ΚΡΙΤΩΝ
Thomas Taylor (1804)
Plato · Thomas Taylor (1804)
Scene: The Prison of Socrates
Socrates: Why came you at this early hour, Crito? Or is it not yet morning?
Crito: It is.
Socrates: But what time of the morning is it?
Crito: It is now the break of day.
Socrates: I wonder how the keeper of the prison came to admit you.
Crito: He is accustomed to me, Socrates, in consequence of my frequently coming hither; and he is also in a certain respect under obligations to me.
Socrates: Did you come just now, or some time ago?
Crito: It is a considerable time since I came.
Socrates: But why did you not immediately call me, and not sit down in silence?
Crito: Not so, by Jupiter, Socrates; nor should I myself be willing to be for so long a time awake and in sorrow. But I have for some time admired you, on perceiving how sweetly you slept. And I designedly did not call you, that you might continue in that pleasant condition. Indeed I have often and formerly through the whole of your life considered you as happy on account of your manners, but far more so in the present calamity, because you bear it so easily and mildly.
Socrates: But it would be absurd, Crito, if a man of my age were to be indignant when it is necessary for him to die.
Crito: And yet others, Socrates, equally old, when they have been involved in such-like calamities, have notwithstanding their age been indignant with their present fortune.
Socrates: It is so. But why did you come to me so early?
Crito: I come, Socrates, bearing a message not unpleasant to you, as it appears to me, but bitter and weighty to me and to all your associates; and which I indeed shall bear most heavily.
Socrates: What is it? Is the ship come from Delos, on the arrival of which it is necessary I should die?
Crito: Not yet; but it appears to me, from what certain persons coming from Sunium have announced, and who left it there, that it will arrive to-day. From these messengers, therefore, it is evident that it will be here to-day; and consequently it will be necessary for you, Socrates, to die to-morrow.
Socrates: But with good fortune, Crito: and if it please the Gods, be it so. Yet I do not think that it will arrive here to-day.
Crito: Whence do you infer this?
Socrates: I will tell you. For on the day after, or on the very day in which the ship arrives, it is necessary that I should die.
Crito: Those that have power over these things say so.
Socrates: I do not, therefore, think it will come this, but the next day. But I infer this from a certain dream which I saw this night a little before you came; and you appear very opportunely not to have disturbed me.
Crito: But what was this dream?
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The Athenian who turned Socratic conversation into a written philosophy and founded the Academy.
Plato was born around 428 BCE into a wealthy and politically prominent Athenian family; through his mother Perictione the family traced kinship to the lawgiver Solon, and his relatives Critias and Charmides were among the oligarchs of the Thirty. A late tradition says his given name was Aristocles and that 'Plato' — from the word for 'broad' — was a nickname. He grew up during the long agony of the Peloponnesian War and came of age amid the violence and disillusion that followed Athens' defeat.
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