what did socrates say to the judges in the court?
Answers
SOCRATES: What impression, men of Athens, my accusers have made upon you, I know not but as for me, they almost made me forget who I am, so persuasively did they speak. And yet there is practically no word of truth in what they have said. But I was particularly astonished at one of their many falsehoods—their statement that I am a clever speaker and that you must beware of being deceived by me. For what seemed to me the most brazen thing about them is this, that they are not ashamed at the prospect of being confuted at once in actual fact, when I prove myself to be in no way a clever speaker—unless, to be sure, they mean by a clever speaker one who tells the truth. If that is what they mean, I should agree that I am an orator on a very different level from them. My accusers, then, as I state, have said little or nothing that is true. That you shall hear from me the whole truth—not, gentlemen, speeches decked out like theirs with words and phrases and finely arranged, but words uttered as they occur to me in the language of every day—for I am confident in the justice of my plea—and let none of you expect otherwise. For surely it would ill become me at my age to appear before you telling stories, like a boy. There is indeed one thing, gentlemen, which I most earnestly beg and entreat of you. If you hear me making my defence in the language that I regularly employ at the counters in the market place, where many of you have heard me, and elsewhere, not to be surprised nor to interrupt me on that account. For the truth is that this is the first time I have appeared before a court, though I am seventy years old. I am therefore literally a stranger to the language of the courts. Then just as, if I had really been a stranger, you would assuredly pardon me for speaking in the dialect and the fashion of my motherland, so too now I ask this of you, a fair request, in my opinion to ignore my manner of speech—it may be bad, it may be good—and to give this one thing your whole attention and consideration, whether or not my plea is just. For that is the virtue of a judge, as an orator's virtue is to speak the truth.