ath is like this, I say
that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if
death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the
dead are, 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, too, shall have a wonderful
interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the
son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have 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 be able to
continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so
also in that; 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! For in that world
they do not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides
being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what
is said is true.

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a
truth--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 to die
and be released was better for me; and therefore the oracle gave no
sign. For which reason, also, I am not angry with my accusers or my
condemners; they have done me no harm, although neither of them meant to
do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.

Still I have a favor 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