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Section 2

EUTHYPHRO. What is new, Socrates, that you have left your usual haunts in the Lyceum and are now spending your time here by the King Archon's porch? Surely you don't have a lawsuit before the King, as I do.

SOCRATES. The Athenians don't call it a lawsuit, Euthyphro, but an indictment.

EUTHYPHRO. What? Has someone indicted you? I certainly won't believe that you have indicted someone else.

SOCRATES. No, I have not.

EUTHYPHRO. But someone else has indicted you?

SOCRATES. Exactly.

EUTHYPHRO. Who is it?

SOCRATES. I don't even know the man very well myself, Euthyphro. He seems to be a young and unknown person. I believe his name is Meletus, of the deme of Pitthus. Perhaps you can picture him: a man with long straight hair, not much of a beard, and a rather hooked nose.

EUTHYPHRO. I don't recall him, Socrates. But what is the indictment he has brought against you?

SOCRATES. What is it? No small one, it seems to me. It is no small thing for a young man to have recognized such an important matter. He says he knows how the youth are corrupted, and who their corrupters are. I expect he is some wise man, and seeing my ignorance, he is coming to accuse me to the city, as if to a mother, for corrupting his peers. In fact, he seems to me the only one of our politicians who starts out the right way. It is right to take care of the young first, to make them as good as possible, just as a good farmer cares for the young plants first, and then for the rest. So Meletus is perhaps first clearing us away, the ones who corrupt the young shoots, as he says. After this, clearly he will take care of the older ones and become the cause of the greatest blessings to the city. That is the natural outcome of such a beginning.