[54a]
virtue? But perhaps you wish to live for the sake of your children, that you may bring them up and educate them? How so? Will you take them to Thessaly to be brought up and educated, making exiles of them, that you may give them that blessing also? Or perhaps you will not do that, but if they are brought up here while you are living, will they be better brought up and educated if you are not with them than if you were dead? Oh yes! your friends will care for them. Will they care for them if you go away to Thessaly and not if you go away to the dwellings of the dead? If those who say they are your friends
[54b]
are of any use, we must believe they will care for them in both cases alike.“Ah, Socrates, be guided by us who tended your infancy. Care neither for your children nor for life nor for anything else more than for the right, that when you come to the home of the dead, you may have all these things to say in your own defence. For clearly if you do this thing it will not be better for you here, or more just or holier, no, nor for any of your friends, and neither will it be better when you reach that other abode. Now, however, you will go away wronged, if you do go away, not by us,
[54c]
the laws, but by men; but if you escape after so disgracefully requiting wrong with wrong and evil with evil, breaking your compacts and agreements with us, and injuring those whom you least ought to injure—yourself, your friends, your country and us—we shall be angry with you while you live, and there our brothers, the laws in Hades' realm, will not receive you graciously; for they will know that you tried, so far as in you lay, to destroy us. Do not let Crito persuade you to do
[54d]
what he says, but take our advice.Be well assured, my dear friend, Crito, that this is what I seem to hear, as the frenzied dervishes of Cybele seem to hear the flutes, and this sound of these words re-echoes within me and prevents my hearing any other words. And be assured that, so far as I now believe, if you argue against these words you will speak in vain. Nevertheless, if you think you can accomplish anything, speak.Crito
No, Socrates, I have nothing to say. [54e] Socrates
Then, Crito, let it be; and let us act in this way, since it is in this way that God leads us.
No, Socrates, I have nothing to say. [54e] Socrates
Then, Crito, let it be; and let us act in this way, since it is in this way that God leads us.
