Whatever be the danger and obloquy which I may incur, it would be monstrous indeed, if having maintained my place in the ranks as an hoplite under your generals at Delium and Potidaea, I were now from fear of death or anything else to disobey the oracle and desert the post which the god has assigned to me, the duty of living for philosophy and cross-questioning both myself and others. And should you even now offer to acquit me, on condition of my renouncing this duty, I should tell you with all respect and affection that I will obey the god rather than you and that I will persist until my dying day in cross-questioning you, exposing your want of wisdom and virtue and reproaching you until the defect be remedied. My mission as your monitor is a mark of the special favor of the gods to you and if you condemn me it will be your loss; for you will find none other such. Perhaps you will ask me, Why cannot you go away, Sokrates, and live in peace and silence? This is the hardest of all questions for me to answer to your satisfaction. If I tell you that silence on my part would be disobedience to the god, you will think me in jest and not believe me. You will believe me still less, if I tell you that the greatest blessing which can happen to man is to carry on discussions every day about virtue and those other matters which you hear me conversing, when I cross-examine myself and others and that life without such examination is no life at all. Nevertheless so stands the fact, incredible as it may seem to you. I certainly have my enemies [the Pharisaical party and the High Priests of orthodoxy] and these will be my destruction if I am destroyed; of that I am certain; not that Meletos, nor yet Anytos, but the envy and detraction of the world, which has been the death of many more--there is no danger of my being the last of them. Later, after his condemnation, he added: And I prophesy to you, my murderers, that immediately after my death, punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await you. Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser and not to give an account of your lives. But that will not be as you suppose; far otherwise. For I say that there will be more accusers of you than there are now. For if you think that by killing men you can avoid the accuser censuring your lives, you are mistaken--that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honorable; the easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others but to be improving yourselves. This is the prophecy which I utter to the judges who have condemned me.