Twenty-four Dialogues of Plato

...are indeed most wretched and are punished; and if he should not ...? any part of justice, whether he indicts you or you him, would you say these things to him or not even move the case? This is what we are eager for: and by Zeus, O Socrates! If he should attempt to indict me, I think I would find where he is "rotten" original: "sathros" — meaning legally weak or unsound; and our talk in the courtroom would be about him long before it was ever about me.

Socrates: And I, my dear friend, knowing this very thing, desire to become your pupil. I know that while others—and this Meletus Meletus was the primary accuser of Socrates who brought the charges of impiety and corrupting the youth—do not even seem to notice you, he has looked upon me so sharply and easily that he has indicted me for impiety.

Now then, by Zeus, tell me what you just now claimed to know so clearly: what sort of thing do you say piety eusebes: duty or reverence toward the gods is, and impiety asebes: the opposite; irreverence? This applies to murder and all other things. Or
From prosecuting those who act wrongly.

is the pious hosion: that which is sanctioned by divine law not the same as itself in every action, and the impious again the opposite of everything pious? Is it not always like itself, having one single form idean: a specific character, essence, or "look" that defines a class of things in respect to its holiness, whatever is to be impious?

Euthyphro: Entirely so, Socrates.

Socrates: Tell me then, what do you say the pious and the impious are?

Euthyphro: I say then, that the pious is exactly what I am doing now: to prosecute the wrongdoer who commits a sin—whether it be murder or temple-robbing or anything else of the sort—regardless of whether he happens to be your father, or your mother, or anyone else at all. Not to prosecute is impious. For Socrates, look at what a great proof I will tell you of the law, that it is so. I have already told others that these things are rightly done: not to yield to the impious man, no matter who he happens to be.

For men themselves believe that Zeus is the best and most just of the gods; and they admit that he bound his own father Cronus because he swallowed his sons without justice; and that he, in turn, castrated his own father Uranus for other such reasons. Yet they are angry with me because I am prosecuting my father for wrongdoing! Thus, they say the opposite things about the gods and about me.

Socrates: Is this, Euthyphro, the reason I am a defendant in this case? Because when someone says such things about the gods, I find them somehow difficult to accept. Because of this,
the wrongdoer

it seems someone will say I am in error. Now then, if these things also seem correct to you—one who knows well about such matters—it seems we must also concede. For what can we say, we who admit ourselves that we know nothing?

Vocabulary: Plato, Socrates, Euthyphro, Piety, Impiety, Justice, Zeus, Cronus, Indictment.