riends, who would have acquitted me, I would like also to talk with you
about the thing which has come to pass, while the magistrates are busy,
and before I go to the place at which I must die. Stay then a little,
for we may as well talk with one another while there is time. You are my
friends, and I should like to show you the meaning of this event which
has happened to me. O my judges--for you I may truly call judges--I
should like to tell you of a wonderful circumstance. Hitherto the divine
faculty of which the internal oracle is the source has constantly been
in the habit of opposing me even about trifles, if I was going to make
a slip or error in any matter; and now as you see there has come upon me
that which may be thought, and is generally believed to be, the last and
worst evil. But the oracle made no sign of opposition, either when I was
leaving my house in the morning, or when I was on my way to the court,
or while I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say; and yet I
have often been stopped in the middle of a speech, but now in nothing
I either said or did touching the matter in hand has the oracle opposed
me. What do I take to be the explanation of this silence? I will tell
you. It is an intimation that what has happened to me is a good, and
that those of us who think that death is an evil are in error. For the
customary sign would surely have opposed me had I been going to evil and
not to good.

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great
reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things--either death
is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say,
there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another.
Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like
the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an
unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his
sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the
other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many
days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more
pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private
man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights,
when compared with the others. Now if death be of such a nature, I say
that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if
death is the journey to another pl