PLATO’S EUTHYPHRO OR ON PIETY: A TRIAL DIALOGUE

What news is there, Socrates, that you have left your haunts in the Lyceum A gymnasium and public meeting place where Socrates often taught and are now spending your time here about the King’s Porch? Surely you do not also have some lawsuit before the King, as I do?

A dike private lawsuit is against private individuals; but a graphe public indictment is for public matters: for private cases are dikai, while public cases are graphai.

Not at all; indeed, the Athenians do not call your case a "lawsuit," but an "indictment."
Socrates:What are you saying? Someone, it seems, has brought an indictment against you? For I certainly will not accuse you of bringing one against another.
Socrates:But someone else against you? Euthyphro:Exactly. Socrates:Who is he? Euthyphro:I do not quite know the man myself, Socrates. He seems to me a young man and unknown. They call him Meletus, I believe. He is of the Pitthean district. If you recall any Meletus from Pitthos with long, straight hair, not much of a beard, and a somewhat hooked nose...
Socrates:I do not recall him, Socrates The scribe has likely swapped the speaker tags here or the address; Euthyphro is the one describing the man to Socrates. But tell me, what indictment has he brought against you?
Euthyphro:What kind? One that seems not ignoble to me. For a young man to have mastered such a great matter is no small thing. For he says he knows how the young are being corrupted and who those are that corrupt them. And he is likely to be a wise man; seeing my ignorance—that I am "corrupting" his peers—he comes to accuse me to the city, as if to a mother. And he seems to me the only one of the politicians to begin correctly. For it is right to take care of the young first, so that they will be as good as possible. Just as a good farmer is likely to care for the young plants first, and after this, for the others as well. And so Meletus, perhaps, is first clearing us out—the ones who "corrupt the sprouts of the youth," as he says. Then after this, it is clear that by caring for the elders, he will become the cause of the greatest and most numerous benefits to the city, as is likely to happen from such a beginning.
Euthyphro:That is what he says, Socrates. But I dread lest the opposite happen. For he seems to me to be beginning "from the hearth" An idiom meaning to start at the very foundation or the most sacred part to do evil to the city, by attempting to do you wrong. Socrates:And tell me, what does he say you do to corrupt the young? Euthyphro:Strange things, my wonderful friend, at least to hear them. For he says I am a "maker of gods." And because I make new gods and do not believe in the ancient ones, he has brought this indictment for these very reasons. Euthyphro:I understand, Socrates. It is because you say that the "divine sign" daimonion: Socrates' famous inner voice or "divine sign" that warned him against certain actions comes to you each time. So he has brought this indictment on the grounds that you are making innovations in divine matters. And he comes to the court to slander you, knowing that such things are easy to misrepresent to the many.

The institutional library stamp of the "BIBLIOTHECA BODLEIANA" (Bodleian Library) is pressed into the bottom center of the parchment page.