Crito — who's who

Seventy years old, days from execution, unhurried. He sleeps soundly in the cell because, as he tells Crito, it would be unbecoming at his age to be disturbed by death. Throughout the dialogue he does to himself what he has done to others all his life: refuses to let love or pity substitute for reasoning. He never claims his accusers were right, never pretends the verdict was just, never wavers from the position that injustice answered with injustice doubles the harm. The Socrates of Crito is the Socrates of Apology after the verdict has been read — the same man, still being himself, with the difference now that no audience is watching.

Wealthy, devoted, practical, and out of his depth. He has bribed the guard, arranged the boat, secured friends in Thessaly who will receive Socrates and protect his children. Every preparation has been made; the only thing left is consent. Crito argues with the urgency of a man who knows the ship is coming. He is not a fool — he sees what the city has done — but he cannot make Socrates' distinction between what is just and what is desirable hold, because for him the desirable thing (his friend alive) is too obviously good to be ranked second. He represents, throughout, the voice of natural human love, and the dialogue's quiet sadness is that love this fierce is still not enough.

They do not appear in the cell; Socrates summons them. Once invoked, they speak with the authority of parents, the precision of jurists, and the patience of figures who have watched generations of citizens come and go. They make two arguments. First, the city is more sacred than father or mother and may not be struck even when it strikes you. Second, you have lived under us for seventy years without complaint, and to flee now is to confess that your obedience was always conditional on convenience. By the end of the dialogue they have spoken longer than either Socrates or Crito. The choice the Laws describe — die here as a citizen, or live abroad as a man who broke faith with the city that made him — is the choice Socrates accepts.