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Section 54

SOCRATES. "But you say you want to live for the sake of your children, so you can bring them up and educate them? What then? Will you take them to Thessaly and raise and educate them there, making them strangers to their own land, so they can owe you this favor as well? Or will they be brought up better and educated here while you are alive, even if you are not with them? Because your friends will care for them. Will they care for them if you go to Thessaly, but not care for them if you go to Hades? If those who profess to be your friends are of any use at all, one must believe they will care for them. Therefore, Socrates, obey us who nurtured you. Do not value children or life or anything else more than justice, so that when you go to Hades you may have all these things to say in your defense to those who rule there. For it does not seem to be better or more just or more pious for you or for any of your friends to do this here, nor will it be better for you when you arrive yonder. As things stand, you will depart, if you depart, having been wronged not by us Laws, but by men. But if you escape so disgracefully, returning injustice for injustice and evil for evil, breaking your own agreements and covenants with us, and doing harm to those you ought least to harm—yourself, your friends, your fatherland, and us—then we shall be angry with you while you live, and our brothers, the Laws in Hades, will not receive you favorably, knowing that you attempted to destroy us as far as you were able. So do not let Crito persuade you to do what he says rather than us." These things, I assure you, my dear friend Crito, I seem to hear them saying, just as those engaged in Corybantic frenzies seem to hear the flutes; the sound of these very arguments hums within me and makes me unable to hear anything else. Know well, as far as my present thoughts go, that if you speak against these things, you will speak in vain. But if you think you can accomplish anything more, speak.

CRITO. No, Socrates, I have nothing to say.

SOCRATES. Let it be, then, Crito, and let us act in this way, since this is the way the god is leading us.