t themselves before you
with tears and mourning, and I have three desolate children with whom to
move you to compassion; but I should do a shame to our city at the age I
am, and in the reputation of wisdom which is now charged against me, to
appear in such an abject form. What would men say of the other
Athenians? I have always admonished those who have frequented my
lectures, not to redeem their lives by an unbecoming action; and in the
wars of my country, at Amphipolis, Potidea, Delia, and other expeditions
where I have been, I have effectually manifested how far I was from
securing my safety by my shame. I should, moreover, compromise your
duty, and should invite you to unbecoming things; for 'tis not for my
prayers to persuade you, but for the pure and solid reasons of justice.
You have sworn to the gods to keep yourselves upright; and it would seem
as if I suspected you, or would recriminate upon you that I do not
believe that you are so; and I should testify against myself, not to
believe them as I ought, mistrusting their conduct, and not purely
committing my affair into their hands. I wholly rely upon them; and hold
myself assured they will do in this what shall be most fit both for you
and for me: good men, whether living or dead, have no reason to fear the
gods."

Is not this an innocent child's pleading of an unimaginable loftiness,
true, frank, and just, unexampled?--and in what a necessity employed!
Truly, he had very good reason to prefer it before that which the great
orator Lysias had penned for him: admirably couched, indeed, in the
judiciary style, but unworthy of so noble a criminal. Had a suppliant
voice been heard out of the mouth of Socrates, that lofty virtue had
struck sail in the height of its glory; and ought his rich and powerful
nature to have committed her defence to art, and, in her highest proof,
have renounced truth and simplicity, the ornaments of his speaking, to
adorn and deck herself with the embellishments of figures and the
flourishes of a premeditated speech? He did very wisely, and like
himself, not to corrupt the tenor of an incorrupt life, and so sacred an
image of the human form, to spin out his decrepitude another year, and to
betray the immortal memory of that glorious end. He owed his life not to
himself, but to the example of the world; had it not been a public
damage, that he should have concluded it after a lazy and obscure manner?
Assuredly, that careless and indi