CHAPTER XXIX.
THE LAST CONVERSATION.
Callias, as may be supposed, did not fail to keep his appointment with the utmost punctuality. He found at Crito’s house very nearly the same company that had been assembled the day before at Xenophon’s. After the usual greetings had been interchanged, the host said, “I propose, if it is agreeable to you all, to hold the conversation which we are to have to-day at the house of our friend Plato. He has written to invite us, not because he can himself see us, for he is not sufficiently recovered from his late illness, but because we shall thus be able to talk with his friend Phaedo; for as all know there is no more fitting person than Phaedo to tell our young friend Callias the things that he desires to hear. For though we were all present, Xenophon only excepted, on that day when the Master left us, having given us his last instructions, yet there is no one who so well remembers and is so well able to describe all that was then said or done. I propose, therefore, that we transfer ourselves to his house.”
The proposition met with general assent and the party set out.
Crito naturally took charge of Callias as being his special guest. As the two were walking, the young man said, “Tell me, Crito, if it is not unpleasing to you, whether in the thirty days during which the Master was held in prison, any efforts were made to save his life?”
“I am glad,” said Crito, “that you have asked me that question privately and not before others, for, indeed, this is a matter which has caused me no little amount of trouble and shame. Some people blame me because, they say, though a rich man I did not bribe the jailer of the prison in which Socrates was confined, and thus enable him to escape. I am blameable, indeed, but for an exactly opposite reason. I did bribe the man—this of course is in absolute confidence between you and me—and in this, as the Master showed me, I was wrong. Indeed I never received from him so severe a rebuke as I did concerning this matter. But let me tell you what happened. I had arranged everything. The jailer was to let him escape. There were people ready to carry him out of the country. I went to him early in the morning of the day when the ship was expected to return. I told him what I had done. I made light of the money that the affair was to cost. I could well afford it, I said, and if I could not there were others ready to contribute. And then I attacked him, it was an impudent thing to do, but I felt as if I could do anything that we should not lose him. I told him that it was wrong of him to do his best to let his enemies get their way. I said to him, ‘Thus acting you desert your children, whom you might bring up and educate. But if you die you will leave them orphans and friendless. Either you ought not to have children or you ought to take some trouble about them. Surely this does not become one who has made virtue his study throughout his life. And remember what a disgrace will fall upon us, for it will certainly be said that we did not do our best to save your life.’
“Well, I cannot tell you now a tenth part of what he said. I have it all written down at home, but I may say what you will easily believe that I was as helpless in his hands as the veriest pretender whom he has ever cross-examined. I know that he ended by making me thoroughly ashamed of myself. One of his chief arguments was this:
“‘Suppose, Crito, that as I was in the act of escaping, the State itself were to say to me: Are you not seeking to destroy by so acting the laws of the State itself? Is not that State already dissolved wherein public sentences are set aside by private persons? What should I answer to such questions? And if the laws were to say, What complaint have you got to make against us that you seek to destroy us? Do you not owe your being to us, seeing that your father and mother married according to our ordering? Have we not given you nurture, education, all the good things that you possess as being an Athenian? Have you not acknowledged us by living in the city, by having children in it? And if they were further to say, Verily, he who acts in this way in which you are about to act is a corrupter of youth—what could I answer?
“‘And tell me, Crito,’ he went on, ‘whither would you have me betake myself? Not surely to any well-ordered city seeing that I had shown myself the enemy of such order, but rather to some abode of riot, which would indeed ill become one who had professed to be a lover of virtue and righteousness. And as for my children, how shall I benefit them? By taking them elsewhere and bringing them up not as citizens of Athens, but as citizens of some other State which I myself here have judged inferior, seeing that all my life long I have deliberately preferred Athens to it?’ Verily, Callias, when he said this, I had no answer. But here we are at Phaedo’s house.”