First, who is there in your knowledge that is less a slave to his bodily
 appetites than I am? Who in the world more free,—for I accept neither gifts nor
 pay from any one? Whom would you with reason regard as more just than the one so
 reconciled to his present possessions as to want nothing beside that belongs to
 another? And would not a person with good reason call me a wise man, who from
 the time when I began to understand spoken words have never left off seeking
 after and learning every good thing that I could? And that my labour has not been in vain do you not think is attested by this
 fact, that many of my fellow-citizens who strive for virtue and many from abroad
 choose to associate with me above all other men? And what shall we say is
 accountable for this fact, that although everybody knows that it is quite
 impossible for me to repay with money, many people are eager to make me some
 gift? Or for this, that no demands are made on me by a single person for the
 repayment of benefits, while many confess that they owe me a debt of gratitude?
 Or for this, that during the siege, The blockade
 of Athens by the Spartans in
 the last year of the Peloponnesian War. while others were
 commiserating their lot, I got along without feeling the pinch of poverty
 any worse than when the city’s prosperity was at its height? Or for this,
 that while other men get their delicacies in the markets and pay a high
 price for them, I devise more pleasurable ones from the resources of my
 soul, with no expenditure of money? And now, if no one can convict me of
 misstatement in all that I have said of myself, do I not unquestionably
 merit praise from both gods and men? But in spite of all, Meletus, do you maintain that I corrupt the young by such
 practices? And yet surely we know what kinds of corruption affect the young; so
 you tell us whether you know of any one who under my influence has fallen from
 piety into impiety, or from sober into wanton conduct, or from moderation in
 living into extravagance, or from temperate drinking into sottishness, or from
 strenuousness into effeminacy, or has been overcome of any other base pleasure.”
 But, by Heaven! said Meletus: there is one set of men I know,—those whom you
 have persuaded to obey you rather than their parents. I admit it, he reports
 Socrates as replying, at least
 so far as education is concerned; for people know that I have taken an interest
 in that. But in a question of health, men take the advice of physicians rather
 than that of their parents; and moreover, in the meetings of the legislative
 assembly all the people of Athens ,
 without question, follow the advice of those whose words are wisest rather than
 that of their own relatives. Do you not also elect for your generals, in
 preference to fathers and brothers,—yes, by Heaven! in preference to your very
 selves,—those whom you regard as having the greatest wisdom in military
 affairs? Yes, Meletus had said; for that is both expedient and
 conventional.