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Achilles any thought of death and danger? For wherever a man's 
place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he 
has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the 
hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything but of 
disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying. 

Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I 
who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to com- 
mand me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained 
where they placed me, like any other man, facing death— if now, 
when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the 
philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I 
were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; 
that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in 
court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle 
because I was afraid of death, fancying that I was wise when I was 
not wise. For the fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, 
and not real wisdom, being a pretence of knowing the unknown; 
and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear appre- 
hend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is not 
this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the con- 
ceit that a man knows what he does not know? And in this respect 
only I believe myself to differ from men in general, and may per- 
haps claim to be wiser than they are:— that whereas I know but 
little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do 
know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or 
man, is evil and dishonourable, and I will never fear or avoid a pos- 
sible good rather than a certain evil. And therefore if you let me go 
now, and are not convinced by Anytus, who said that since I had 
been prosecuted I must be put to death; (or if not that I ought nev- 
er to have been prosecuted at all); and that if I escape now, your 
sons will all be utterly ruined by listening to my words— if you say 
to me, Socrates, this time we will not mind Anytus, and you shall 
be let off, but upon one condition, that you are not to enquire and