Before dawn, in prison, an old friend arrives with a plan and the money to get Socrates out. Socrates says no.
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A short conversation in Socrates' cell, a day or two before his execution. His friend Crito has bribed the guard and arranged a way out to Thessaly; Socrates wants to reason through whether a man should break the law to save his own life. It is being pressed now and isn't open yet. Help press it and it joins the Symposium and the Phaedrus on the Socrates shelf.
Athens could not put anyone to death while its sacred ship was away on the yearly voyage to Delos, so after his trial in 399 BC Socrates waited about a month in prison. The dialogue opens on the morning news that the ship has been sighted. Crito was Socrates' age and from the same neighbourhood, a rich man who had offered to put up money for him at the trial.
Crito arrives to find Socrates asleep and sits waiting rather than wake him. Socrates then tells him a dream: a beautiful woman dressed in white came to him and quoted Homer, 'on the third day you would reach fertile Phthia,' the line in which Achilles talks of sailing home. Socrates takes it to mean he will die in three days. In the second half, the Laws of Athens themselves step forward and speak to him.
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