Crito
399 BCE
"We must not regard what the many say of us: but what he, the one man who has understanding of just and unjust, will say."
Days before his execution, Socrates receives an early morning visit from his wealthy friend Crito, who has arranged his escape. What follows is a profound dialogue on the nature of justice, the authority of law, and the obligations we owe to the society that formed us.
The Prison at Dawn
SOCRATES: Why have you come at this hour, Crito? It must be quite early.
CRITO: Yes, certainly.
SOCRATES: What is the exact time?
CRITO: The dawn is breaking.
SOCRATES: I wonder the keeper of the prison would let you in.
CRITO: He knows me because I often come, Socrates; moreover I have done him a kindness.
SOCRATES: And are you only just arrived?
CRITO: No, I came some time ago.
SOCRATES: Then why did you sit and say nothing, instead of awakening me at once?
CRITO: I should not have liked myself, Socrates, to be in such great trouble and unrest as you are—indeed I should not: I have been watching with amazement your peaceful slumbers; and for that reason I did not awake you, because I wished to minimize the pain. I have always thought you to be of a happy disposition; but never did I see anything like the easy, tranquil manner in which you bear this calamity.
SOCRATES: Why, Crito, when a man has reached my age he ought not to be repining at the approach of death.
CRITO: And yet other old men find themselves in similar misfortunes, and age does not prevent them from repining.
SOCRATES: That is true. But you have not told me why you come at this early hour.
CRITO: I come to bring you a message which is sad and painful; not, as I believe, to yourself, but to all of us who are your friends, and saddest of all to me.
SOCRATES: What? Has the ship come from Delos, on the arrival of which I am to die?
CRITO: No, the ship has not actually arrived, but she will probably be here today, as persons who have come from Sunium tell me that they have left her there; and therefore tomorrow, Socrates, will be the last day of your life.
Crito's Appeal
CRITO: Socrates, I implore you for the last time to listen to me and save yourself. For if you die I shall not only lose a friend who can never be replaced, but there is another evil: people who do not know you and me will believe that I might have saved you if I had been willing to give money, but that I did not care.
Now, can there be a worse disgrace than this—that I should be thought to value money more than the life of a friend? For the many will not be persuaded that I wanted you to escape, and that you refused.
SOCRATES: But why, my dear Crito, should we care about the opinion of the many? Good men, and they are the only persons who are worth considering, will think of these things truly as they occurred.
CRITO: But you see, Socrates, that the opinion of the many must be regarded, for what is now happening shows that they can do the greatest evil to anyone who has lost their good opinion.
SOCRATES: I only wish it were so, Crito; and that the many could do the greatest evil; for then they would also be able to do the greatest good—and what a fine thing this would be! But in reality they can do neither; for they cannot make a man either wise or foolish; and whatever they do is the result of chance.
CRITO: Well, I will not dispute with you; but please to tell me, Socrates, whether you are not acting out of regard to me and your other friends: are you not afraid that if you escape from prison we may get into trouble with the informers for having stolen you away, and lose either the whole or a great part of our property?
Now, if you fear on our account, be at ease; for in order to save you, we ought surely to run this, or even a greater risk. Be persuaded, then, and do as I say.
SOCRATES: Yes, Crito, that is one fear which you mention, but by no means the only one.
CRITO: Fear not—there are persons who are willing to get you out of prison at no great cost. As for the informers, they are far from being exorbitant in their demands—a little money will satisfy them. My means, which are certainly ample, are at your service, and if you have a scruple about spending all mine, here are strangers who will give you the use of theirs.
Simmias the Theban has brought a large sum of money for this very purpose; and Cebes and many others are prepared to spend their money in helping you to escape. I say, therefore, do not hesitate on our account.
Nor let any misgiving arise about what you said in court—that if you went into exile you would not know what to do with yourself. For men will love you in other places where you may go, and not in Athens only. There are friends of mine in Thessaly, if you like to go to them, who will value and protect you, and no Thessalian will give you any trouble.
On Children and Duty
CRITO: Nor can I think that you are at all justified, Socrates, in betraying your own life when you might be saved. You are playing into the hands of your enemies, who are hurrying on your destruction. And further I should say that you are deserting your own children; for you might bring them up and educate them, instead of which you go away and leave them, and they will have to take their chance.
Either a man should not have children, or he should take the trouble of bringing them up. But you appear to be choosing the easier part, not the better and manlier, which would have been more becoming in one who professes to care for virtue in all his actions.
Indeed, I am ashamed not only of you, but of us who are your friends, when I reflect that the whole business will be attributed entirely to our want of courage. The trial need never have come on, or might have been managed differently; and this last act, or crowning folly, will seem to have occurred through our negligence and cowardice.
Think of it, Socrates, and do not be careless or thoughtless, but make up your mind while there is still time. There is no alternative: this very night everything must be put into execution. If we delay, it will be no longer possible. I beseech you therefore, Socrates, be persuaded by me, and do as I say.
Socrates' Response
SOCRATES: Dear Crito, your zeal is invaluable, if a right one; but if wrong, the greater the zeal the greater the danger. And therefore we ought to consider whether I shall or shall not do as you say. For I am and always have been one of those natures who must be guided by reason, whatever the reason may be which upon reflection appears to me to be the best.
I cannot repudiate my own words: the principles which I have hitherto honored and revered I still honor, and unless we can at once find other and better principles, I am certain not to agree with you—no, not even if the power of the multitude could inflict many more imprisonments, confiscations, deaths, frightening us like children with hobgoblin terrors.
What will be the fairest way of considering the question? Shall I return to your old argument about the opinions of men? We were saying that some of them are to be regarded, and others not. Now were we right in maintaining this before I was condemned? And has the argument which was once good now proved to be talk for the sake of talking—mere childish nonsense?
"We must not regard what the many say of us: but what he, the one man who has understanding of just and unjust, will say, and what the truth will say."
The Expert and the Many
SOCRATES: Take a parallel instance: if, acting under the advice of those who have no understanding, we destroy that which is improved by health and is corrupted by disease, would life be worth having? And that which has been destroyed is—the body?
CRITO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Could we live, having an evil and corrupted body?
CRITO: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice? Do we suppose that principle, whatever it may be in man, which has to do with justice and injustice, to be inferior to the body?
CRITO: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: More honorable than the body?
CRITO: Far more.
SOCRATES: Then, my friend, we must not regard what the many say of us: but what he, the one man who has understanding of just and unjust, will say, and what the truth will say. And therefore you begin in error when you advise that we should regard the opinion of the many about just and unjust, good and evil, honorable and dishonorable.
The Central Question
SOCRATES: From these premises I proceed to argue the question whether I ought or ought not to try and escape without the consent of the Athenians: and if I am clearly right in escaping, then I will make the attempt; but if not, I will abstain. The other considerations which you mention, of money and loss of character and the duty of educating one's children, are, I fear, only the doctrines of the multitude, who would be as ready to restore people to life, if they were able, as they are to put them to death.
The only question which remains to be considered is, whether we shall do rightly either in escaping or in suffering others to aid in our escape and paying them in money and thanks, or whether in reality we shall not do rightly. If the latter, then death or any other calamity which may ensue on my remaining here must not be allowed to enter into the calculation.
CRITO: I think that you are right, Socrates; how then shall we proceed?
SOCRATES: Let us consider the matter together, and do you either refute me if you can, and I will be convinced; or else cease, my dear friend, from repeating to me that I ought to escape against the wishes of the Athenians. For I highly value your attempts to persuade me to do so, but I may not be persuaded against my own better judgment.
Never Do Wrong
SOCRATES: Are we to say that we are never intentionally to do wrong, or that in one way we ought and in another we ought not to do wrong? Or is doing wrong always evil and dishonorable, as I was just now saying, and as has been already acknowledged by us? Are all our former admissions which were made within a few days to be thrown away?
And have we, at our age, been earnestly discoursing with one another all our life long only to discover that we are no better than children? Or, in spite of the opinion of the many, and in spite of consequences whether better or worse, shall we insist on the truth of what was then said, that injustice is always an evil and dishonor to him who acts unjustly?
CRITO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then we must do no wrong?
CRITO: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Nor when injured injure in return, as the many imagine; for we must injure no one at all?
CRITO: Clearly not.
"One must never do wrong... not even when one is wronged."
SOCRATES: Again, Crito, may we do evil?
CRITO: Surely not, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And what of doing evil in return for evil, which is the morality of the many—is that just or not?
CRITO: Not just.
SOCRATES: For doing evil to another is the same as injuring him?
CRITO: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered from him. But I would have you consider, Crito, whether you really mean what you are saying. For this opinion has never been held, and never will be held, by any considerable number of persons.
The Voice of the Laws
SOCRATES: Imagine that I am about to escape, and the Laws and the government come and interrogate me: "Tell us, Socrates," they say, "what are you about? Are you not going by an act of yours to overturn us—the Laws, and the whole State, as far as in you lies? Do you imagine that a State can subsist and not be overthrown, in which the decisions of law have no power, but are set aside and trampled upon by individuals?"
What will be our answer, Crito, to these and the like words? Anyone, and especially a rhetorician, will have a good deal to say on behalf of the law which requires a sentence to be carried out. He will argue that this law should not be set aside.
CRITO: I have nothing to say, Socrates.
"Do you imagine that a city can continue to exist and not be turned upside down, if the legal judgments which are pronounced in it are of no effect?"
The Laws Continue
SOCRATES: Then the Laws will say: "Consider, Socrates, if we are speaking truly that in your present attempt you are going to do us an injury. For, having brought you into the world, and nurtured and educated you, and given you and every other citizen a share in every good which we had to give, we further proclaim to any Athenian by the liberty which we allow him, that if he does not like us when he has become of age and has seen the ways of the city, he may go where he pleases and take his goods with him."
"None of us Laws will forbid him or interfere with him. Anyone who does not like us and the city, and who wants to emigrate to a colony or to any other city, may go where he likes, retaining his property. But he who has experience of the manner in which we order justice and administer the State, and still remains, has entered into an implied contract that he will do as we command him."
"And he who disobeys us is, as we maintain, thrice wrong: first, because in disobeying us he is disobeying his parents; secondly, because we are the authors of his education; thirdly, because he has made an agreement with us that he will duly obey our commands; and he neither obeys them nor convinces us that our commands are unjust."
"He who disobeys us... has agreed to obey us and neither obeys nor convinces us that we are wrong."
Socrates' Particular Case
SOCRATES: "And we say that you, Socrates, if you go forth, will be as guilty of these crimes as any other. You, above all other Athenians, seemed to be so fond of the State, or in other words, of us her Laws—for who would care about a State which has no laws? Will you not keep your agreements?"
"For just consider: if you had not, more than other Athenians, approved of us, you would not have remained in this city throughout your life without ever stirring from it. You never went out of the city either to see the games, except once when you went to the Isthmus, or to any other place unless when you were on military service."
"You never made any journeys to other cities as other men do, nor did you have any desire to know other States or their Laws: your affections did not go beyond us and our State; we were your special favorites, and you acquiesced in our government of you. And here in this very city you begat your children, which is a proof of your satisfaction."
"Moreover, you might in the course of the trial, if you had liked, have fixed the penalty at banishment; the State which refuses to let you go now would have let you go then. But you pretended that you preferred death to exile, and that you were not unwilling to die. And now you have forgotten these fine sentiments, and pay no respect to us the Laws, of whom you are the destroyer."
The Consequences of Escape
SOCRATES: "Listen, then, Socrates, to us who have brought you up. Think not of life and children first, and of justice afterwards, but of justice first, that you may be justified before the princes of the world below. For neither will you nor any that belong to you be happier or holier or juster in this life, or happier in another, if you do as Crito bids."
"Now you depart in innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil; a victim, not of the Laws, but of men. But if you go forth, returning evil for evil, and injury for injury, breaking the covenants and agreements which you have made with us, and wronging those whom you ought least of all to wrong, that is to say, yourself, your friends, your country, and us, we shall be angry with you while you live, and our brethren, the Laws in the world below, will receive you as an enemy; for they will know that you have done your best to destroy us."
Socrates' Decision
SOCRATES: This, dear Crito, is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of the mystic; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other. And I know that anything more you may say will be vain.
CRITO: I have nothing to say, Socrates.
"Then let me follow the intimations of the will of God."
— Socrates to Crito
End of Text
Translation based on Benjamin Jowett's rendering, with adaptations for clarity.
Return to Library