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Section 38

Perhaps someone might say: "Socrates, can you not just leave us and live a quiet life, keeping silent?" This is the hardest thing of all to persuade some of you to believe. If I say that this is disobeying the god, and that therefore I cannot keep quiet, you will not believe me and will think I am being ironic. If I say that the greatest good for a human being is to discuss virtue every day, and the other things you hear me conversing and examining myself and others about, and that the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being—you will believe me even less. Yet these things are as I say, gentlemen, though it is not easy to persuade you. Furthermore, I am not accustomed to thinking I deserve anything bad. If I had money, I would propose a fine as large as I could pay, for that would not harm me. But as it is, I have none, unless you are willing to set a fine at an amount I could actually pay. Perhaps I could pay you a mina of silver. So I propose that amount. Wait, Plato here, men of Athens, along with Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus, bid me propose a penalty of thirty minae, and they offer themselves as guarantors. So I propose that amount, and they will be reliable guarantors of the money for you.