Complete Works (134 page)
A
LCIBIADES
: You’re right.
S
OCRATES
: So what you need to get for yourself and for the city isn’t political power, nor the authority to do what you like; what you need is justice and self-control.
A
LCIBIADES
: Apparently.
32
[e] S
OCRATES
: Because my dear Alcibiades, when an individual or a city with no intelligence is at liberty to do what he or it wants, what do you think the likely result will be? For example, if he’s sick and has the power
[135]
to do whatever he likes—without any medical insight but with such a dictator’s power that nobody criticizes him—what’s going to happen? Isn’t it likely his health will be ruined?
A
LCIBIADES
: You’re right.
S
OCRATES
: And in a ship, if someone were free to do what he liked, but was completely lacking in insight and skill in navigation, don’t you see what would happen to him and his fellow sailors?
A
LCIBIADES
: I do indeed; they would all die.
S
OCRATES
: Likewise, if a city, or any ruler or administrator, is lacking in [b] virtue, then bad conduct will result.
A
LCIBIADES
: It must.
S
OCRATES
: Well then, my good Alcibiades, if you are to prosper, it isn’t supreme power you need to get for yourself or the city, but virtue.
A
LCIBIADES
: You’re right.
S
OCRATES
: But before one acquires virtue it’s better to be ruled by somebody superior than to rule; this applies to men as well as to boys.
A
LCIBIADES
: So it seems.
S
OCRATES
: And isn’t what is better also more admirable?
A
LCIBIADES
: Yes.
S
OCRATES
: And isn’t what is more admirable more appropriate?
A
LCIBIADES
: Of course. [c]
S
OCRATES
: So it’s appropriate for a bad man to be a slave, since it’s better.
A
LCIBIADES
: Yes.
S
OCRATES
: And vice is appropriate for a slave.
A
LCIBIADES
: Apparently.
S
OCRATES
: And virtue is appropriate for a free man.
A
LCIBIADES
: Yes.
S
OCRATES
: Well, my friend, shouldn’t we avoid whatever is appropriate for slaves?
A
LCIBIADES
: Yes, as much as possible, Socrates.
S
OCRATES
: Can you see what condition you’re now in? Is it appropriate for a free man or not?
A
LCIBIADES
: I think I see only too clearly.
S
OCRATES
: Then do you know how to escape from your present state?—let’s not call a handsome young man by
that
name.
A
LCIBIADES
: I do. [d]
S
OCRATES
: How?
A
LCIBIADES
: It’s up to you, Socrates.
S
OCRATES
: That’s not well said, Alcibiades.
A
LCIBIADES
: Well, what should I say?
S
OCRATES
: That it’s up to God.
A
LCIBIADES
: Then that’s what I say. And furthermore I say this as well: we’re probably going to change roles, Socrates. I’ll be playing yours and you’ll be playing mine, for from this day forward I will never fail to attend on you, and you will always have me as your attendant.
S
OCRATES
: Then my love for you, my excellent friend, will be just like a [e] stork: after hatching a winged love in you, it will be cared for by it in return.
A
LCIBIADES
: Yes, that’s right. I’ll start to cultivate justice in myself right now.
S
OCRATES
: I should like to believe that you will persevere, but I’m afraid—not because I distrust your nature, but because I know how powerful the city is—I’m afraid it might get the better of both me and you.
1
. Pericles was the most influential Athenian politician of the mid-fifth century
B.C.
2
. Great empire-building kings of Persia in the sixth and fifth centuries
B.C.
3
. Retaining the bracketed phrase in d1.
4
. Omitting d7–e2
endeixasthai
…
dun
ē
sesthai
.
5
. The
aulos
, conventionally translated ‘flute’, was actually a reed instrument.
6
. In the manuscripts, Alcibiades’ reply and the next speech of Socrates are preceded by the following reply-speech pair; the translation follows a conjectural transposition of b8–10 with b11–c2.
7
. Attributing
oude ge kalon dokei einai
in c5 to Socrates, and accepting the conjectured reply
ou
from Alcibiades.
8
. One of the aspects under which Zeus was worshipped was as the god of friendship.
9
. Cf. Euripides,
Hippolytus
350–53.
10
. Assigning
malista
(d1) to Alcibiades, and rejecting the supplement
nai
(d2).
11
. Omitting
ge
in e13.
12
. Peparethus, an otherwise insignificant Aegean island, was embroiled in conflict in the late 360s.
13
. As Alcibiades did at 113d.
14
. Pythoclides of Ceos and Damon of Athens were musicians and philosophers; Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was a philosopher; all taught in Athens in the fifth century
B.C.
15
. Zeno of Elea was a philosopher; Pythodorus and Callias were both prominent politicians in Athens in the fifth century
B.C.
See
Parmenides
126e–128e.
16
. Socrates’ father was a sculptor; sculptors recognized Daedalus as their patron and legendary ancestor. Hephaestus was the artisan among the Olympian gods.
17
. A line of the comic poet Plato, frg. 204 Kock.
18
. No. 142 (Perry), 147 (Hausrath).
19
. The Attic ‘acre’ was 874 square meters, so Alcibiades’ holding was less than 26 hectares (65 modern acres).
20
. Reading
auto to auto
in b1.
21
. Reading
auton hekaston
at d4.
22
. Conjecturing
atta
before
t
ō
n
in a2, and omitting
ti
.
23
. An echo of
Odyssey
ii.365.
24
. At 104c–d.
25
. An epithet for the people of Athens, in Homer,
Iliad
ii.547.
26
. “Know Thyself”; cf. 129a.
27
. The Greek word for ‘pupil’ also means ‘doll’.
28
. Reading
thei
ō
i
in c4.
29
. Accepting the emendation
thean
(vision) for
theon
(god) in c5.
30
. Omitting 133c8–17 (which seem to have been added by a later neo-Platonist scholar). The lines read:
S
OCRATES
: Just as mirrors are clearer, purer, and brighter than the reflecting surface of the eye, isn’t God both purer and brighter than the best part of our soul?
A
LCIBIADES
: I would certainly think so, Socrates.
S
OCRATES
: So the way that we can best see and know ourselves is to use the finest mirror available and look at God and, on the human level, at the virtue of the soul.
A
LCIBIADES
: Yes.
31
. At 131a–c.
32
. Accepting a conjectural deletion of 134d1–e7 (which seem to have been added by a later neo-Platonist scholar). The lines read:
S
OCRATES
: And if you and the city act with justice and self-control, you and the city will be acting in a way that pleases God.
A
LCIBIADES
: That seems likely.
S
OCRATES
: And, as we were saying before, you will be acting with a view to what is divine and bright.
A
LCIBIADES
: Apparently.
S
OCRATES
: Of course, if you keep that in view, you will see and understand yourselves and your own good.
A
LCIBIADES
: Yes.
S
OCRATES
: And you will act properly and well.
A
LCIBIADES
: Yes.
S
OCRATES
: And if you act that way, I’m prepared to guarantee your prosperity.
A
LCIBIADES
: And I trust your guarantee.
S
OCRATES
: But if you act unjustly, with your eyes on what is dark and godless, as is likely, your conduct will also be dark and godless, because you don’t know yourself.
A
LCIBIADES
: That’s likely.
Translated by Anthony Kenny.
Alcibiades, full of ambition, encounters Socrates, who engages him in conversation
and makes him realize how little he understands of what he needs to understand;
at the end Alcibiades is humiliated and begs Socrates to be his
teacher and lover. To this schematic extent
Second Alcibiades
tells the same
story as the
Alcibiades
also preserved in the Platonic corpus. Certain other
parallels suggest that the author of
Second Alcibiades
adapted
Alcibiades
:
141a–b
≈
105a–c; 145b–c
≈
107d–108a. But perhaps the similarities between
the two dialogues are to be explained by their common derivation from the celebrated
Alcibiades
of Aeschines of Sphettus, or from one of the other dialogues
called
Alcibiades
. We cannot determine this question, because Aeschines’ dialogue
survives only in fragments, and the
Alcibiades
dialogues of Euclides
and Antisthenes, other students of Socrates and writers of Socratic dialogues,
are lost.
In most respects Socrates in
Second Alcibiades
is a figure familiar from
other Socratic literature. He uses analogies taken from humble occupations; he
argues that sometimes ignorance is better than knowledge; he argues that the
only truly valuable knowledge is the knowledge of the good, an authoritative
knowledge that will correctly advise us when to use the other goods and skills
in our possession; he believes that the gods hold the virtues of the soul in
higher regard than expensive gifts and sacrifices. Most important is the main
theme of the dialogue: Socrates argues that it would be better not to pray for
anything in particular, so fallible is our human knowledge of what is good for
us; best would be to follow the example of the Spartans, who simply pray to
the gods for what is good and what is noble. This coheres well with what is
known of Socrates’ view of prayer (cf. Xenophon’s
Memoirs of Socrates
I.iii.2).
But the author of
Second Alcibiades
seems also to be writing against a different
branch of the Socratic legacy, Cynicism. The Cynics regarded all ignorance
as madness, whereas Socrates in
Second Alcibiades
takes care to distinguish
madmen from people with lesser forms of ignorance. The latter he calls
fools and asses, or (euphemistically) innocent, naive, simple, or even bighearted
(
megalopsychos
). Why does the author use this word?
Megalopsychia,
the
ability to rise above and be unaffected by the events in life that are normally
thought to be bad—pain, poverty, bad treatment by other people, and so on—
was a cardinal virtue for the Cynics. But here Socrates applies the term to people
who stupidly don’t know or care about what’s good for them (140c, 150c).
This curious negative connotation of
megalopsychia
—not found elsewhere in
ancient Greek—is another sign that
Second Alcibiades
is arguing against the
Cynics.
The author of
Second Alcibiades
had a notable predilection (shared with
Plato, but with few of the other authors in the Platonic corpus) to quote and
adapt Greek poetry. Certain features of his language tell us that he came from
Northern Greece and suggest that he wrote in the third century
B.C.
,
but the evidence
is not strong and the dialogue might well date from the end of the
fourth century
B.C.
D.S.H.
S
OCRATES
: Alcibiades, are you on your way to say your prayers?
[138]
A
LCIBIADES
: Yes, indeed, Socrates.
S
OCRATES
: You have a depressed and downcast look; you seem preoccupied.
A
LCIBIADES
: And what might preoccupy me, Socrates?
S
OCRATES
: The most serious of all questions, in my view. Tell me, in [b] God’s name, what you think. In public and private prayer we make requests to the gods: don’t they sometimes grant some of them and not all of them, and don’t they say yes to some people and no to others?
A
LCIBIADES
: Indeed they do.
S
OCRATES
: So don’t you agree that there is a great need for caution, for fear you might, all unawares, be praying for great evils when you think you are asking for great goods? Suppose the gods were in a mood to give whatever was asked; it might be just like the case of Oedipus who blurted out the prayer that his sons might take arms to settle their inheritance.
1
[c] He could have prayed for relief from the ills which beset him without begging for others in addition! But in fact, what he asked for came to pass, with many terrible consequences which there is no need to enumerate.