The Logos Scripture · Gospel of Xenophon

The Trial and the Orderly Departure

Gospel of Xenophon 6 · First Witness: Justice, the Citizen, and Duty

This book is written as a record. Where there are numbers, dates, and names, they are set down as they were.

6.1The rulers of Athens were eaten by their own envy, and feared still more to lose their worldly authority.

6.2They wove charges against the prophet, accusing him of bringing in strange gods and corrupting the young.

6.3The jurors numbered five hundred and one. Those who found him guilty, two hundred and eighty-one.

6.4The blind court of the people awarded him the cup of hemlock.

6.5Yet when the hour came in the stone cell, Socrates was wholly composed, and took the cup of poison with a steady hand.

6.6His disciples wept at the sudden cruelty of the city, but he rebuked them, saying:

6.7"I have lived my whole life as a just citizen, and I will keep the law of this body to the last."

6.8"But this flesh is only lodging taken for a season."

6.9He drank the poison, lay down in good order, and said in a low voice the last oath of a citizen:

6.10"Crito, I owe Asclepius a cock. Remember to pay the debt for me."

6.11Then he closed his eyes, and the system of the body came to rest in absolute quiet.

6.12But his soul sprang upward, and flew toward the free sky.

6.13And the disciples were left marvelling at his unbroken discipline, and at that leap of the soul.

6.14I was there. I did not see a light. I saw a man settle his accounts.