Alcibiades I

Introduction

The dialogue

The Alcibiades, called the First or the Greater to tell it from a shorter dialogue of the same name, is a conversation between Socrates and Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, at the moment when the young man is about to come before the Athenian Assembly for the first time. Socrates has loved him for years without speaking to him, held back, he says, by “a certain divine opposition”; now that the other lovers have given up, and the sign no longer opposes him, he speaks (103a–b). Alcibiades is “not yet quite twenty” (123d); Pericles, his guardian, is alive and still keeping company with Damon (118c); and Alcibiades expects to come forward before the Athenians “in a very few days” (105a–b). No one else speaks, and there is no narrator and no setting beyond the two of them: “there are just the two of us”, Socrates says (118b). Socrates speaks as a lover (erastēs) in the Athenian sense, an older man courting a beautiful youth; such courtship ended as the youth became a man, and this is why, with Alcibiades nearly twenty, the others have given up and his body’s bloom is said to be fading (131c–d). The dialogue runs from page 103 to page 135 in the pages of Stephanus’ edition, by which Plato is still cited, and fills fifty-eight pages of Burnet’s Oxford text.

The ancient arrangement of Plato’s works by Thrasyllus, which Diogenes Laertius preserves (3.59), places the dialogue first in the fourth tetralogy, with the Second Alcibiades, the Hipparchus and the Lovers, and Burnet’s second volume prints the four in that order. Thrasyllus gives it the subtitle “On the nature of man” and classes it as “maieutic”, a dialogue that brings a thought to birth. In late antiquity it was where the study of Plato began, because it turns the reader to knowing himself, the beginning of philosophy: the Neoplatonist Iamblichus put it first among the dialogues of his course, and Proclus and Olympiodorus, whose commentaries Burnet cites in his apparatus, both expounded it. Since the early nineteenth century its authenticity has been doubted, and it is still disputed (see “What is most exposed”, below). When it was written is not known.

The question and the answers

Socrates begins by telling Alcibiades what he thinks of himself. He thinks he needs no one, trusting in his beauty and stature, his family and friends, his guardian Pericles and his wealth (104a–c); and his hopes are larger still: to show the Athenians that he is worthy of being honored as no one ever was, to have the greatest power in the city, then among the Greeks and the barbarians, until he fills “all mankind, so to speak, with your name and your power” (105a–c). None of this, Socrates says, can come about without him (105d–e). He offers no long speech to prove it, only questions, and asks for answers (106b).

What will Alcibiades advise the Athenians about? Not letters, the lyre or wrestling, the only things he has learned (106e–107a), nor building, divination or health, which belong to the experts (107a–c), but war and peace and “the city’s affairs” (107d). Socrates asks him to name the better in war and peace as the better in wrestling is called “gymnastic” and in singing to the lyre “musical” (108a–e). Alcibiades cannot; shamed into trying, he says that wars are made over wrongs suffered “justly or unjustly” (109b), and agrees that the better is the more just (109c). Then where did he learn what is just? He has always thought he knew it, even as a boy at knucklebones (110b), so he never sought it, and did not discover it (110c–d). If he learned it from the many, they are good teachers of Greek, about which they agree, but not of justice, about which they disagree so violently that they fight and kill one another, as in Homer, at Tanagra and at Coronea (111a–112d). Then comes the turn that gives the dialogue’s method its character: since Alcibiades has been answering, it is not Socrates who says that Alcibiades knows nothing about justice; Alcibiades has said it himself (112e–113c).

Alcibiades retreats to new ground: the Athenians seldom deliberate about what is just, but about what will be to their advantage, and the two are not the same (113d). Socrates makes him answer again. Just things are fine, fine things good, good things advantageous, and so just things are advantageous; and again it is Alcibiades who has said so (115a–116d). He confesses that he is “simply like a man in a strange state”, saying one thing and then another (116e). Socrates names the condition. A man wanders about what he does not know but thinks he knows, and this ignorance, “the disgraceful stupidity”, is the cause of mistakes; Alcibiades has it about the greatest things, and so do most of those who manage the city’s affairs, except a few, and perhaps Pericles (116e–118c). But Pericles has made no one wise, not even his sons (118c–119a).

Alcibiades concedes, and draws the wrong conclusion: if the politicians are uneducated, why should he train? He will be “far, far above these men by nature, at least” (119b–c). Socrates’ answer fills the next five pages (119c–124b), most of it a single long speech (121a–124b). His real rivals are not the politicians at home but the kings of Sparta and Persia, whose birth, upbringing, education and wealth leave him nowhere: the Persian queen has whole regions for her girdle and her veil, while his own land at Erchia “is not even three hundred plethra” (123b–c), and the queen mother Amestris would wonder what on earth he trusts in, and the Spartan Lampido that he means to contend with her son when he has been so badly reared (123c–124a). Nothing will let him surpass them but care and craft; so he must listen to Socrates and to the inscription at Delphi, “know thyself” (124a–b).

The argument’s main stretch

Here the dialogue turns from what Alcibiades lacks to what caring for himself would be. Asked in what they want to become good, he says: good at managing affairs, at ruling men in the city who have dealings with one another; the knowledge of it is good counsel, and what it produces is friendship among the citizens, which he takes to be concord (124e–126c). But husbands and wives are in concord about nothing that only one of them knows, and if each does his or her own business, as Alcibiades thinks a well-ordered city requires, there will be no concord and no friendship (126e–127c). Alcibiades admits that he does not even know what he is saying, and that he may long have been “in the most shameful state” without noticing it; Socrates tells him to take heart, since at his age there is time (127d–e).

The rest of the dialogue asks what caring for oneself is (127e–135e). Caring for what is one’s own is not caring for oneself: shoemaking cares for shoes and gymnastics for the feet (128a–d). To know the craft that makes oneself better one must know what one is (128e–129a), and so Socrates asks how “the self itself” might be discovered (129b). Whoever uses a thing is other than what he uses; a man uses his whole body; what uses and rules the body is the soul; so a man is his soul, or nothing (129b–130c). Socrates grants that this has been shown “adequately” rather than “precisely”, and that where they should first have looked into “the self itself”, they have looked instead into “what each thing itself is”; perhaps that will suffice (130c–d). It follows that in their conversation soul has been speaking to soul (130d–e); that the doctor, the trainer and the craftsman know their bodies or what belongs to them, but not themselves (131a–c); and that the lover of Alcibiades’ body goes away when its bloom fades, while Socrates, the lover of his soul, stays (131c–132a). His fear is that Alcibiades will become “a lover of the people” and be corrupted (132a).

How, then, can the soul know itself? By the example of sight. An eye sees itself when it looks into another eye, into the pupil, the region in which the eye’s virtue comes to be; so a soul must look into a soul, into the region in which wisdom comes to be, and nothing in the soul is more divine than that (132c–133c). In Burnet’s text, from Eusebius, the image goes on: the god is purer and brighter than the best in our soul, and by looking into him, as the finest mirror, we would best know ourselves (133c8–17). Knowing oneself was agreed to be temperance (131b, 133c). Without it a man cannot know what is his own, or what belongs to others or to cities, and so cannot be a statesman or a household manager; he will make mistakes and do badly, in private and in public (133c–134a). Cities need virtue, not walls and triremes; Alcibiades must acquire it first, and must procure for himself and the city not license or rule to do whatever he wishes but justice and temperance (134b–e), not tyranny but virtue; until a man has virtue it is better for him to be ruled, and vice befits a slave, virtue a free man (135a–c).

The ending

Asked whether the condition he is in befits a free man, Alcibiades says he perceives it “very keenly indeed”, and that he will escape it “if you wish it, Socrates”. Socrates corrects him: “If god wills” (135c–d). Alcibiades then says that they are likely to change parts: from this day he will attend Socrates as a tutor attends a boy (135d). Socrates’ love, Socrates replies, will be like the stork, tended in turn by the winged love it has hatched; Alcibiades says he will begin at once to care for justice; and Socrates, who would wish him to carry it through, ends with a fear: “seeing the strength of the city”, he dreads that it may get the better of them both (135e).

What is most exposed

Four things in this dialogue are likely to trouble a first-time reader, and they are best stated plainly.

First, it may not be Plato’s. No ancient doubt of it is recorded, and it was placed at the head of the Neoplatonist curriculum. In 1809 Schleiermacher, introducing his German translation, judged it unworthy of Plato, and since then scholars have been divided: some defend it, as Nicholas Denyer does in his commentary (2001), dating it to Plato’s last years; others think it the work of a follower writing later in the fourth century. The case against it rests less on its language than on its manner and doctrine: it reads as an introduction, argues openly to convert the young man instead of leaving him at a loss, and teaches about the soul and self-knowledge in ways some find unlike the dialogues no one doubts. The case for it rests on its art, on studies of its style and on the ancient tradition. This edition takes no side, and speaks of the dialogue’s author only where it must.

Second, the claim at the center of the dialogue is provisional by its own account. That a man is his soul is reached quickly, by elimination: not the body, which is ruled, nor the two together, since the body has no share in the ruling, so the soul (130a–c). Socrates says himself that it has been shown adequately, not precisely, and that the argument has looked into “what each thing itself is”, not into “the self itself” which it set out to discover (130c–d). What “the self itself” names is not said, and readers have disagreed: the form of the self, a reason common to all men, the god, or simply Alcibiades’ own self (see the note at 129b).

Third, the passage in which the god becomes the finest mirror of the soul (133c8–17) is not in the medieval manuscripts B and T. Burnet prints it in angle brackets from Eusebius, a Christian bishop of the early fourth century AD, who quotes it, and notes that Julian and Stobaeus read something like it. Its authenticity is disputed; Denyer, who defends the dialogue, takes these lines for a later addition. Without them the conclusion is still drawn: the part of the soul where wisdom comes to be resembles the god, and whoever looks into it knows himself best (133c1–6).

Fourth, the dialogue was written for readers who knew how the story ended. Alcibiades became the most brilliant and the most destructive Athenian of his generation; he urged Athens into the Sicilian expedition and was one of its generals, went over to Sparta, returned, and died in exile; and Socrates’ association with him was remembered against Socrates. Other followers of Socrates, Aeschines of Sphettus and Antisthenes, also wrote dialogues called Alcibiades, and Xenophon answers the charge at length (Memorabilia 1.2.12–47). Socrates’ fear that Alcibiades will become “a lover of the people” (132a), and his last words, that “the strength of the city” may get the better of them both (135e), are dramatic irony of the plainest kind. The note at the close says more.

The manner

The dialogue is a lover’s approach, and much of its comedy is erotic and social. Socrates’ opening is a lover’s speech that turns into a catalogue of the beloved’s vanities (103a–105e). Alcibiades, who has been meaning to ask what Socrates wants, finds that he has been beaten “to it by a whisker” (104c–d), and Socrates warns him that having had such trouble starting, he may have as much trouble stopping (104e). Alcibiades’ pride is the target throughout, and he gives as good as he gets: “You’re teasing, Socrates” (109d); “You’re insolent, Socrates” (114d); and when Alcibiades says he will come to no harm by answering, Socrates replies, “Why, you’re a prophet” (115a). Socrates mocks his taste for new arguments as a taste for clean clothes (113e–114a), and asks whether he would give one answer and then another about whether he has two eyes or three (116e); “By now I’m afraid for myself”, says Alcibiades (117a).

The comedy of Socrates’ answer is the comedy of scale. The Athenian politicians have “the slave’s hair, as the women would say, still on their souls” (120b), and one of them, Meidias, is a “quail-tapper” (120a). Alcibiades traces his family back to Zeus; so, says Socrates, does his own, through Daedalus, the legendary craftsman (121a). The Persian heir’s birthday is kept by all Asia, while “when we are born, as the comic poet says, not even the neighbours much notice it” (121c–d); the Persian prince has four royal tutors, the wisest, the most just, the most temperate and the most courageous, and Alcibiades had Zopyrus, “the household slave most useless from old age” (122b). The money that goes into Sparta leaves tracks like the animals in Aesop’s lion’s cave, none of them coming out (123a). The last page turns the joke on Socrates himself: his love, cared for by the love it has hatched, will be no different from a stork (135e). The translation tries to keep all of this and to add nothing. Where the English cannot carry a joke, a note says what it was.

On reading this edition

Each left-hand page is a page of Burnet’s Oxford text, line for line, with his apparatus at the foot; each right-hand page translates it, with the Stephanus section letters in the margin so that any passage can be found on both sides. Words in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ in the Greek are not in the principal manuscripts and have been supplied, by a scholar or from another witness; they are translated. Words in square brackets [ ] are ones Burnet thought spurious; they are not translated. The Key Words of the Dialogue, which follow, explain the words on which the argument turns and how they are rendered. At the back, the Outline gives the argument’s joints by Stephanus page, the Editorial Note sets out the conventions of both pages and explains the abbreviations of the apparatus, the Glossary lists the renderings for reference, and the Note on this Edition says how the volume was made and where a reader should be careful.

A note on the persons

The dialogue itself establishes a good deal about Alcibiades. He is the son of Cleinias (103a) and Deinomache (105d, 123c); his father died at Coronea (112c); Pericles, son of Xanthippus, is guardian to him and his brother Cleinias (104b, 118e), whom Alcibiades calls “a madman” (118e). His family traces itself to Eurysaces and so to Zeus (121a); his land at Erchia is “not even three hundred plethra” (123c). As a boy he learned letters, the lyre and wrestling, and would not learn the pipes (106e); his tutor was the old Thracian slave Zopyrus (122b). He is “not yet quite twenty” (123d), beautiful and tall (104a), with many lovers, all of whom have given up (103a–104c). Of Socrates the dialogue says that he was the first of those lovers (103a); that he is the son of Sophroniscus and Phaenarete (131e); that he claims descent from Daedalus (121a); and that a divine sign, which he calls “the god”, kept him from speaking until now (103a, 105d–e, 124c).

The rest comes from other sources, and on some points they disagree. Alcibiades (about 451–404 BC) was a kinsman of Pericles through his mother, an Alcmaeonid; Plutarch, whose Life of Alcibiades is the fullest ancient account, names Pericles and his brother Ariphron as his guardians and traces the family through his father to Eurysaces (1); Cleinias was the younger brother (Protagoras 320a). He served at Potidaea with Socrates, who saved his life there, and at Delium, where he protected Socrates in the retreat (Plato, Symposium 220d–221c; Plutarch, Alcibiades 7). In the Symposium (212c–222b) Plato has him tell, drunk, how he once tried and failed to seduce Socrates. His public career began about 420; he was one of the generals of the expedition against Syracuse in 415, was recalled to stand trial for profaning the Mysteries, escaped to Sparta, later returned to Athens, and was killed in exile about 404. Socrates (469–399 BC) was tried and executed in 399. The dramatic date of the dialogue is not given; if Alcibiades is not yet twenty and Pericles is alive, it falls about 433–432, on the eve of the Peloponnesian War and before the Potidaea campaign in which Alcibiades served beside Socrates, though the details do not all agree (the note at 124a observes that Lampido’s son became king only in 427/6).