apology   

was leaving my house and going out in the morning, or when I was going
up into this court, or while I was speaking, at anything which I was
going to say; and yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a
speech; but now in nothing I either said or did touching this matter
has the oracle opposed me. What do I take to be the explanation of
this? I will tell you. I regard this as a proof that what has happened
to me is a good, and that those of us who think that death is an evil
are in error. This is a great proof to me of what I am saying, for the
customary sign would surely have opposed me had I been going to evil
and not to good.
Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great
reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: - either
death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men
say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to
another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a
sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of
dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to
select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams,
and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life,
and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the
course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think
that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king,
will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others.
Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is
then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another
place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my
friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the
pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the
professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are
said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and
Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own
life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give
if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer?
Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I, too, shall have a
wonderful interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and
Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered
death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure,
as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I
shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as
in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who
pretends to be wise, and is not. What would not a man give, O judges,
to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or
Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What
infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking
them questions! For in that world they do not put a man to death for
this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in
this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.
Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a
truth - that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after
death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own
approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that to die
and be released was better for me; and therefore the oracle gave no
sign. For which reason also, I am not angry with my accusers, or my
condemners; they have done me no harm, although neither of them meant
to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.
Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I
would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you
trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about
riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be
something when they are really nothing, - then reprove them, as I have
reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care,
and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And
if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your
hands.