Apology

The Apology is Plato's account of the defence Socrates delivered at his trial in 399 BCE on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. It is the founding document of philosophical martyrdom and one of the most read short texts in the Western tradition — the source of the lines the unexamined life is not worth living and no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

The speech is in three parts: Socrates' main defence; his proposal, after the guilty verdict, of an absurdly lenient counter-penalty; and his closing address after the death sentence. Each part is a deliberate refusal to do what the court is asking — and a setting of the example of the philosophical life that all of Plato's subsequent dialogues will work from.