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Section 51

SOCRATES. "Or is it rather that justice towards a father or a master—if you happened to have one—was not on equal terms for you, so that you could not suffer things and do them back, nor answer back when scolded, nor strike back when struck, nor many other such things; but towards your fatherland and the Laws it will be permitted? So that if we undertake to destroy you, considering it just, you too may undertake to destroy us, the Laws and the fatherland, to the best of your ability, and you will say that in doing so you are acting justly—you, who truly care about virtue? Are you so wise that it has escaped your notice that the fatherland is something more honorable, more venerable, and more sacred, and held in higher esteem among gods and among men of understanding, than a mother, a father, and all other ancestors combined? That one must reverence it and yield to it and flatter a fatherland in its anger more than a father; and one must either persuade it, or do what it commands; and suffer peacefully if it commands you to suffer, whether to be beaten or bound; and if it leads you to war to be wounded or killed, this must be done, and this is what is just? And one must not give way or retreat, or leave one's post, but in war and in court and everywhere, one must do whatever the city and the fatherland commands, or else persuade it as to what is truly just? For it is impious to use force against a mother or a father, and far more impious still to use it against one's fatherland." What shall we say to this, Crito? Do the Laws speak the truth or not?

CRITO. I think they do.

SOCRATES. "Observe then, Socrates," the Laws might perhaps say, "if we are speaking the truth, that you are not attempting to treat us justly in what you are now undertaking. We who gave you birth, nurtured you, educated you, and gave you and all other citizens a share of all the good things we could, still publicly proclaim that any Athenian who wishes to do so, once he has been examined and seen the affairs of the city and us Laws, has the right, if we do not please him, to take his belongings and go wherever he wishes. Not one of us Laws gets in the way or forbids it if anyone wants to go to a colony because we and the city do not please him, or if he wants to go somewhere else and live as an alien, taking his property with him wherever he chooses."