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After the Sentence

Socrates, as Plato renders him · the court of Athens · 399 BC
text: Plato's Apology, in Benjamin Jowett's translation (1892) · published before 1931, in the public domain · the closing movement, from the sentence of death to the parting line
colour carries the act's function; a dashed underline marks a predicted misfire; hover or focus any span for its filing

Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name which you will get from the detractors of the city, who will say that you killed Socrates, a wise man; for they will call me wise, even although I am not wise, when they want to reproach you. If you had waited a little while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature. For I am far advanced in years, as you may perceive, and not far from death. I am speaking now not to all of you, but only to those who have condemned me to death. And I have another thing to say to them: You think that I was convicted because I had no words of the sort which would have procured my acquittal—I mean, if I had thought fit to leave nothing undone or unsaid. Not so; the deficiency which led to my conviction was not of words—certainly not. But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to do, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I maintain, are unworthy of me. I thought at the time that I ought not to do anything common or mean when in danger: nor do I now repent of the style of my defence; I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought I or any man to use every way of escaping death. Often in battle there can be no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me, and my accusers are keen and quick, and the faster runner, who is unrighteousness, has overtaken them. And now I depart hence condemned by you to suffer the penalty of death,—they too go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide by my award—let them abide by theirs. I suppose that these things may be regarded as fated,—and I think that they are well.

And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain prophesy to you; for I am about to die, and in the hour of death men are gifted with prophetic power. And I prophesy to you who are my murderers, that immediately after my departure punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await you. Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives. But that will not be as you suppose: far otherwise. For I say that there will be more accusers of you than there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained: and as they are younger they will be more inconsiderate with you, and you will be more offended at them. If you think that by killing men you can prevent some one from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves. This is the prophecy which I utter before my departure to the judges who have condemned me.

Friends, who would have acquitted me, I would like also to talk with you about the thing which has come to pass, while the magistrates are busy, and before I go to the place at which I must die. Stay then a little, for we may as well talk with one another while there is time. You are my friends, and I should like to show you the meaning of this event which has happened to me. O my judges—for you I may truly call judges—I should like to tell you of a wonderful circumstance. Hitherto the divine faculty of which the internal oracle is the source has constantly been in the habit of opposing me even about trifles, if I was going to make a slip or error in any matter; and now as you see there has come upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed to be, the last and worst evil. But the oracle made no sign of opposition, either when I was leaving my house in the morning, or when I was on my way to the court, or while I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say; and yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a speech, but now in nothing I either said or did touching the matter in hand has the oracle opposed me. What do I take to be the explanation of this silence? I will tell you. It is an intimation that what has happened to me is a good, and that those of us who think that death is an evil are in error. For the customary sign would surely have opposed me had I been going to evil and not to good.

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things—either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death be of such a nature, 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 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 for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, both I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

The divergences

"I am speaking now not to all of you, but only to those who have condemned me to death" — the address files a Frame-set, and the frame holds for three paragraphs: everything after it belongs to one half of the room, and the halves change over at "Friends, who would have acquitted me". A hearer files an Assertion about who is being talked to, a remark inside one continuous speech to one court. They part on target. The partition can be tested where it fails, in the last request: "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" — the favour is owed by the men who condemned him and asked of the men who did not, and one imperative is handed to both bodies at once.

"And I prophesy to you who are my murderers, that immediately after my departure punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await you" — the address files an Assertion, under the frame installed one sentence earlier where a dying man is gifted with prophetic power and prediction is the act being performed. The condemners can file a Threat: harm named, its arrival timed to their own act, and the speaker written into the causal chain three sentences later as "accusers whom hitherto I have restrained". They part on function and on orientation together — a report of what will happen, or a commissive keyed to standing. What decides it is whether the speaker is an agent of the harm, and the relative clause is the only place in the movement where he says he was. Lingg made the same move from the same posture — "When you shall have hanged us, then, mark my words, they will do the bomb throwing!" — third person, conditioned on the court's own act, and the state filed it as a threat.

"they too go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong" — the court files an Assertion: the opinion of a man it has just sentenced, touching nothing pending and requiring no answer. The record files a Declaration, a verdict entered against the accusers with the truth named as the bench that enters it. They part on function. Lingg entered his four findings of perjury in his own name and they are flagged on his page for the defect that follows — a private man has no bench. This sentence borrows one, and the borrowing is what makes it unanswerable: a verdict from that bench can be neither enforced by the speaker nor vacated by the court.

"O my judges—for you I may truly call judges" — the men addressed are the ones whose votes lost, and the men in the other half of the room hold the same office on the same lot. The address files a Frame-set that re-grounds the title on the correctness of a vote; the court files a compliment paid to a minority. They part on target. The title then travels again inside the same paragraph, to Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, while the men in the room are demoted in passing to "the professors of justice in this world". Lingg refused the title outright — "I do not recognize your law … and I do not recognize the decision of the court" — which is available to a speaker who wants nothing further from the bench; this address keeps the title in circulation and re-awards it, which requires that the bench still mean something.

"know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death" — the friends file consolation, offered to men about to lose him and warranted by the bearing of the man saying it. The address files an Assertion about how the world is arranged, warranted by the silence of a sign, and three sentences later the warrant closes on itself: "I see clearly that the time had arrived when it was better for me to die … wherefore the oracle gave no sign." They part on function. The premise the assertion needs — that this is a good man — is the proposition the city voted on an hour before, and the vote went against it, so the claim can be load-bearing for the friends and empty for the court without either party misreading a word of it.

"In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not" — the city files an execution on the counts it tried, impiety and the corruption of the young; the address files an execution for asking questions. They part on scope: the charge sheet, or the practice the charge sheet was brought to stop. The excerpt never states the counts, which lets the re-description stand on the page unopposed. Anthony worked the same axis from the dock. The bench told her the prisoner had been tried "according to the established forms of law"; she answered "by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women", granting the narrow reading in her first word so as to take the wide one in her second.

"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows." — the friends can file a closing courtesy, modesty laid over a conclusion the paragraph before had already reached. The address files a Frame-set that withdraws the question from everyone present. They part on target. The line takes back "know of a certainty" from the friends and takes from the court the presumption its sentence rested on, that dying is the harm; both parties are left holding filings with no ground under them, and there is no next sentence in which either could be repaired.