Before Dawn in the Prison

Socrates: 43a Why have you come at this hour, Crito? Isn't it still early?

Crito: Yes, very early.

Socrates: What time is it, exactly?

Crito: It is just before dawn.

Socrates: I am surprised the prison warder was willing to let you in.

Crito: He knows me by now, Socrates, because I come here so often; and besides, I have done him a good turn.

Socrates: Have you just arrived, or have you been here long?

Crito: Quite a while.

Socrates: 43b Then why didn't you wake me at once, instead of sitting beside me in silence?

Crito: No, by Zeus, Socrates. I would not wish to be so sleepless and so full of grief myself. I have been watching you for a long time, marvelling at how peacefully you sleep, and I did not wake you on purpose, so that you might pass the time as pleasantly as possible. Often before, all through your life, I have thought you fortunate in your disposition, but never so much as in this present misfortune, seeing how easily and gently you bear it.

Socrates: Well, Crito, it would be out of tune for a man of my age to be distressed that he must now die.

Crito: 43c Other men of your age, Socrates, are overtaken by misfortunes like this, yet their age does nothing to keep them from being distressed at what has befallen them.

Socrates: That is true. But tell me, why have you come so early?

Crito: I bring news, Socrates — hard news; not for you, it seems to me, but for me and for all your friends hard and heavy news, and I think I shall bear it as heavily as any of them.

Socrates: What news? Has the ship come from Delos, 43d on whose arrival I must die?¹

Crito: It has not come yet, but I think it will arrive today, from what some people report who have come from Sunium² and left it there. So it is clear from their news that it will come today, and tomorrow, Socrates, you will have to end your life.

Socrates: Well, Crito, may it be for the best. If this is what the gods want, so be it. All the same, I do not think it will come today.

Crito: 44a What makes you think so?

Socrates: I will tell you. I am to die, I believe, on the day after the ship arrives.

Crito: So say those in charge of these things.

Socrates: Then I do not think it will come on the day that is now dawning, but on the next. I judge this from a dream I had a little while ago in the night; and it seems you chose a good moment not to wake me.

Crito: And what was the dream?

Socrates: A woman came up to me, beautiful and graceful, 44b dressed in white. She called me and said: "Socrates, on the third day you would reach fertile Phthia."³

Crito: What a strange dream, Socrates.

Socrates: No, a clear one, Crito, or so it seems to me.

1. Every year Athens sent a sacred ship to the island of Delos in honour of Apollo, and while it was away no one could be put to death. Socrates' trial had taken place the day after it set sail; he spent about a month in prison waiting for its return. ↩
2. The cape at the southern tip of Attica, a day's sailing from the harbour of Athens. ↩
3. A line from Homer's Iliad (9.363). Achilles, refusing to go on fighting at Troy, says he will sail home and on the third day reach Phthia, his homeland. Socrates takes the dream to mean that he will die — go home — on the third day, counting the present day as the first. ↩