The Euthyphro

Euthyphro: What novel circumstance has happened, Socrates, that you, leaving the discussions in the Lyceum, are now waiting about the porch of the king? For you have not an action with the king, as I have.

Socrates: The Athenians, Euthyphro, do not call it an action, but an accusation.

Euthyphro: What do you say? Some one, as it seems, has accused you. For I should not think that you would accuse another.

Socrates: I should not, indeed.

Euthyphro: Has, then, another accused you?

Socrates: Certainly.

Euthyphro: Who is he?

Socrates: I do not, Euthyphro, perfectly know the man: for he appears to me to be young, and of no note. But they call him, I think, Melitus; and he is of the town Pittheus: if you have in your recollection one Melitus, a Pitthean, who has long hair, a thin beard, and an aquiline nose.

Euthyphro: I do not recollect him, Socrates. But what is his accusation of you?

Socrates: What is it? Not an ignoble one, as it appears to me. For it is no despicable thing, for one who is a young man, to be knowing in a circumstance of such a magnitude. For he knows, as he says, how the youth are corrupted, and who they are that corrupt them. And he appears to be a certain wise man; and seeing my ignorance, and considering me as one who corrupts his equals in age, to have accused me to the city, as to a mother. In consequence of this, he only of the citizens seems to me to have begun rightly. For it is right to pay attention to youth, in the first place, that they may become the most excellent characters: just as it is reasonable that a good husbandman should first take care of the young plants, and after this of the others. Thus also Melitus perhaps will first cut us up who corrupt the blossoms of youth, as he says, and afterwards he will certainly pay attention to those of a more advanced age, and thus will be the cause of the most numerous and the greatest goods to the city. This is what may be expected to happen from one who makes such a beginning.

Euthyphro: I should wish it were so, Socrates; but I tremble, lest the contrary should happen. For, in reality, he appears to me, by trying to injure you, to begin to hurt the city from the Vestal hearth itself. But tell me by what part of your conduct it is that he says you corrupt the youth?

Socrates: The things of which he accuses me, O wonderful man, must be considered, when they are heard, as absurd. For he says that I am a maker of gods; and, as if I introduced new and did not believe in the ancient gods, has brought this accusation against me.