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General SummaryWHILE Xenophon was still absent in Asia with the Ten Thousand Greeks, his master and friend, the philosopher Socrates, suffered death at Athens as a person dangerous to the state. Socrates, who lived during the exciting epoch of the Peloponnesian War, gave himself up to the study of moral problems. His grotesque and even repulsive features contrasted strangely with the noble tone and elevated character of his doctrines. One of his pupils was Plato, a wealthy noble who abandoned a public career for the delights of philosophy. Plato’s Dialogues furnish us with an attractive picture of Socrates, both as a thinker and as a man. These works are really essays on philosophical themes, but are cast in the form of question and answer which Socrates had employed. In nearly all the dialogues, Socrates is a conspicuous figure; in some of them, indeed, he is throughout the only speaker. As we read these matchless productions of Plato’s genius, there rises before our eyes the figure of that poor and homely Athenian who spent all his days in an unwearied search for truth, and who became, at the last, a willing martyr to the cause of truth.
Historical SummaryThough condemned to death, Socrates is not to die at once. He must abide in prison until the arrival of a certain sacred ship from the island of Delos. During this interval of waiting, when no legal execution could take place, his friend Crito visits him. Crito begs the philosopher to accept the money which his disciples are ready to give him and with it to bribe his jailers and escape. But Socrates is not to be persuaded. As a reply to Crito, he represents the Laws of his native city as making this speech to him.
48. Socrates in Prison1
. . . "Listen then, Socrates, to us who have brought you up. Think not of life and children first, and of justice afterwards, but of justice first, that you may be justified before the princes of the world below. For neither will you nor any that belong to you be happier or holier or juster in this life, or happier in another, if you do as Crito bids. Now you depart in innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil; a victim not of the laws but of men. But if you go forth, returning evil for evil, and injury for injury, breaking the covenants and agreements which you have made with us, and wronging those whom you ought least to wrong, that is to say, yourself, your friends, your country, and us, we shall be angry with you while you live. And our brethren, the Laws in the world below, will receive you as an enemy; for they will know that you have done your best to destroy us. Listen, then, to us, and not to Crito."
Soc. This is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of the mystic; that voice, I say, is murmuring in my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other. And I know that anything more which
you may say will be in vain. Yet speak, if you have anything to say.
Cr. I have nothing to say, Socrates.
Soc. Leave me then to follow whithersoever God leads.
1 Plato, , 16–17.
Chicago: Crito in Readings in Early European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1926), 126. Original Sources, accessed December 4, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=DWMVV7CA5CS5DX6.
MLA: . Crito, in Readings in Early European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, Ginn and Company, 1926, page 126. Original Sources. 4 Dec. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=DWMVV7CA5CS5DX6.
Harvard: , Crito. cited in 1926, Readings in Early European History, ed. , Ginn and Company, Boston, pp.126. Original Sources, retrieved 4 December 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=DWMVV7CA5CS5DX6.
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