But Crito is not listening. Are you worried, he asks, about the financial and legal risks I and your other friends will be taking? We are ready to risk everything for you. He points out that he has more than enough money to take care of the problems, especially with the help of Simmias and Cebes of Thebes, who have brought money to assist. They can pay off the venal officials (whom Crito is already bribing) relatively cheaply, as well as informers or professional blackmailers who would threaten to accuse them after the event. Everyone in Athens has his price, and Crito and his friends have the funds.
If Socrates is worried about where to go in nearby cities, Crito has contacts in Thessaly in the wild frontier to the north (perhaps including the friends of Meno, whom Socrates may have conversed with and Xenophon served with in Cyrus’ army; see ch. 22.7*).[13]
If the whole idea of a jailbreak seems far-fetched to us, it was not to an Athenian: the small prison staff was overworked and probably underpaid, and security was lax. A number of inmates escaped from prison in Athens, by bribery, digging through a wall, or taking French leave while on parole for a festival. Even the great orator Demosthenes later became Athens’ Most Wanted when he broke out of the municipal prison with the help of some guards.[14]
Crito goes on to exhort Socrates to think that if he stays, he is only abetting his enemies. Further, he should think of his children, who will be orphaned and thrown into the cold, cruel world without a protector. You, who have been talking about virtue all your life, should do the courageous thing and save your life. “But you seem to me to be taking the easy way out.” Again he expresses his deep shame that Socrates’ condemnation and execution should come about through his friends’ cowardice. “See, Socrates, if this outcome is not both an evil and a disgrace for both you and us.”[15] Crito moves from the practical to the sentimental to the moral, implying that both Socrates and his friends will be playing cowards if they do not carry out Crito’s plan. Surely if Socrates does not care about his friends’ reputation and his family’s welfare, he will care about his own goodness.
At the level of public justification, Plato the author is concerned to defend Socrates’ friends as well as the memory of Socrates. So devoted are Socrates’ friends that they are willing to spend their wealth freely, to risk prosecution, indeed to take on the whole Athenian state, to rescue their friend and mentor. By the conventional standards of Greek friendship, they demonstrate complete dedication and solidarity. Socrates inspires the deepest loyalty in his friends.
In the present crisis with the sacred galley lying at Sunium, there is no time for delay, urges Crito. “So make up your mind. Or rather, now is the time not to make up your mind, but to have it already made up. There is just one way out. This very night everything must be done. If we wait, the moment will be past. By all means, Socrates, listen to me and don’t say no.”[16] Crito has presumably bribed the guards and perhaps members of the Eleven, the prison directors (who may have had their offices in the annex of the municipal prison),[17] and arranged transportation out of the city.
[13].Plato Crito 45c, 53d.
[14].Hunter 1997:297, 305-306.
[15].Plato Crito 44e-46e.
[16].Plato Crito 46a.
[17].See Vanderpool 1980: 20.