And So He Dies

Hello.

Don’t have much time today, but we are still reading Plato’s Apology, though this was the last section.

The part that I selected today started on page 67, section b, though it ends on the next page. It goes like this: “the difficulty is not so much to escape death; the real difficulty is to escape from wickedness, which is far more fleet of foot…I [Socrates], the slow old man, have been overtaken by the slower of the two, but my accusers, who are clever and quick, have been overtaken by the faster: by iniquity. When I leave this court, I shall go away condemned by you to death, but they will go away convinced by Truth herself of depravity and injustice. And they accept their sentence even as I accept mine.”

I thought that this was a really interesting quote because Socrates talks of how he has been overcome by death, but his accusers have been overcome by injustice. He talks of himself as the slow old man who is caught only by the slower. I also thought that it conveyed fairly well the tenor of the last section of The Apology. He is not afraid, he has made that quite clear, but there is something else behind his words nonetheless. I found this last part especially sad, with its last line that conveys such heaviness even through its light tone, “Well, now it is time to be off, I to die and you to live; but which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God.”

Goodbye.