Socrates 蘇格拉底 · Σωκράτης

🔊He served as a heavy infantryman in three campaigns of the long war with Sparta, at Potidaea, Delium, and Amphipolis. The young aristocrat Alcibiades, whose life he saved at Potidaea, reported that Socrates endured cold and hunger better than anyone and walked off the lost field at Delium so calmly that no enemy cared to approach him.

在對斯巴達的長年戰爭中，他以重裝步兵的身分參加過三場戰役：波提狄亞、德里昂、安菲波利斯。年輕貴族阿爾基比亞德在波提狄亞被他救過一命；據他說，蘇格拉底比誰都耐寒耐餓，而德里昂兵敗撤退時，他走得那樣從容，敵人沒有一個想靠近。

🔊At his trial Socrates explained how his odd career began. His friend Chaerephon had asked the oracle at Delphi whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the priestess had answered that no one was. Socrates, aware of having “no wisdom, small or great,” set out to refute the god by finding a wiser man. He questioned politicians, poets, and craftsmen, and found that each believed he knew things he did not. He concluded that the oracle meant something modest: he was wiser only in not mistaking his ignorance for knowledge.

蘇格拉底在法庭上解釋過，他那古怪的生涯是怎麼開始的。他的朋友凱勒豐去德爾菲問神諭：有沒有人比蘇格拉底更有智慧？女祭司回答說沒有。蘇格拉底自知「大小智慧都沒有」，就動身去找一個更有智慧的人，想藉此反駁神。他問過政治家、詩人、工匠，發現每一個都以為自己知道一些其實不知道的事。他的結論是，神諭的意思很平實：他比較有智慧，只在於他沒有把自己的無知誤認為知識。

🔊From then on he spent his days in the agora and the gymnasia, questioning anyone who would stop. He charged no fee, which set him apart from the professional teachers called sophists, and he denied that he taught anything at all. He compared himself to a gadfly sent to sting a large and sluggish horse, and to a midwife who helps others deliver ideas while having none of her own.

從那以後，他整天待在市集與體育場，逢人就問，只要對方肯停下來。他不收學費，這一點使他跟那些稱為「智者」的職業教師不同；他甚至否認自己教過任何東西。他把自己比作一隻牛虻，被派來叮一匹龐大而遲鈍的馬；又比作接生婆，幫別人把想法生出來，自己卻沒有孩子。

🔊Athens lost the war in 404 BCE and endured a brutal oligarchy, the Thirty, several of whose leaders had once kept company with Socrates. Socrates himself had defied them: ordered to arrest an innocent man, Leon of Salamis, he simply went home. Democracy was restored the next year, and in 399 three citizens, Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon, brought him to court. The charge, in Plato’s wording, was that he “corrupts the youth” and “does not believe in the gods of the state, but has other new divinities of his own.”

西元前 404 年雅典戰敗，接著經歷了殘暴的寡頭統治「三十人僭主」，其中幾位領袖從前跟蘇格拉底來往過。蘇格拉底自己倒是違抗過他們：他們命令他去逮捕一個無辜的人，薩拉米斯的勒翁，他直接回家了。第二年民主政體恢復；西元前 399 年，美勒托斯、安尼托斯、呂孔三位公民把他告上法庭。照柏拉圖的記載，罪名是他「敗壞青年」，並且「不信城邦所信的神，另立自己的新神」。

🔊A jury of several hundred citizens found him guilty by a narrow margin; had thirty votes gone the other way, he says, he would have been acquitted. Asked to propose his own penalty, he suggested free meals at public expense, then a small fine. The jury chose death. He refused a chance to escape, arguing that a citizen who has accepted the laws all his life may not break them when they turn against him, and a month later he drank the hemlock among his friends. In Plato’s account his last words were a reminder to pay a debt: “Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius.”

由數百位公民組成的陪審團以些微差距判他有罪；他說，只要有三十票投向另一邊，他就無罪了。輪到他自己提議刑罰時，他先提議由公家供他免費用餐，後來才改口說可以繳一筆小額罰金。陪審團選了死刑。他拒絕了逃亡的機會，理由是：一個公民一輩子都接受法律，就不能在法律轉而對他不利的時候違反它。一個月後，他在朋友圍繞之下喝了毒芹汁。照柏拉圖的記述，他最後一句話是提醒朋友還一筆債：「克里托，我們還欠阿斯克勒庇俄斯一隻公雞。」