在《申辩篇》前面的内容中，虽然苏格拉底慷慨陈词地证明对他所有的指控都是不成立的，但是最后还是被投票判处死刑。其原因在于尽管他的言辞是非常有道理的，但很多人更多的是被情绪而不是理性所操控，因此苏格拉底对世人的批判和指责让他们非常不满。可悲的是这群人却能决定苏格拉底的生死，这是苏格拉底的悲剧，也是现代文明依然需要去面对的一个难题。在苏格拉底被判处死刑以后，他本可以提出一个处罚方案来替换死刑，但是他“固执”地认为他应该得到的是奖赏，因此法官坚持了原判。伟大的苏格拉底从此离我们而去。
Now being dead is either of two things. For either it is like being nothing and the dead man has no perception of anything, or else, in accordance with the things that are said, it happens to be a sort of change and migration of the soul from the place here to another place. And if in fact there is no perception, but it is like a steep in which the sleeper has no dream at all, death would be a wondrous gain.
On the other hand, if death is like a journey from here to another place, and if the things that are said are true, that in fact all the dead are there, then what greater good could there be than this, judges? For if one who arrives in Hades, released from those here who claim to be judges, will find those who are judges in truth — the very ones who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthys, and Aeacus, and Triptolemus, and those of the other demigods who turned out to be just in their own lives — would this journey be a paltry one? Or again, to associate with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer, how much would any of you give? For I am willing to die many times if these things are true, since especially for myself spending time there would be wondrous.
This much, however, I beg of them: when my sons grow up, punish them, men, and pain them in the very same way I pained you, if they seem to you to care for money or anything else before virtue. And if they are reputed to be something when they are nothing, reproach them just as I did you: tell them that they do not care for the things they should, and that they suppose they are something when they are worth nothing. And if you do these things, we will have been treated justly by you, both I myself and my sons.
But now it is time to go away, I to die and you to live. Which of us goes to a better thing is unclear to everyone except to the god.
▍生词好句
perception: n. 感知
wondrous: adj. 美妙的；奇妙的
Hades: n. 冥界；冥府
release from: 摆脱；免除
demigod: n. 半人半神
paltry: adj. 微不足道的
virtue: n. 美德；优点
repute: vt. 把……誉为
reproach: vt. 责备；申斥
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