Read Apology By Plato Online

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law, I am quite a stranger to the language of the place; and there- 
fore I would have you regard me as if I were really a stranger, 
whom you would excuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after 
the fashion of his country:— Am I making an unfair request of you? 
Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good; but think 
only of the truth of my words, and give heed to that: let the speaker 
speak truly and the judge decide justly. 

And first, I have to reply to the older charges and to my first ac- 
cusers, and then I will go on to the later ones. For of old I have had 
many accusers, who have accused me falsely to you during many 
years; and I am more afraid of them than of Anytus and his associ- 
ates, who are dangerous, too, in their own way. But far more dan- 
gerous are the others, who began when you were children, and took 
possession of your minds with their falsehoods, telling of one So- 
crates, a wise man, who speculated about the heaven above, and 
searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the 
better cause. The disseminators of this tale are the accusers whom 
I dread; for their hearers are apt to fancy that such enquirers do 
not believe in the existence of the gods. And they are many, and 
their charges against me are of ancient date, and they were made 
by them in the days when you were more impressible than you are 
now— in childhood, or it may have been in youth— and the cause 
when heard went by default, for there was none to answer. And 
hardest of all, I do not know and cannot tell the names of my ac- 
cusers; unless in the chance case of a Comic poet. All who from 
envy and malice have persuaded you— some of them having first 
convinced themselves— all this class of men are most difficult to 
deal with; for I cannot have them up here, and cross-examine 
them, and therefore I must simply fight with shadows in my own 
defence, and argue when there is no one who answers. I will ask 
you then to assume with me, as I was saying, that my opponents 
are of two kinds; one recent, the other ancient: and I hope that you