my cause than I do; and, judging according to my past actions, both public and private, according to my intentions, and according to the profit that so many of our citizens, both young and old, daily extract from my conversation, and the fruit that you all reap from me, you cannot more duly acquit yourselves towards my merit than in ordering that, my poverty considered, I should be maintained at the Prytanaeum, at the public expense, a thing that I have often known you, with less reason, grant to others.  Do not impute it to obstinacy or disdain that I do not, according to the custom, supplicate and go about to move you to commiseration.  I have both friends and kindred, not being, as Homer says, begotten of wood or of stone, no more than others, who might well present themselves before you with tears and mourning, and I have three desolate children with whom to move you to compassion; but I should do a shame to our city at the age I am, and in the reputation of wisdom which is now charged against me, to appear in such an abject form.  What would men say of the other Athenians?  I have always admonished those who have frequented my lectures, not to redeem their lives by an unbecoming action; and in the wars of my country, at Amphipolis, Potidea, Delia, and other expeditions where I have been, I have effectually manifested how far I was from securing my safety by my shame.  I should, moreover, compromise your duty, and should invite you to unbecoming things; for ’tis not for my prayers to persuade you, but for the pure and solid reasons of justice.  You have sworn to the gods to keep yourselves upright; and it would seem as if I suspected you, or would recriminate upon you that I do not believe that you are so; and I should testify against myself, not to believe them as I ought, mistrusting their conduct, and not purely committing my affair into their hands.  I wholly rely upon them; and hold myself assured they will do in this what shall be most fit both for you and for me:  good men, whether living or dead, have no reason to fear the gods.”

Is not this an innocent child’s pleading of an unimaginable loftiness, true, frank, and just, unexampled?—­and in what a necessity employed!  Truly, he had very good reason to prefer it before that which the great orator Lysias had penned for him:  admirably couched, indeed, in the judiciary style, but unworthy of so noble a criminal.  Had a suppliant voice been heard out of the mouth of Socrates, that lofty virtue had struck sail in the height of its glory; and ought his rich and powerful nature to have committed her defence to art, and, in her highest proof, have renounced truth and simplicity, the ornaments of his speaking, to adorn and deck herself with the embellishments of figures and the flourishes of a premeditated speech?  He did very wisely, and like himself, not to corrupt the tenor of an incorrupt life, and so sacred an image of the human form, to spin out his decrepitude another year, and to betray