apology   

greatest good privately to everyone of you, thither I went, and sought
to persuade every man among you that he must look to himself, and seek
virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private interests, and look
to the state before he looks to the interests of the state; and that
this should be the order which he observes in all his actions. What
shall be done to such a one? Doubtless some good thing, O men of
Athens, if he has his reward; and the good should be of a kind
suitable to him. What would be a reward suitable to a poor man who is
your benefactor, who desires leisure that he may instruct you? There
can be no more fitting reward than maintenance in the Prytaneum, O men
of Athens, a reward which he deserves far more than the citizen who
has won the prize at Olympia in the horse or chariot race, whether the
chariots were drawn by two horses or by many. For I am in want, and he
has enough; and he only gives you the appearance of happiness, and I
give you the reality. And if I am to estimate the penalty justly, I
say that maintenance in the Prytaneum is the just return.
Perhaps you may think that I am braving you in saying this, as in what
I said before about the tears and prayers. But that is not the case. I
speak rather because I am convinced that I never intentionally wronged
anyone, although I cannot convince you of that - for we have had a
short conversation only; but if there were a law at Athens, such as
there is in other cities, that a capital cause should not be decided
in one day, then I believe that I should have convinced you; but now
the time is too short. I cannot in a moment refute great slanders;
and, as I am convinced that I never wronged another, I will assuredly
not wrong myself. I will not say of myself that I deserve any evil, or
propose any penalty. Why should I? Because I am afraid of the penalty
of death which Meletus proposes? When I do not know whether death is a
good or an evil, why should I propose a penalty which would certainly
be an evil? Shall I say imprisonment? And why should I live in prison,
and be the slave of the magistrates of the year - of the Eleven? Or
shall the penalty be a fine, and imprisonment until the fine is paid?
There is the same objection. I should have to lie in prison, for money
I have none, and I cannot pay. And if I say exile (and this may
possibly be the penalty which you will affix), I must indeed be
blinded by the love of life if I were to consider that when you, who
are my own citizens, cannot endure my discourses and words, and have
found them so grievous and odious that you would fain have done with
them, others are likely to endure me. No, indeed, men of Athens, that
is not very likely. And what a life should I lead, at my age,
wandering from city to city, living in ever-changing exile, and always
being driven out! For I am quite sure that into whatever place I go,
as here so also there, the young men will come to me; and if I drive
them away, their elders will drive me out at their desire: and if I
let them come, their fathers and friends will drive me out for their
sakes.
Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and
then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with
you? Now I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to
this. For if I tell you that this would be a disobedience to a divine
command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not
believe that I am serious; and if I say again that the greatest good
of man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that concerning
which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which
is unexamined is not worth living - that you are still less likely to
believe. And yet what I say is true, although a thing of which it is
hard for me to persuade you. Moreover, I am not accustomed to think
that I deserve any punishment. Had I money I might have proposed to
give you what I had, and have been none the worse. But you see that I
have none, and can only ask you to proportion the fine to my means.
However, I think that I could afford a minae, and therefore I propose
that penalty; Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus, my friends
here, bid me say thirty minae, and they will be the sureties. Well
then, say thirty minae, let that be the penalty; for that they will be