Do you philosophers then teach us to despise kings?  I hope not.  Who among us teaches to claim against them the power over things which they possess?  Take my poor body, take my property, take my reputation, take those who are about me.  If I advise any persons to claim these things, they may truly accuse me.  Yes, but I intend to command your opinions also.  And who has given you this power?  How can you conquer the opinion of another man?  By applying terror to it, he replies, I will conquer it.  Do you not know that opinion conquers itself, and is not conquered by another?  But nothing else can conquer will except the will itself.  For this reason too the law of God is most powerful and most just, which is this:  Let the stronger always be superior to the weaker.  Ten are stronger than one.  For what?  For putting in chains, for killing, for dragging whither they choose, for taking away what a man has.  The ten therefore conquer the one in this in which they are stronger.  In what then are the ten weaker?  If the one possesses right opinions and the others do not.  Well then, can the ten conquer in this matter?  How is it possible?  If we were placed in the scales, must not the heavier draw down the scale in which it is.

How strange then that Socrates should have been so treated by the Athenians.  Slave, why do you say Socrates?  Speak of the thing as it is:  how strange that the poor body of Socrates should have been carried off and dragged to prison by stronger men, and that anyone should have given hemlock to the poor body of Socrates, and that it should breathe out the life.  Do these things seem strange, do they seem unjust, do you on account of these things blame God?  Had Socrates then no equivalent for these things?  Where then for him was the nature of good?  Whom shall we listen to, you or him?  And what does Socrates say?  “Anytus and Melitus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me.”  And further, he says, “If it so pleases God, so let it be.”

But show me that he who has the inferior principles overpowers him who is superior in principles.  You will never show this, nor come near showing it; for this is the law of nature and of God that the superior shall always overpower the inferior.  In what?  In that in which it is superior.  One body is stronger than another:  many are stronger than one:  the thief is stronger than he who is not a thief.  This is the reason why I also lost my lamp, because in wakefulness the thief was superior to me.  But the man bought the lamp at this price:  for a lamp he became a thief, a faithless fellow, and like a wild beast.  This seemed to him a good bargain.  Be it so.  But a man has seized me by the cloak, and is drawing me to the public place:  then others bawl out, Philosopher, what has been the use of your opinions? see, you are dragged to prison, you are going to be beheaded.  And what system of philosophy ([Greek:  eisagogaen)] could I have made so that, if a stronger man should have laid hold