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penalty: and what counter-proposition shall he make? He, the be- 
nefactor of the Athenian people, whose whole life has been spent in 
doing them good, should at least have the Olympic victor's reward 
of maintenance in the Prytaneum. Or why should he propose any 
counter-penalty when he does not know whether death, which 
Anytus proposes, is a good or an evil? And he is certain that im- 
prisonment is an evil, exile is an evil. Loss of money might be an 
evil, but then he has none to give; perhaps he can make up a mina. 
Let that be the penalty, or, if his friends wish, thirty minae; for 
which they will be excellent securities. 

(He is condemned to death.) 

He is an old man already, and the Athenians will gain nothing 
but disgrace by depriving him of a few years of life. Perhaps he 
could have escaped, if he had chosen to throw down his arms and 
entreat for his life. But he does not at all repent of the manner of 
his defence; he would rather die in his own fashion than live in 
theirs. For the penalty of unrighteousness is swifter than death; 
that penalty has already overtaken his accusers as death will soon 
overtake him. 

And now, as one who is about to die, he will prophesy to them. 
They have put him to death in order to escape the necessity of giv- 
ing an account of their lives. But his death 'will be the seed’ of 
many disciples who will convince them of their evil ways, and will 
come forth to reprove them in harsher terms, because they are 
younger and more inconsiderate. 

He would like to say a few words, while there is time, to those 
who would have acquitted him. He wishes them to know that the 
divine sign never interrupted him in the course of his defence; the 
reason of which, as he conjectures, is that the death to which he is 
going is a good and not an evil. For either death is a long sleep, the 
best of sleeps, or a journey to another world in which the souls of