apology   

like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his
very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly
which God has given the state and all day long and in all places am
always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching
you. And as you will not easily find another like me, I would advise
you to spare me. I dare say that you may feel irritated at being
suddenly awakened when you are caught napping; and you may think that
if you were to strike me dead, as Anytus advises, which you easily
might, then you would sleep on for the remainder of your lives, unless
God in his care of you gives you another gadfly. And that I am given
to you by God is proved by this: - that if I had been like other men,
I should not have neglected all my own concerns, or patiently seen the
neglect of them during all these years, and have been doing yours,
coming to you individually, like a father or elder brother, exhorting
you to regard virtue; this I say, would not be like human nature. And
had I gained anything, or if my exhortations had been paid, there
would have been some sense in that: but now, as you will perceive, not
even the impudence of my accusers dares to say that I have ever
exacted or sought pay of anyone; they have no witness of that. And I
have a witness of the truth of what I say; my poverty is a sufficient
witness.
Someone may wonder why I go about in private, giving advice and
busying myself with the concerns of others, but do not venture to come
forward in public and advise the state. I will tell you the reason of
this. You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes
to me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the indictment.
This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice
which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am
going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what
stands in the way of my being a politician. And rightly, as I think.
For I am certain, O men of Athens, that if I had engaged in politics,
I should have perished long ago and done no good either to you or to
myself. And don't be offended at my telling you the truth: for the
truth is that no man who goes to war with you or any other multitude,
honestly struggling against the commission of unrighteousness and
wrong in the state, will save his life; he who will really fight for
the right, if he would live even for a little while, must have a
private station and not a public one.
I can give you as proofs of this, not words only, but deeds, which you
value more than words. Let me tell you a passage of my own life, which
will prove to you that I should never have yielded to injustice from
any fear of death, and that if I had not yielded I should have died at
once. I will tell you a story - tasteless, perhaps, and commonplace,
but nevertheless true. The only office of state which I ever held, O
men of Athens, was that of senator; the tribe Antiochis, which is my
tribe, had the presidency at the trial of the generals who had not
taken up the bodies of the slain after the battle of Arginusae; and
you proposed to try them all together, which was illegal, as you all
thought afterwards; but at the time I was the only one of the Prytanes
who was opposed to the illegality, and I gave my vote against you; and
when the orators threatened to impeach and arrest me, and have me
taken away, and you called and shouted, I made up my mind that I would
run the risk, having law and justice with me, rather than take part in
your injustice because I feared imprisonment and death. This happened
in the days of the democracy. But when the oligarchy of the Thirty was
in power, they sent for me and four others into the rotunda, and bade
us bring Leon the Salaminian from Salamis, as they wanted to execute
him. This was a specimen of the sort of commands which they were
always giving with the view of implicating as many as possible in
their crimes; and then I showed, not in words only, but in deed, that,
if I may be allowed to use such an expression, I cared not a straw for
death, and that my only fear was the fear of doing an unrighteous or
unholy thing. For the strong arm of that oppressive power did not
frighten me into doing wrong; and when we came out of the rotunda the