and look to
the state before he looks to the interests of the state; and that this
should be the order which he observes in all his actions. What shall be
done to such an one? Doubtless some good thing, O men of Athens, if he
has his reward; and the good should be of a kind suitable to him. What
would be a reward suitable to a poor man who is your benefactor, and
who desires leisure that he may instruct you? There can be no reward so
fitting as maintenance in the Prytaneum, O men of Athens, a reward which
he deserves far more than the citizen who has won the prize at Olympia
in the horse or chariot race, whether the chariots were drawn by two
horses or by many. For I am in want, and he has enough; and he only
gives you the appearance of happiness, and I give you the reality. And
if I am to estimate the penalty fairly, I should say that maintenance in
the Prytaneum is the just return.

Perhaps you think that I am braving you in what I am saying now, as in
what I said before about the tears and prayers. But this is not so. I
speak rather because I am convinced that I never intentionally wronged
any one, although I cannot convince you--the time has been too short; if
there were a law at Athens, as there is in other cities, that a capital
cause should not be decided in one day, then I believe that I should
have convinced you. But I cannot in a moment refute great slanders; and,
as I am convinced that I never wronged another, I will assuredly not
wrong myself. I will not say of myself that I deserve any evil, or
propose any penalty. Why should I? because I am afraid of the penalty of
death which Meletus proposes? When I do not know whether death is a good
or an evil, why should I propose a penalty which would certainly be an
evil? Shall I say imprisonment? And why should I live in prison, and be
the slave of the magistrates of the year--of the Eleven? Or shall the
penalty be a fine, and imprisonment until the fine is paid? There is the
same objection. I should have to lie in prison, for money I have none,
and cannot pay. And if I say exile (and this may possibly be the penalty
which you will affix), I must indeed be blinded by the love of life, if
I am so irrational as to expect that when you, who are my own citizens,
cannot endure my discourses and words, and have found them so grievous
and odious that you will have no more of them, others are likely to
endure me. No indeed, men of Athens, that is not very likely. And what