2019-04-07
CHAPTER ONE: Plato II. Socrates
Then the revolution came, and men fought for it and against, bitterly and to the death.
When the democracy won, the fate of Socrates was decided: he was the intellectual leader of the revolting party, however pacific he might himself have been; he was the source of the hated aristocratic philosophy; he was the corrupter of youths drunk with debate（沉溺于辩论）.
It would be better, said Anytus（苏格拉底学生的爸爸） and Meletus, that Socrates should die.
The rest of the story all the world knows, for Plato wrote it down in prose more beautiful than poetry.
We are privileged（非常幸运的有特权做某事） to read for ourselves that simple and courageous (if not legendary) "apology," or defence, in which the first martyr（殉道者） of philosophy proclaimed the rights and necessity of free thought, upheld his value to the state, and refused to beg for mercy from the crowd whom he had always contemned.
They had the power to pardon him; he disdained（鄙视） to make the appeal.
It was a singular confirmation of his theories, that the judges should wish to let him go, while the angry crowd voted for his death.
Had he not denied the gods? Woe（哀伤） to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.
So they decreed（判决） that he should drink the hemlock（毒药）.
His friends came to his prison and offered him an easy escape; they had bribed all the officials who stood between him and liberty.
He refused. He was seventy years old now (399 B.C.); perhaps he thought it was time for him to die, and that he could never again die so usefully.
"Be of good cheer," he told his sorrowing friends, "and say that you are burying my body only." "When he had spoken these words," says Plato, in one of the great passages of the world's literature,
he rose and went into the bath-chamber with Crito, who bade us wait; and we waited, talking and thinking of... the greatness of our sorrow; he was like a father of whom we were being bereaved（失去=lose）, and we were about to pass the rest of our lives as orphans... Now the hour of sunset was near, for a good deal of time had passed while he was within. When he came out, he sat down with us again,... but not much was said. Soon the jailer... entered and stood by him, saying:"To you, Socrates, whom I know to be the noblest and gentlest and best of all who ever came to this place, I will not impute the angry feelings of other men, who rage and swear at me when, in obedience to the authorities, I bid them drink the poison—indeed I am sure that you will not be angry with me; for others, as you are aware, and not I, are the guilty cause. And so fare you well, and try to bear lightly what must needs be; you know my errand." Then bursting into tears he turned away and went out.
*如果你和周围格格不入，不要害怕，那是因为你活在未来。