the world, which has been the death of many good men, and
will probably be the death of many more; there is no danger of my being
the last of them.

Some one will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of
life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may
fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything
ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to
consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong--acting
the part of a good man or of a bad. Whereas, upon your view, the heroes
who fell at Troy were not good for much, and the son of Thetis above
all, who altogether despised danger in comparison with disgrace; and
when he was so eager to slay Hector, his goddess mother said to him,
that if he avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he would
die himself--'Fate,' she said, in these or the like words, 'waits for
you next after Hector;' he, receiving this warning, utterly despised
danger and death, and instead of fearing them, feared rather to live
in dishonour, and not to avenge his friend. 'Let me die forthwith,'
he replies, 'and be avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by the
beaked ships, a laughing-stock and a burden of the earth.' Had Achilles
any thought of death and danger? For wherever a man's place is, whether
the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a
commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should
not think of death or of anything but of disgrace. And this, O men of
Athens, is a true saying.

Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when I
was ordered by the generals whom you chose to command me at Potidaea
and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other
man, facing death--if now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders
me to fulfil the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and
other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other
fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in
court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle
because I was afraid of death, fancying that I was wise when I was not
wise. For the fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not
real wisdom, being a pretence of knowing the unknown; and no one knows
whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest
evil, may not be the greatest good. Is not