“I should have done what was decidedly wrong, O Athenians, if, when the archons whom you elected ordered me, at Potidæa, at Amphipolis, and at Delium, to accept the post given me in the war, and stand where I was ordered to stand at the risk of death,--if then, I say, I had not obeyed the command, and exposed my life willingly for the good of my country; but when the order comes from a god--as I had the best reason to believe that a god did order me to spend my life in philosophizing, and in proving myself and others, whether we were living according to right reason,--if in such circumstances I should now, from fear of death, or from any other motive, leave my post, and become a deserter, this were indeed a sin; and for such an offence any one might justly bring me before this court on a charge of impiety, saying that I had disobeyed the voice of the god by flinching from death, and conceiting myself to be wise when I was not wise. For to be afraid of death, O Athenians, is in fact nothing else than to seem to be wise when a man is not wise: for it is to seem to have a knowledge of things which a man does not know. For no man really knows whether death may not be to mortal men of all blessings perhaps the greatest; and yet they do fear it, as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils. And how, I ask, can this be other than the most shameful folly to imagine that a man knows what he does not know? or perhaps do I differ from most other men in this, and if I am wiser at all than any one, am I wiser in this, that, while not possessing any exact knowledge of the state of matters in Hades, I do not {113} imagine that I possess such knowledge; but as to right and wrong, I know for certain, that to disobey a better than myself whether man or god, is both bad and base. On no account therefore will I ever fear and seek to avoid what may or may not be an evil, rather than that which I most certainly know to be bad; in so much that if, on the present occasion, you should be willing to acquit me, and refuse to listen to Anytus, who maintained that I either should never have been brought before you at all, or you could not do otherwise than condemn me to death, because your sons, putting in practice the lessons of Socrates, must needs go on without redemption to their ruin--if, notwithstanding this declaration of my prosecutor, you should still be unconvinced, and say--O Socrates, for the present we discharge you, but on this condition, that for the future you shall not go on philosophizing and proving, as you have hitherto done; and, if you are caught doing so, then you shall die--if on these conditions you were now willing to acquit me, I should say to you, O Athenians, that, while I cherish all loyal respect and love for you, I choose to obey the gods rather than men, and so long as I live and breathe I will never cease philosophizing: and exhorting any of you with whom I may happen to converse, and addressing him as I have been wont, thus,--O my