PLATO: APOLOGY OF SOCRATES
Written
by Konstantinos Konstantinidis Amphiktyon
In the
text, Socrates speaks about the concept of death before the court that
sentenced him to death: "For one of two things is death: Either it will be
a state of non-existence in which the dead person has absolutely no sense of
anything, or according to what is said it happens to be some change and
relocation of the soul from here to another place. And so if it is a state of
this kind in which there is absolutely no sense, but it is a kind of sleep in
which the one who sleeps does not even dream, in this case death would be a
wonderful gain. For I think that if it were
necessary to choose the night on which one slept so as not to see a single
dream, and after comparing that night with all the other nights and days of
one's life, one would have to think and say how many days and nights during one's
life he lived better and more pleasantly than he lived that night. I am of the opinion that not a
common citizen, but the Great King himself would find very few of these days
and nights compared with the others. If then death is such a thing,
I certainly consider it a gain, because it is obvious and now the whole of
eternity thus seems to be nothing but such a night. If death is a kind of
emigration from here to another place, and it is true what is said that all the
dead are there, what greater good could there be, gentlemen judges? For if anyone were to be freed
from those who say they are judges, he would reach Hades and there find the
true judges, who are said to judge there Minos, that is, Rhadamanthus, Aeacus,
Triptolemus, and all the Greeks, those of the demigods who were righteous in
life. Would such an emigration be
bad? Or again (would it be bad) to
associate with Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, and Homer?» Observations:
1/
The Greeks called the Persian monarch the Great King
2/ Minos was the king of Knossos, renowned
for his justice
3/
Rhadamanthus was the brother of Minos, founder of many colonies and a very just
man
4/
Aeacus was a cousin of the two previous ones and the first king of Aegina. These three are considered
judges in the court of Hades
5/
Triptolemus, according to the prevailing myth, was the son of Celeus, king of
Eleusis and Metanira. The goddess Demeter entrusted
the wheat to him. It is said that she mounted
him on a winged chariot and made him roam over the world to teach people how to
cultivate wheat
. 6/ What was this winged
chariot of Demeter? Because such vehicles are
mentioned at many points in Greek Prehistory. And Zeus, according to Homer,
had gone to Ethiopia when the goddess Thetis sought him out for the injustice
of her son Achilles by Agamemnon in Troy.
7/
Orpheus was the son of the god Apollo or Aegagrus, king of Thrace, and the Muse
Calliope. From Apollo he received the
divine lyre and with his divine music he moved even inanimate things. Orpheus is the founder of the
ancient Orphic cult which, according to the internationally renowned astronomer
and mathematician, dates back to before 11,835 BC based on astronomical data. Orpheus and Jason were the
leaders in the Argonaut Expedition to the Black Sea and according to others to
America
8/ Musaeus, a contemporary of Orpheus,
poet, son of Eumolpus and Selene. Religious songs, oracles and
purifications are attributed to him.
9/
The ancient Greeks were not afraid of death because they considered it a
natural process of man's transition from the present state to something else
that nature knows. This made them brave,
courageous, risk-taking and daring.
10/ Our current dogmatic religion, for
reasons of speculation, even trades in death
11/
Socrates, until the last night of his life, took music lessons and was
untroubled, as his students testify.
12/
His friends offered to help him escape, which was very easy, but he refused,
because he wanted to remain loyal to the laws of the Athenian Republic.
13/
General Odysseas Angelis, Chief of the Hellenic Arm Forces. for seven years
(Papadopoulos junta), sentenced to life imprisonment, refused three times to be
released by the Piraeus prosecutor due to irreparable harm (he had serious
health problems) because he considered that if he accepted his release it would
be like accepting that he was a criminal, a fact that neither he nor the other
coup plotters had accepted. He therefore preferred to end
his life and hang himself with a cable.
I
wish everyone Health and Longevity (29/9/25)
*Amphiktyon Major General (retd)
Konstantinos Konstantinidis
Author, Member of the Society of Greek
Writers
amphiktyon@gmai
