Why Socrates chose death over escape

In 399 BC, a jury of 501 Athenian citizens found Socrates guilty of impiety and corrupting the young. He was seventy years old.

He could have proposed exile as his penalty. Instead, he half-jokingly suggested that Athens reward him with free meals for life. The jury sentenced him to death.

While he awaited execution, his friend Crito arranged an escape. Plato's dialogue Crito records Socrates' refusal: he had lived his whole life under the laws of Athens; to flee now would betray everything he had taught.

On his last day he discussed the immortality of the soul with his friends, then calmly drank the cup of hemlock. His final words asked that a debt of a rooster be paid to Asclepius.

Socrates left no writings. But his death made his ideas immortal — and made him the model of a person who would rather die than live a lie.