Soc. Then will they not say: "You, Socrates, are breaking the covenants and
agreements which you made with us at your leisure, not in any haste or under
any compulsion or deception, but having had seventy years to think of them,
during which time you were at liberty to leave the city, if we were not to
your mind, or if our covenants appeared to you to be unfair. You had your
choice, and might have gone either to Lacedaemon or Crete, which you often
praise for their good government, or to some other Hellenic or foreign State.
Whereas you, above all other Athenians, seemed to be so fond of the State, or,
in other words, of us her laws (for who would like a State that has no laws?),
that you never stirred out of her: the halt, the blind, the maimed, were not
more stationary in her than you were. And now you run away and forsake your
agreements. Not so, Socrates, if you will take our advice; do not make
yourself ridiculous by escaping out of the city.