Alcibiades II

Outline

The divisions follow the argument. References are to Stephanus pages and sections, which stand in the margins of both pages of the text.

I. The errand and the danger (138a–c)

138a Socrates meets Alcibiades “on your way to pray to the god”, with a gloomy face and his eyes on the ground: he is pondering, Socrates says, “The greatest pondering of all”.

138b The gods give some of the things we pray for and not others, and to some of us and not to others; so forethought is needed, “lest one should, without noticing it, pray for things that are very bad while thinking them good”, and the gods should give it.

138c Oedipus prayed that his sons might divide their inheritance “with the bronze”: when he could have prayed for a way out of the bad things he had, “he called down others on top of those he had already”.

II. Madness and unintelligence (138c–140d)

138c–139a Alcibiades: “But you, Socrates, have spoken of a madman”. Being mad is the opposite of being intelligent. Some men are intelligent, some unintelligent, others mad, as some are healthy and others sick, with none in neither condition.

139a–c Nor is there a third condition between intelligence and unintelligence; and one thing cannot have two opposites. “Then it looks as though unintelligence and madness are the same.”

139c–d But the many are unintelligent, and living among so many madmen we would long ago have been “struck and pelted”. “But see, my dear fellow: perhaps this is not so.”

139d–140c All ophthalmia is disease, but not all disease ophthalmia, and the diseases differ in what they bring about; shoemakers, carpenters and sculptors are all craftsmen, but the craftsmen are not all carpenters.

140c–d “In the same way, then, men have divided unintelligence among them too”: madness, idiots and thunderstruck, and “the most auspicious names”, great-souled, simple, innocent, inexperienced and tongue-tied.

III. Who are the intelligent? (140d–141d)

140d–e Starting again: the intelligent are “those who know what they must do and say”; those who know neither “will, without noticing it, both say and do what they must not”.

140e–141a Oedipus was one of these; and many today, not in anger as he was, pray for bad things while thinking them good.

141a–b If the god offered Alcibiades the tyranny of Athens, then of all the Greeks, then of all Europe, “that very day”, he would “go away overjoyed”.

141c–d Yet not “in exchange for your soul”, nor if he were going to use it badly: “it is not safe either to accept at random what is given, or to pray oneself that it come about”.

IV. Prayers that harm (141d–143b)

141d–e Tyrants plotted against and killed; the beloved of Archelaus, tyrant of Macedon, “yesterday and the day before”.

141e–142b Generals in exile or dead, or besieged by the informers, so that “some of them pray to be men who were never generals rather than men who have been”.

142b–c Parents who prayed for children and then grieved for them.

142c–d Few refuse what is given or stop praying; the many pray for what harms them, and then “sing a palinode, unpraying whatever they prayed for at first”.

142d–e Homer’s men who “blame” the gods; “whether one should say ‘recklessness’ or unintelligence”.

142e–143a The intelligent poet’s prayer for his senseless friends: “King Zeus, the good things, he says, both when we pray and when we pray not, give us; but the wretched things, even when we pray, ward off”.

143a–b Alcibiades: ignorance is the cause of many bad things for men; a prayer for the worst things “would truly be like some curse and not a prayer”.

V. Ignorance that is good (143b–144c)

143b–c A wiser man might say that “there is ignorance of some things, and for some people in some state, that is a good thing”.

143c–e Orestes and Alcmaeon. Alcibiades: “Speak auspiciously, for Zeus’ sake, Socrates!” Socrates: had Orestes been intelligent, he would not have dared it; “ignorance of the best … is, as it seems, a bad thing”.

143e–144c The dagger at Pericles’ door: if Alcibiades were ignorant of his guardian, he would not kill him, nor Orestes his mother; “to be ignorant of such things, at least, is better for those so disposed”.

VI. Knowledge without the knowledge of the best (144d–146e)

144d The claim: “the possession of the other kinds of knowledge, if someone possesses it without the best, looks as though it seldom benefits and for the most part harms the one who has it”.

144d–145a We act on what we know or think we know; the orators advise the city on war and peace, walls and harbors.

145a–c The intelligent man knows also “when it is better”, in advice, in war, in killing; that is, “the knowledge of the best accompanies him”, which “was the same as the knowledge of the beneficial”.

145c–e The horseman, the boxer and the flute-player know their crafts, but fall “far short” of being intelligent.

145e–146b A commonwealth of experts “without the knowledge of the best and without the one who knows when it is better to use each one of these”: “A sorry one”. Each assigns the largest “part” of it “to that, in which he himself is in fact at his strongest”; it is “full of great confusion and lawlessness”.

146b–d Knowledge profits only if “the beneficially accompanies it”; the many have “missed the best”, and it profits them “neither to know anything nor to think they know”.

146d–e Socrates, recalling his claim of 144d: “was I not really shown to be speaking rightly?” Alcibiades: “Even if not then, at any rate now it seems so to me”.

VII. The pilot and the poet (146e–147e)

146e–147b A city and a soul must hold fast to this knowledge as the sick to a doctor and the sailor to a pilot; without it, the man of “much learning and much craft” will “meet with a great storm”.

147b–d The Margites: “he knew many works, but badly”. All poetry is riddling; Homer was “putting badly in place of bad, and knew in place of to know”, so that “it was bad for him to know them all”, and Margites “was in fact a sorry fellow”.

147e Alcibiades agrees, and then: “It seems the other way to me again.”

VIII. What to pray for: the Spartans and Ammon (147e–149c)

147e–148a Socrates names the perplexity: if the god appeared again and offered a choice, “how on earth do you think you would hit the right mark”?

148a–b Alcibiades: “a madcap thing, and truly in need of much caution”. Socrates: the poet knew more than we.

148b–d The Spartans’ prayer, “the fine things on top of the good”, and their good fortune.

148d–149a Athens, always defeated, sends to Ammon to ask why the gods favor the Spartans, who neglect them, over the Athenians and their sacrifices.

149b Ammon’s answer: “he would rather have the Spartans’ auspicious speech than all the rites of the Greeks together”.

149b–c The auspicious speech is their prayer; the other Greeks “pray for whatever comes”, and the gods hear them “speak ill-omened words”.

IX. The gods and gifts (149c–150b)

149c–e Homer’s Trojans, whose hecatombs the gods would not share, “hated as they were by the gods”.

149e–150a The gods are not “led astray by gifts, like a bad moneylender”, but look to the soul, “whether someone is in fact holy and just”; they are “not takers of gifts”.

150a–b “justice and intelligence are held in especial honor”; the intelligent and the just know “what they must do and say, both toward gods and toward men”. Alcibiades agrees: “it would not be fitting for me to cast my vote against the god”.

X. Waiting for the teacher (150b–151c)

150b–d Socrates recalls Alcibiades’ perplexity: it is not safe for him to pray, for the god may hear ill-omened words. The Spartans’ prayer he would not be willing to use, Socrates says, “because of your greatness of soul”; he must wait “until one learns how one must be disposed toward gods and toward men”.

150d–e Who will teach him? “The man who cares about you”, who must first take the mist from his soul, as Athena took it from the eyes of Diomedes.

150e–151a Alcibiades will shrink from nothing that man orders, and puts off the sacrifice.

151a–c The wreath: Socrates accepts it and, as Creon in Euripides took Teiresias’ garlands as an omen, takes “this opinion from you as an omen”; he would be “the fair victor over your lovers”.