The Gadfly and the City

Socrates introduces one of his most famous images. He compares himself to a gadfly, a small biting insect, and Athens to a large slow horse. The image is funny and self-aware. It is also completely serious.

I am not arguing for my own sake. I am arguing for yours. You are about to swat me away, and if you do, I do not think you know what you are losing.

I am like a gadfly attached to a horse. The horse is Athens. Athens is large and powerful and impressive. It is also slow. It gets comfortable. It stops paying attention. It needs to be stirred up.

I am the stirring. I spend my days landing on people, poking them, making them uncomfortable, asking them the questions they would rather not think about. It is irritating. I know that. Nobody likes a gadfly. The horse needs it.

If you kill me, the horse goes back to sleep. Maybe eventually the god sends another gadfly. That will not happen for a while. In the meantime, you will be very comfortable and completely unexamined.

I am not saying this to make myself sound important. I am saying it because I genuinely care about what happens to this city more than I care about what happens to me today.

Some of you will ask: if you care so much about Athens, why have you never entered public life? Why no politics, no office, no public service?

Because my inner voice told me not to. It was right. A person who genuinely fights for what is just in public life does not survive long. I can prove this with two moments from my own life.

Years ago, the assembly wanted to put ten generals on trial together. This was illegal, and I was the only senator who voted against it. The crowd screamed at me. They threatened to arrest me. I held my position. I could easily have been killed for it.

Later, when the Thirty came to power, a brutal group of men who seized control of Athens, they ordered me to help them arrest an innocent man named Leon so they could execute him. I went home instead. The others followed the order. I did not. If the Thirty had not fallen shortly afterward, I would have died for that too.

A person who fights for justice in public life does not last. I have lasted because I have done it one conversation at a time, privately, with individuals. That is not cowardice. That is the only strategy that actually works.