The Dead Come to Life, or the Fisherman (6-10)

FRANKNESS

Where, pray, and when have I insulted you? I have always consistently admired philosophy and extolled you and lived on intimate terms with the writings that you have left behind. These very phrases that I utter—where else but from you did I get them? Culling them like a bee, I make my show with them before men, who applaud and recognize where and

from whom and how I gathered each flower; and although ostensibly it is I whom they admire for the bouquet, as a matter of fact it is you and your garden, because you have put forth such blossoms, so gay and varied in their hues—if one but knows how to select and interweave and combine them so that they will not be out of harmony with one another. Would any man, after receiving this kindly treatment at your hands,-attempt to speak ill of benefactors to whom he owes his reputation? Not unless he be like Thamyris or Eurytus in his nature, so as to raise his voice against the Muses from whom he had the gift of song, or to match himself against Apollo in archery—and he the giver of the bow!

PLATO

That speech of yours is good rhetoric, my fine fellow; but it is directly against your case and only makes your presumptuousness appear more staggering, since ingratitude is now added to injustice. For you got your shafts from us, as you admit, and then turned them against us, making it your only aim to speak ill of us all. That is the way you have paid us for opening that garden to you and not forbidding you to pick flowers and go away with your arms full. For that reason, then, above all else, you deserve to die.

FRANKNESS

See! You give me an angry-hearing, and you reject every just plea! Yet I should never have supposed that anger could affect. Plato or Chrysippus or Aristotle or the rest of you; it seemed to me that

you, and you alone, were surely far away from anything of that kind. But, however that may be, my masters, do not put me to death unsentenced and unheard. This too was once a trait of yours, not to deal with fellow-citizens on a basis of force and superior strength, but to settle your differences by course of law, according, a hearing and in your turn receiving one. So let us choose a judge, and then you may bring your complaint either jointly or through anyone whom you may elect to represent you all; and I will defend.myself against your charges. Then, if I am proven guilty, and the court passes that verdict upon me, I will submit, of course, to the punishment that I deserve, and you will not have taken it upon yourselves to do anything high-handed. But if after I have undergone my investigation I am found innocent and irreproachable, the jury will discharge me, and you will turn your anger against those who nave misled you and set you against me.

PLATO

There we have it! “Cavalry into the open,” so that you may give the slip to the jury and get away.[*] At any rate, they say that you are an orator and a lawyer and a wizard at making speeches. And whom do you wish to be judge, what is more? It must be someone whom you cannot influence by a bribe, as your sort often do, to cast an unjust ballot in your favour.

FRANKNESS

Do not be alarmed on that score. I should not care to have any such referee of suspicious or doubtful

character, who would sell me his vote. See, for my part I nominate Philosophy herself to the bench, and you yourselves also!

PLATO

And who can conduct the prosecution if we are to be jurors?

FRANKNESS

Be prosecutors and jurors at the same time. Even that arrangement has no terrors for me, since I have so much the better of you in the justice of my case and expect to be so over-stocked with pleas.

PLATO

What shall we do, Pythagoras and Socrates? Really, the man seems to be making a reasonable request in demanding a trial.

SOCRATES

What can we do but go to court, taking Philosophy _ with us, and hear his defence, whatever it may be. Prejudgment is not our way; it is terribly unprofessional, characteristic of hot-headed fellows who hold that might is right. We shall lay ourselves open to hard words from those who like to deal in them if we stone a man who has had no opportunity even to plead his case, especially as we ourselves maintain that we delight in just dealing. What could we say of Anytus and Meletus, who prosecuted me, or of the jurors on that occasion, if this fellow is to die without getting any hearing at all?[*]

PLATO

Excellent advice, Socrates; so let us go and get Philosophy. She shall judge, and we shall be content with her decision, whatever it may be.