Gorgias

Soc.

Just consider what defence a person like that would make at such a pass, if the prosecutor should speak against him thus: Children, this fellow has done you all a great deal of personal mischief, and he destroys even the youngest of you by cutting and burning, and starves and chokes you to distraction, giving you nasty bitter draughts and forcing you to fast and thirst; not like me, who used to gorge you with abundance of nice things of every sort. What do you suppose a doctor brought to this sad pass could say for himself? Or if he spoke the truth—All this I did, my boys, for your health—how great, think you, would be the outcry from such a bench as that? A loud one, would it not?

Call.

I daresay: one must suppose so.

Soc.

Then you suppose he would be utterly at a loss what to say?

Call.

Quite so.

Soc.

Such, however, I am sure would be my own fate if I were brought before the court. For not only shall I have no pleasures to plead as having been provided by me—which they regard as services and benefits, whereas I envy neither those who provide them nor those for whom they are provided—but if anyone alleges that I either corrupt the younger men by reducing them to perplexity, or revile the older with bitter expressions whether in private or in public, I shall be unable either to tell the truth and say—It is on just ground that I say all this, and it is your interest that I serve thereby, gentlemen of the jury—or to say anything else; and so I daresay any sort of thing, as luck may have it, will befall me.

Call.

Then do you think, Socrates, that a man in such a case and with no power of standing up for himself makes a fine figure in a city?

Soc.

Yes, if he had that one resource, Callicles, which you have repeatedly admitted; if he had stood up for himself by avoiding any unjust word or deed in regard either to men or to gods. For this has been repeatedly admitted by us to be the most valuable kind of self-protection. Now if I were convicted of inability to extend this sort of protection to either myself or another, I should be ashamed, whether my conviction took place before many or few, or as between man and man; and if that inability should bring about my death, I should be sorely vexed: but if I came to my end through a lack of flattering rhetoric, I am quite sure you would see me take my death easily. For no man fears the mere act of dying, except he be utterly irrational and unmanly; doing wrong is what one fears: for to arrive in the nether world having one’s soul full fraught with a heap of misdeeds is the uttermost of all evils. And now, if you do not mind, I would like to tell you a tale to show you that the case is so.

Call.

Well, as you have completed the rest of the business, go on and complete this also.