ace, and there, as men say, all the
dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than
this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is
delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the
true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus
and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in
their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a
man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and
Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I myself, too,
shall have a wonderful interest in there meeting and conversing with
Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who
has suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no
small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs.
Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search into true and
false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the next; and I shall find
out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What would
not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great
Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men
and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with
them and asking them questions! In another world they do not put a man
to death for asking questions: assuredly not. For besides being happier
than we are, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a
certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or
after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own
approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that the
time had arrived when it was better for me to die and be released from
trouble; wherefore the oracle gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am
not angry with my condemners, or with my accusers; they have done me no
harm, although they did not mean to do me any good; and for this I may
gently blame them.

Still I have a favour to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would
ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble
them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or
anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something
when they are really nothing,--then reprove them, as I have reproved
you, for not caring about that