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something more to say, at which you may be inclined to cry out; 
but I believe that to hear me will be good for you, and therefore I 
beg that you will not cry out. I would have you know, that if you kill 
such an one as I am, you will injure yourselves more than you will 
injure me. Nothing will injure me, not Meletus nor yet 
Anytus— they cannot, for a bad man is not permitted to injure a 
better than himself. I do not deny that Anytus may, perhaps, kill 
him, or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights; and he 
may imagine, and others may imagine, that he is inflicting a great 
injury upon him: but there I do not agree. For the evil of doing as 
he is doing— the evil of unjustly taking away the life of another— is 
greater far. 

And now, Athenians, I am not going to argue for my own sake, as 
you may think, but for yours, that you may not sin against the God 
by condemning me, who am his gift to you. For if you kill me you 
will not easily find a successor to me, who, if I may use such a 
ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by 
God; and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his 
motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. 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 will not easily find another 
like me, and therefore I would advise you to spare me. I dare say 
that you may feel out of temper (like a person who is suddenly 
awakened from sleep), and you think that you might easily strike 
me dead as Anytus advises, and then you would sleep on for the re- 
mainder of your lives, unless God in his care of you sent you anoth- 
er gadfly. When I say that I am given to you by God, the proof of 
my mission is this:— if I had been like other men, I should not have 
neglected all my own concerns or patiently seen the neglect of 
them during all these years, and have been doing yours, coming to 
you individually like a father or elder brother, exhorting you to re- 
gard virtue; such conduct, I say, would be unlike human nature. If I