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are no gods if they are the sons of gods? You might as well affirm 
the existence of mules, and deny that of horses and asses. Such 
nonsense, Meletus, could only have been intended by you to make 
trial of me. You have put this into the indictment because you had 
nothing real of which to accuse me. But no one who has a particle 
of understanding will ever be convinced by you that the same men 
can believe in divine and superhuman things, and yet not believe 
that there are gods and demigods and heroes. 

I have said enough in answer to the charge of Meletus: any elab- 
orate defence is unnecessary, but I know only too well how many 
are the enmities which I have incurred, and this is what will be my 
destruction if I am destroyed;— not Meletus, nor yet Anytus, but 
the envy and detraction of the world, which has been the death of 
many good men, and will probably be the death of many more; 
there is no danger of my being the last of them. 

Some one will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a 
course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To 
him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is 
good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dy- 
ing; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is do- 
ing right or wrong— acting the part of a good man or of a bad. 
Whereas, upon your view, the heroes who fell at Troy were not 
good for much, and the son of Thetis above all, who altogether des- 
pised danger in comparison with disgrace; and when he was so 
eager to slay Hector, his goddess mother said to him, that if he 
avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he would die 
himself— 'Fate,' she said, in these or the like words, 'waits for you 
next after Hector;' he, receiving this warning, utterly despised 
danger and death, and instead of fearing them, feared rather to live 
in dishonour, and not to avenge his friend. 'Let me die forthwith,' 
he replies, 'and be avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by 
the beaked ships, a laughing-stock and a burden of the earth.' Had