For your country to be held in higher esteem then your mother and farther would mean that you hold the importance of the group over individualism. To do this would mean that you hold a sense of duty to the powers at is. In the case of the Crito, Socrates is to be sentenced to death by forced suicide. His charge is that he is a blasphemer and corrupter of the youth which he vehemently denies. So with this passage being from the Crito we all know that Socrates didn’t do so good at his trail and that his friends and family plead with him to run away, which he doesn’t want to do either. He feels so strong about the laws of Athens that he will even pay with his life. Socrates is a true patriot that put the needs of Athens laws before his need to
