hat, Crito? Must we not agree?

_Crito_: There is no help, Socrates.

_Socrates_: Then will they not say: "You, Socrates, are breaking the
covenants and agreements which you made with us at your leisure, not
in any haste or under any compulsion or deception, but having had
seventy years to think of them, during which time you were at liberty
to leave the city, if we were not to your mind, or if our covenants
appeared to you to be unfair. You had your choice, and might have gone
either to Lacedaemon or Crete, which you often praise for their good
government, or to some other Hellenic or foreign state. Whereas you,
above all other Athenians, seemed to be so fond of the state, or, in
other words, of us her laws (for who would like a state that has no
laws?), that you never stirred out of her; the halt, the blind, the
maimed were not more stationary in her than you were. And now you run
away and forsake your agreements. Not so, Socrates, if you will take
our choice; do not make yourself ridiculous by escaping out of the
city.

"For just consider, if you transgress and err in this sort of way,
what good will you do either to yourself or to your friends? That your
friends will be driven into exile and deprived of citizenship, or will
lose their property, is tolerably certain; and you yourself if you fly
to one of the neighboring cities, as, for example, Thebes or Megara,
both of which are well-governed cities, will come to them as an
enemy, Socrates, and their government will be against you, and all
patriotic citizens will cast an evil eye upon you as a subverter of
the laws, and you will confirm in the minds of the judges the justice
of their own condemnation of you. For he who is a corrupter of the
laws is more than likely to be a corrupter of the young and foolish
portion of mankind. Will you then flee from well-ordered cities and
virtuous men? and is existence worth having on these terms?...

"Listen, then, Socrates, to us who have brought you up. Think not of
life and children first, and of justice afterward, but of justice
first, that you may be justified before the princes of the world
below. For neither will you nor any that belong to you be happier or
holier or juster in this life, or happier in another, if you do as
Crito bids. Now you depart in innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of
evil; a victim, not of the laws, but of men. But if you go forth,
returning evil for evil, and injury for injury, breaking the co