Apology by Plato: Free EPUB, AZW3 & KEPUB Download

Philosophy · Dialogue

Apology

By Plato · (Published c. 399 BC) · Trans. by Benjamin Jowett, 1871 · All Plato books

Word Count ~19,000 words (estimated)

Reading Time Approx. 1.1 hours (estimated)

Copyright Status Public Domain in the US; check local laws

Source Project Gutenberg #1656

Source Edition Project Gutenberg #1656

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The opening of the Apology

How you, O Athenians, have been affected by my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that they almost made me forget who I was—so persuasively did they speak; and yet they have hardly uttered a word of truth. But of the many falsehoods told by them, there was one which quite amazed me;—I mean when they said that you should be upon your guard and not allow yourselves to be deceived by the force of my eloquence. To say this, when they were certain to be detected as soon as I opened my lips and proved myself to be anything but a great speaker, did indeed appear to me most shameless—unless by the force of eloquence they mean the force of truth; for if such is their meaning, I admit that I am eloquent. But in how different a way from theirs! Well, as I was saying, they have scarcely spoken the truth at all; but from me you shall hear the whole truth: not, however, delivered after their manner in a set oration duly ornamented with words and phrases. No, by heaven! but I shall use the words and arguments which occur to me at the moment; for I am confident in the justice of my cause (Or, I am certain that I am right in taking this course.): at my time of life I ought not to be appearing before you, O men of Athens, in the character of a juvenile orator—let no one expect it of me. And I must beg of you to grant me a favour:—If I defend myself in my accustomed manner, and you hear me using the words which I have been in the habit of using in the agora, at the tables of the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask you not to be surprised, and not to interrupt me on this account. For I am more than seventy years of age, and appearing now for the first time in a court of law, I am quite a stranger to the language of the place; and therefore 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 accusers, 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 associates, who are dangerous, too, in their own way. But far more dangerous are the others, who began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods, telling of one Socrates, 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 accusers; 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 will see the propriety of my answering the latter first, for these accusations you heard long before the others, and much oftener.

The excerpt below is the first two paragraphs of the speech. Socrates says his accusers nearly made him forget who he was and have hardly spoken a word of truth, and that he will speak in his accustomed way rather than in a set oration; past seventy, he asks to be excused as a stranger to the language of the court. The second paragraph turns to the older accusers, whom he fears more than Anytus.

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Further Reading

Read next: Plato’s Republic, and Epictetus on this speech

Free edition

The Republic

By Plato · The longest dialogue, and the city Socrates keeps describing

Free edition

The Enchiridion

By Epictetus · Stoic practice built on the death this speech accepts

Apology by Plato: Summary, Ideas & Arguments

This page gives a summary and analysis of the Apology, with the speech set out in eight groups in the order Socrates makes his defence and the arguments and people named in it explained. Plato wrote it as a defence for his teacher, and the translation printed here is Benjamin Jowett’s, published in 1871. The trial took place in 399 BC. Socrates speaks as a man of more than seventy, answering two charges: that he corrupts the young men of Athens, and that he does not believe in the gods of the state but introduces new divinities. The defence is not arranged as a legal argument. He takes the older slander first, then the indictment, and the shape of the speech is the shape of a life described rather than a case answered point by point.

The first movement clears the ground. Socrates separates the nameless accusers who had maligned him for years, and whom he cannot cross-examine, from Meletus and his associates, who are present and can answer. He denies the two things public opinion had fastened on him, natural philosophy and teaching for pay, and tells how Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi whether any man was wiser than Socrates, and how the answer set him to examining politicians, poets and artisans. The examinations made enemies, and they also made the reputation of wisdom that he says belongs to the god, since he knows only that he knows nothing. Young men of the richer class imitated the game, and the anger of those they examined fell on him. He calls the hatred that followed the true cause of the charge.

He then cross-examines Meletus, who says everyone in Athens improves the young except Socrates, and who is caught in a contradiction when he calls him a complete atheist while also charging him with teaching about new divinities. From there the speech turns to the reason he will not abandon the mission: the post where the god placed him, the campaigns at Potidaea, Amphipolis and Delium, the gadfly that stings a sluggish horse, and his poverty as witness that he took no fee. He puts it in the terms of a soldier at his post, and of Achilles, who chose to avenge his friend and die. He refuses to bring his sons into court or to entreat the judges. After conviction he proposes maintenance in the Prytaneum, then a fine of thirty minae, and is condemned to death. The complete speech is at Project Gutenberg #1656.

Jowett’s introduction, printed before the speech, asks how far the Apology reports what Socrates said. It compares the speech with Xenophon’s account, notes that Plato is said to have been present at the defence and absent at the death, and concludes that the work is an ideal portrait rather than a transcript. Jowett divides it into three parts, the defence, the address on the penalty and the last words, and asks whether the cross-examination of Meletus is sophistry or irony. He finds the defence about the lives of the disciples weak, and observes that the prophecy of harsher teachers was never fulfilled. The enmity of Aristophanes, he adds, did not keep Plato from putting the two men together in the Symposium. The introduction is his, not Plato’s, and it is read here as a separate essay.

The last part is addressed to the judges who voted for acquittal. Socrates says that the divine sign which had checked him all his life said nothing during the trial, and takes the silence as a sign that death is a good: either a dreamless sleep or a journey to a place where the dead can be questioned. He asks his friends to reprove his sons if they prefer riches to virtue, and ends with the sentence about going his way to die while they go theirs to live. Readers who want the longer dialogue can take The Republic, where the just man and the city are argued. The Enchiridion of Epictetus is the Stoic handbook built on the acceptance of what cannot be avoided, and the rest of the Philosophy Classics shelf is free too.

Historical Context

The Apology is written for a court that worked by speech. An accuser swore an affidavit, the defendant answered it, and the judges decided; if the verdict was guilty, the accuser proposed a penalty and the defendant proposed another, and the judges chose between them. Socrates speaks as a man of more than seventy who is appearing in a court of law for the first time, and he asks to be excused for using the words of the market place. The charges are brought by Meletus, Anytus and Lycon, and he says that each speaks for a different group: the poets, the craftsmen and politicians, the rhetoricians.

The speech keeps returning to recent Athenian politics, and the introduction explains why. Socrates had presided with his tribe at the trial of the generals after Arginusae, when the assembly wished to try them in a body, and he alone opposed it; he also refused the order of the Thirty to fetch Leon from Salamis. Jowett notes that the names of Alcibiades, Critias and Charmides were fresh in the memory of the restored democracy, and that this is what makes the charge of corrupting the young serious. The defence has to answer for men who had been his companions and had done the city harm.

Jowett’s introduction is a Victorian essay on a Greek text, and it argues with the scholarship of its time. It weighs Xenophon’s Memorabilia against Plato, doubts the story that the Delphic oracle first turned Socrates to cross-examining the world, and answers Schleiermacher, who held that the defence was a nearly exact reproduction of what Socrates said. It also places the Apology among the dialogues: the Crito as an appendage, the Gorgias carrying the idealisation further, the Republic and the Phaedo taking up the just man and the death. The introduction was published with the translation in 1871.

Key Ideas & Arguments

• The old accusers: The slander Socrates says he fears most: a nameless opinion formed over years, taught to the judges when they were children, and repeated by comic poets. He cannot cross-examine it, so he fights shadows. Jowett calls it public opinion, and says the professed accusers are only its mouthpiece.
• The oracle at Delphi: Chaerephon’s question and the answer that no man was wiser. Socrates treats the answer as a riddle he must test, and the testing becomes his life’s work. He says the god speaks of him only as an example: the wisest man is the one who knows his wisdom is worth nothing.
• Meletus: The accuser who signs the indictment and stands in court to answer. Socrates questions him about who improves the young, about the horse trainer, about intention, and about the gods, and makes him say that Socrates is a complete atheist. Jowett calls him easily foiled and mastered.
• The gadfly: Socrates’s image for himself: a fly fastened on a great and noble horse that is slow because of its size. He stings the city into life and warns that the judges will not easily find another. The image carries the claim that his questioning is a service, not a nuisance.
• The divine sign: A voice that came to Socrates from childhood, which he says always forbade and never commanded. It kept him out of politics, where he would have died early, and it was silent through the trial, which he reads as a sign that his death is a good.
• The unexamined life: The claim that daily discourse about virtue is the greatest good of man, and that a life without examination is not worth living. Socrates says it in the address on the penalty, when he explains why he will not hold his tongue in exchange for acquittal.

Core Arguments & Influence

• The mission from the god: The oracle said that no man was wiser than Socrates, and Socrates says he spent his life trying to make sense of it. Since he knew he had no wisdom, he went to the men with a name for it and found that they had none either. The examinations were not a career he chose; he describes them as a duty laid on him, which took him away from his own affairs and left him poor. Offered his life on condition that he stop, he says he will obey the god.
• Care of the soul before private interest: The speech keeps repeating one instruction: look to the improvement of the soul before wealth, family and office. Socrates says he goes to each man privately, like a father or elder brother, urging him to care for virtue first, and that virtue is not given by money but brings money and every other good with it. He points to his poverty as the proof that he took no fee, and to the young men who followed him as the proof that he promised them nothing.
• The examined life: The most quoted sentence in the speech comes in the address on the penalty: the life that is not examined is not worth living. Socrates says that questioning himself and others is the greatest good of man, and that he cannot give it up without disobeying the god. He does not claim that the examination makes him wise. He claims only that he knows he does not know, and that this is worth more than the confidence of those who think they know. The court is asked to spare the practice rather than the man.
• Duty, law and the refusal to entreat: Socrates argues that a man posted by a commander must stay at his post, and that he has been posted by the god. He reminds the judges of the campaigns at Potidaea, Amphipolis and Delium, and of the two days when he stood against a crowd, at the trial of the generals and in the rotunda under the Thirty. What follows is a refusal of the usual means of escape: no tears, no children produced in court, no asking the judges to break their oath.
• Death, and the portrait Plato made: The last third of the speech turns on death. Socrates says the sign that had checked him all his life gave no sign during the trial, and he takes the silence as an intimation that death is a good, either a dreamless sleep or a journey to another world. Jowett’s introduction reads the whole speech as Plato’s ideal portrait rather than a report, in which much is said that was not said, and he notes that the prophecy of harsher teachers was never fulfilled.

Why Download Our Custom E-Reader Edition of Apology?

The download is the whole book, not an excerpt: Jowett’s introduction first, then the Apology complete, from the sentence about the accusers who nearly made Socrates forget who he was to the last line about which of the two ways is better. Nothing is cut, and no part of the speech is replaced by a summary. The introduction is printed as the separate essay it is, so the speech can be read on its own.

Around the text the page adds what a court speech needs: eight groups that follow the movements of the defence, six notes on the old accusers, the oracle, Meletus, the gadfly, the divine sign and the examined life, five themes that carry the argument across the speech, and a short account of the court, the politics behind the charge and Jowett’s introduction.

The files come in three formats with the same text and the same breaks. The EPUB opens in Apple Books, Calibre and most Android readers; the AZW3 is the file for a Kindle, by USB or through Send to Kindle; the KEPUB is the one Kobo devices read best. No account is needed, nothing is locked, and the files keep working.

• Project Gutenberg transcription, via Project Gutenberg #1656 — the complete text, Jowett’s introduction and the Apology, unabridged.
• The speech in eight groups Eight groups in the order of the defence, from the old accusers to the last words, each with a short account of the step it takes.
• Jowett’s introduction kept apart The 1871 introduction printed before the speech, with its argument about how far the Apology reports what Socrates said, kept separate from Plato’s text.
• EPUB, AZW3 and KEPUB files The same text in three formats, for Apple Books, Kindle and Kobo, with the paragraph breaks of the translation intact.

Part of: Philosophy Classics · Plato