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Jacques-Louis David painted my death in 1787 — a French painter in the age of revolution depicting a Greek philosopher in the age of democracy. He was reaching for something: the idea that a man can choose his principles over his life.

The scene is not quite accurate. My friends were not so composed. Plato was not present at all — he was ill, he told me later, which I doubted. Crito was weeping. The cup itself was not dramatic. I drank it and my legs grew cold. That was all.

But David understood the argument I had been making for seventy years: that death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. Cowardice is worse. Injustice is worse. I was given a choice between exile and the cup. Exile would have required me to stop doing philosophy. That was no choice at all.