E
UTHYPHRO
: Many fine things, Socrates.
[14]
S
OCRATES
: So do generals, my friend. Nevertheless you could easily tell me their main concern, which is to achieve victory in war, is it not?
E
UTHYPHRO
: Of course.
S
OCRATES
: The farmers too, I think, achieve many fine things, but the main point of their efforts is to produce food from the earth.
E
UTHYPHRO
: Quite so.
S
OCRATES
: Well then, how would you sum up the many fine things that the gods achieve?
E
UTHYPHRO
: I told you a short while ago, Socrates, that it is a considerable [b] task to acquire any precise knowledge of these things, but, to put it simply, I say that if a man knows how to say and do what is pleasing to the gods at prayer and sacrifice, those are pious actions such as preserve both private houses and public affairs of state. The opposite of these pleasing actions are impious and overturn and destroy everything.
S
OCRATES
: You could tell me in far fewer words, if you were willing, the [c] sum of what I asked, Euthyphro, but you are not keen to teach me, that is clear. You were on the point of doing so, but you turned away. If you had given that answer, I should now have acquired from you sufficient knowledge of the nature of piety. As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him. Once more then, what do you say that piety and the pious are? Are they a knowledge of how to sacrifice and pray?
E
UTHYPHRO
: They are.
S
OCRATES
: To sacrifice is to make a gift to the gods, whereas to pray is to beg from the gods?
E
UTHYPHRO
: Definitely, Socrates.
[d] S
OCRATES
: It would follow from this statement that piety would be a knowledge of how to give to, and beg from, the gods.
E
UTHYPHRO
: You understood what I said very well, Socrates.
S
OCRATES
: That is because I am so desirous of your wisdom, and I concentrate my mind on it, so that no word of yours may fall to the ground. But tell me, what is this service to the gods? You say it is to beg from them and to give to them?
E
UTHYPHRO
: I do.
S
OCRATES
: And to beg correctly would be to ask from them things that we need?
E
UTHYPHRO
: What else?
[e] S
OCRATES
: And to give correctly is to give them what they need from us, for it would not be skillful to bring gifts to anyone that are in no way needed.
E
UTHYPHRO
: True, Socrates.
S
OCRATES
: Piety would then be a sort of trading skill between gods and men?
E
UTHYPHRO
: Trading yes, if you prefer to call it that.
S
OCRATES
: I prefer nothing, unless it is true. But tell me, what benefit do the gods derive from the gifts they receive from us? What they give us is obvious to all. There is for us no good that we do not receive from them,
[15]
but how are they benefited by what they receive from us? Or do we have such an advantage over them in the trade that we receive all our blessings from them and they receive nothing from us?
E
UTHYPHRO
: Do you suppose, Socrates, that the gods are benefited by what they receive from us?
S
OCRATES
: What could those gifts from us to the gods be, Euthyphro?
E
UTHYPHRO
: What else, do you think, than honor, reverence, and what I mentioned just now, to please them?
S
OCRATES
: The pious is then, Euthyphro, pleasing to the gods, but not [b] beneficial or dear to them?
E
UTHYPHRO
: I think it is of all things most dear to them.
S
OCRATES
: So the pious is once again what is dear to the gods.
E
UTHYPHRO
: Most certainly.
S
OCRATES
: When you say this, will you be surprised if your arguments seem to move about instead of staying put? And will you accuse me of being Daedalus who makes them move, though you are yourself much more skillful than Daedalus and make them go round in a circle? Or do you not realize that our argument has moved around and come again to [c] the same place? You surely remember that earlier the pious and the god-loved were shown not to be the same but different from each other. Or do you not remember?
E
UTHYPHRO
: I do.
S
OCRATES
: Do you then not realize now that you are saying that what is dear to the gods is the pious? Is this not the same as the god-loved? Or is it not?
E
UTHYPHRO
: It certainly is.
S
OCRATES
: Either we were wrong when we agreed before, or, if we were right then, we are wrong now.
E
UTHYPHRO
: That seems to be so.
S
OCRATES
: So we must investigate again from the beginning what piety is, as I shall not willingly give up before I learn this. Do not think me unworthy, but concentrate your attention and tell the truth. For you know [d] it, if any man does, and I must not let you go, like Proteus,
4
before you tell me. If you had no clear knowledge of piety and impiety you would never have ventured to prosecute your old father for murder on behalf of a servant. For fear of the gods you would have been afraid to take the risk lest you should not be acting rightly, and would have been ashamed before men, but now I know well that you believe you have clear knowledge [e] of piety and impiety. So tell me, my good Euthyphro, and do not hide what you think it is.
E
UTHYPHRO
: Some other time, Socrates, for I am in a hurry now, and it is time for me to go.
S
OCRATES
: What a thing to do, my friend! By going you have cast me
[16]
down from a great hope I had, that I would learn from you the nature of the pious and the impious and so escape Meletus’ indictment by showing him that I had acquired wisdom in divine matters from Euthyphro, and my ignorance would no longer cause me to be careless and inventive about such things, and that I would be better for the rest of my life.
1
. See
Apology
31d.
2
. Here Socrates gives the general principle under which, he says, the specific cases already examined—those of leading, carrying, and seeing—all fall. It is by being changed by something that changes
it
(e.g. by carrying it somewhere) that anything is a changed thing—not vice versa: it is not by something’s being a changed thing that something
else
then changes it so that it comes to be being changed (e.g. by carrying it somewhere). Likewise for “affections” such as being seen by someone: it is by being “affected” by something that “affects” it that anything is an “affected” thing, not vice versa. It is not by being an “affected” thing (e.g., a thing seen) that something else then “affects” it.
3
. Author unknown.
4
. See
Odyssey
iv.382 ff.
Translated by G.M.A. Grube.
This work is universally known as Plato’s ‘
Apology
’ of Socrates, in deference
to the word
apologia
that stands in its Greek title. Actually, the word means
not an apology but a defense speech in a legal proceeding, and that is what we
get—certainly, Socrates does not
apologize
for anything! This is not really a
dialogue. Except for an interlude when he engages one of his accusers in the
sort of question-and-answer discussion characteristic of Plato’s ‘Socratic’ dialogues,
we see Socrates delivering a speech before his jury of 501 fellow male
Athenians. At the age of seventy he had been indicted for breaking the law
against ‘impiety’—for offending the Olympian gods (Zeus, Apollo, and the
rest) recognized in the city’s festivals and other official activities. The basis of
the charge, such as it was, lay in the way that, for many years, Socrates had
been carrying on his philosophical work in Athens. It has often been thought
that the real basis for it lay in ‘guilt by association’: several of Socrates’ known
associates had been prominent malfeasants in Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian
War only a few years earlier and the oligarchic reign of terror that followed;
but an amnesty had forbidden suits based on political offenses during
that time. However much those associations may have been in the minds of his
accusers—and his jurors, too—Plato makes him respond sincerely to the
charges as lodged. After all, these would be the ultimate basis on which he
should or should not be found guilty of anything. So he takes the occasion to
explain and defend his devotion to philosophy, and the particular ways he has
pursued that in discussions with select young men and with people prominent
in the city—discussions like those we see in Plato’s other ‘Socratic’ works. He
argues that, so far from offending the gods through his philosophizing, or showing
disbelief in them, he has piously followed their lead (particularly that of
Apollo, through his oracle at Delphi) in making himself as good a person as he
can and encouraging (even goading) others to do the same. The gods want,
more than anything else, that we shall be good, and goodness depends principally
upon the quality of our understanding of what to care about and how to
behave in our lives: philosophy, through Socratic discussion, is the pursuit of
that understanding.
This is, of course, no record of the actual defense Socrates mounted at his
trial in 399
B.C.
,
but a composition of Plato’s own—we have no way of knowing
how closely, if at all, it conforms to Socrates’ real speech. In it Plato gives
us the best, most serious, response to the charges that, on his own knowledge
of Socrates, Socrates was entitled to give. Was Socrates nonetheless guilty as
charged? In deciding this, readers should notice that, however sincere Plato’s Socrates may be in claiming a pious motivation for his philosophical work, he
does set up human reason in his own person as the final arbiter of what is
right and wrong, and so of what the gods want us to do: he interprets Apollo,
through his oracle at Delphi, to have told him to do that! As we see also from
Euthyphro,
he has no truck with the authority of myths or ancient poets or religious
tradition and ‘divination’ to tell us what to think about the gods and
their commands or wishes as regards ourselves.
In democratic Athens, juries were randomly selected subsets—representatives—of the whole people. Hence, as Socrates makes clear, he is addressing the
democratic people of Athens, and when the jury find him guilty and condemn
him to death, they act as and for the Athenian people. Did Socrates bring on
his own condemnation, whether wittingly or not, by refusing to say the sorts
of things and to comport himself in the sort of way that would have won his acquittal?
Perhaps. True to his philosophical calling, he requires that the Athenians
think,
honestly and dispassionately, and decide the truth of the charges by
reasoning from the facts as they actually were. This was his final challenge to
them to care more for their souls—their minds, their power of reason—than for
their peace and comfort, undisturbed by the likes of him. Seen in that light, as
Plato wants us to see it, the failure was theirs.
J.M.C.
[17]
I do not know, men of Athens, how my accusers affected you; as for me, I was almost carried away in spite of myself, so persuasively did they speak. And yet, hardly anything of what they said is true. Of the many lies they told, one in particular surprised me, namely that you should be [b] careful not to be deceived by an accomplished speaker like me. That they were not ashamed to be immediately proved wrong by the facts, when I show myself not to be an accomplished speaker at all, that I thought was most shameless on their part—unless indeed they call an accomplished speaker the man who speaks the truth. If they mean that, I would agree that I am an orator, but not after their manner, for indeed, as I say, [c] practically nothing they said was true. From me you will hear the whole truth, though not, by Zeus, gentlemen, expressed in embroidered and stylized phrases like theirs, but things spoken at random and expressed in the first words that come to mind, for I put my trust in the justice of what I say, and let none of you expect anything else. It would not be fitting at my age, as it might be for a young man, to toy with words when I appear before you.
One thing I do ask and beg of you, gentlemen: if you hear me making my defense in the same kind of language as I am accustomed to use in the marketplace by the bankers’ tables, where many of you have heard [d] me, and elsewhere, do not be surprised or create a disturbance on that account. The position is this: this is my first appearance in a lawcourt, at the age of seventy; I am therefore simply a stranger to the manner of speaking here. Just as if I were really a stranger, you would certainly excuse me if I spoke in that dialect and manner in which I had been
[18]
brought up, so too my present request seems a just one, for you to pay no attention to my manner of speech—be it better or worse—but to concentrate your attention on whether what I say is just or not, for the excellence of a judge lies in this, as that of a speaker lies in telling the truth.
It is right for me, gentlemen, to defend myself first against the first lying accusations made against me and my first accusers, and then against the later accusations and the later accusers. There have been many who have [b] accused me to you for many years now, and none of their accusations are true. These I fear much more than I fear Anytus and his friends, though they too are formidable. These earlier ones, however, are more so, gentlemen; they got hold of most of you from childhood, persuaded you and accused me quite falsely, saying that there is a man called Socrates, a wise man, a student of all things in the sky and below the earth, who makes [c] the worse argument the stronger. Those who spread that rumor, gentlemen, are my dangerous accusers, for their hearers believe that those who study these things do not even believe in the gods. Moreover, these accusers are numerous, and have been at it a long time; also, they spoke to you at an age when you would most readily believe them, some of you being children and adolescents, and they won their case by default, as there was no defense.