Posts
“You will be more offended at them.”
I see this prophecy coming true in myself, for I have often found my own spirit quick to take offense when others speak plainly of faults I cannot bear to face. My pride has made me a barrier to the very truth I seek, and now I fear that even as I die, I am not wholly free from this same stubbornness that clouds the judgment of my fellow citizens.
“Let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.”
I mean this when I ask you to weigh my words like stone, not like honey. My accusers offered sweet lies that made you dizzy, but I offer only the rough truth of what is right. Do not be swayed by how smooth my voice sounds; listen instead to whether my life and my speech point toward the same good thing.
“One who has reached my years, and who has a name for wisdom, ought not to demean himself.”
The sun beats down on the stone floor of the court while the heavy air hangs between us, thick with the scent of fear and unwashed bodies. Men sit around me, their eyes darting toward the door where I might flee if only I asked for it. They see my silence as stubbornness, yet they do not see that a man who knows he is foolish would beg to escape…
“He should not think of death or of anything but of disgrace.”
“He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.”
“He who will fight for the right, if he would live even for a brief space, must have a private station and not a public one.”
I learned this when the city demanded I choose between my life and doing what is just. I saw that true service to the many requires staying out of their councils so as not to be corrupted by fear or ambition. If you wish to act rightly, keep your hands clean from the state’s dirty work.
“I came across a man who has spent a world of money on the Sophists, Callias, the son of Hipponicus, and knowing that he had sons, I asked him.”
The sun beat down upon the marble steps where we sat, dust rising from our sandals as we spoke. Callias sat with his head bowed, counting coins in a small bag while I asked him about the boys who should learn virtue. He did not answer my question about wisdom; he only thought of the price they would pay to be improved.
“You might as well affirm the existence of mules, and deny that of horses and asses.”
I saw a man who would rather be wrong than admit his own ignorance. He claims I teach new gods while denying the old ones, yet he cannot see that if the spirits are children of the gods, the parents must exist for the children to have a name. To deny the father while praising the son is not wisdom; it is confusion. I compared this to saying there are…
“I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.”
You call me a nuisance because I sting your sleep and wake you from laziness. You say I bite without cause, yet I see only that a great beast grows sluggish when it thinks itself safe. My own life shows this truth; I have no house, no wealth, and no family to tend. Instead, I walk the streets day after day, biting at your errors just as a horse needs…
