The Man Who Would Not Stop
In the year 399 BC, the city of Athens put an old man on trial.
He was seventy years old. His name was Socrates. He had spent his whole adult life walking the streets of Athens and asking people questions. Hard questions. Questions like: Do you actually know what you think you know? Have you ever really examined your own life? Are you living the way you want to live, or just the way you were told to?
Most people found this annoying. Some found it threatening.
The charges against him were serious: corrupting the young people of Athens, and disrespecting the city's gods. A jury of 501 citizens voted on his guilt. The result was 280 to 221. Guilty.
He was sentenced to death.
The part that is hard to believe is that he could have escaped. His friends had money. They had a plan. They were ready to get him out of the city. He refused to go.
He could have promised to stop asking his questions. He refused to do that too.
On the day they brought him the poison, he was the calmest person in the room. His friends were the ones falling apart.
What you are about to read is the speech he gave at his trial. It is called the Apology, which in Greek means a defense speech, not saying sorry. Socrates was not sorry about anything.
He explained who he was. He explained what he had been doing his whole life. He explained why he would not stop, even to save himself.
It is one of the most important things ever written. Not because it is old. Because it is true.
This volume also includes three shorter companion texts. Crito is the conversation Socrates had in prison the morning before his death, when a friend begged him to escape. Alcibiades I is an earlier conversation where Socrates confronts the most ambitious young man in Athens with a simple question: do you actually know yourself? Selected passages from Phaedo show us his final hours, what he believed about death, and the moment he died.
Together, these four texts tell one complete story. The story is about a person who decided that living honestly was more important than living comfortably, and who kept that decision even when it killed him.
If you get one thing from this book, let it be this: the question Socrates spent his life asking is the same question you are going to have to answer, whether you want to or not. The question is: what kind of person are you actually willing to be?
Daimon Classics