course, you know. You are silent. The laws, you say? The question was,
"Who?"

MELETUS: The judges; all the judges.

SOCRATES: In other words, all the Athenian people--everyone but me? And
I alone corrupt them? Truly, I am in an ill plight! But in the case of
all other animals, horses, for instance, there are only a few people who
are able to improve them. Your answer shows that you have never bestowed
attention on the care of young people. Next, tell me is it better for a
man to dwell among good citizens or bad? The good, since the bad will
injure him. I cannot, then, set about making bad citizens designedly. My
friend, no man designedly brings injury upon himself. If I corrupt them,
it must be undesignedly--reason good for admonishing and instructing me,
which you have not done; but not for bringing me into court, which you
have done! However, I corrupt them by teaching them not to believe in
the gods in whom the city believes, but in strange deities? Do I teach
that there are some gods, or that there are no gods at all?

MELETUS: I say that you believe in no gods. You say the sun is a stone,
and the moon earth.

SOCRATES: Most excellent Meletus, everyone knows that Anaxagoras says
so; you can buy that information for a drachma! Do I really appear to
you to revere no gods?

MELETUS: No, no gods at all.

SOCRATES: Now, that is incredible! You must have manufactured this
riddle out of sheer wantonness, for in the indictment you charge me with
reverencing gods! Can anyone believe that there are human affairs, or
equine affairs, or instrumental affairs without believing that there are
men, or horses, or instruments? You say expressly that I believe in
daemonic affairs, therefore in daemons; but daemons are a sort of gods or
the offspring of gods. Therefore, you cannot possibly believe that I do
not believe in gods. Really, I have sufficiently answered the
indictment. If I am condemned, it will not be on the indictment of
Meletus, but on popular calumnies; which have condemned good men before
me, and assuredly I shall not be the last.

_III.--The Defence_

It may be suggested that I ought to be ashamed of practices which have
brought you in danger of death. Risk of death is not to be taken into
account in any action which really matters at all. If it ought to be,
the heroes before Troy were bad characters! Every man should stand to
his post, come life, come death. Should I have stood to my post and
faced death