right and avoiding what was wrong, which he regarded as the best preparation for a defence.

Then I said, Don’t you see, Socrates, that the juries in our courts are apt to be misled by argument, so that they often put the innocent to death, and acquit the guilty? Ah, yes, Hermogenes, he answered, but when I did try to think out my defence to the jury, the deity at once resisted.