Apology

Apology is Plato's version of the speech Socrates gave in his own defense at his trial in Athens in 399 B.C. Plato wrote it in the years that followed, and it is not a transcript: how closely it follows the real defense cannot be determined.

Charged with impiety and with corrupting the young, Socrates answers the accusations one by one, explains the questioning that had made him so many enemies, and refuses either to plead for his life or to promise that he will give up philosophy. Condemned to death, he turns to the jurors who voted to acquit him and argues that death is nothing to be feared.

This edition is based on Benjamin Jowett's translation. The passage below is from his introduction to it:

"In what relation the “Apology” of Plato stands to the real defence of Socrates, there are no means of determining. It certainly agrees in tone and character with the description of Xenophon, who says in the “Memorabilia” that Socrates might have been acquitted “if in any moderate degree he would have conciliated the favour of the dicasts;” and who informs us in another passage, on the testimony of Hermogenes, the friend of Socrates, that he had no wish to live; and that the divine sign refused to allow him to prepare a defence, and also that Socrates himself declared this to be unnecessary, on the ground that all his life long he had been preparing against that hour."