Alcibiades II

Key Words of the Dialogue

These notes are for orientation, not reference: each explains a word the argument leans on, what it meant in the Athens of Socrates, and what the dialogue does with it. The Glossary at the back lists the renderings with the places where they matter.

Pray, prayer (euchesthai, euchē)

The verb is the ordinary Greek for praying, vowing and wishing, and its noun euchē covers both the prayer and the vow; the compound proseuchesthai is to pray to a god (138a). Prayer in Greece was spoken aloud, with the hands raised, often with a sacrifice, and it asked for definite things: victory, health, children, a good harvest. That is what the dialogue questions. It is rendered “pray” and “prayer” throughout, in some forty places, so that the reader can follow one word through the argument: the danger of praying for bad things (138b, 143a–b, 148b, 150c), the prayer that turns to a curse (138c, 143b), the many who pray and then “unpray” (142d, 148b), the poet’s prayer for good things “both when we pray and when we pray not” (143a), and the Spartans’ prayer, whose “auspicious speech” Ammon prefers to “all the rites of the Greeks together” (148c, 149b). Aneuchesthai, “to unpray”, is known to the lexicon only from this dialogue (142d, 148b); palinōidein, “to sing a palinode”, is to take back in a second song what a first one said. Oedipus’ curse is katarasthai, “call down”, a verb built on ara, which means both prayer and curse (138c, with the note).

Intelligent, unintelligent (phronimos, aphrōn); intelligence, unintelligence (phronēsis, aphrosynē)

Phronein is to have one’s wits about one, to think sensibly; phronimos is the man who does, and phronēsis the quality. The English “intelligent” is used here, as in the Alcibiades I of this series, so that the family stays one family, and the reader should hear it as sound practical judgment, not cleverness: the argument of 144d–146e is precisely that skill and knowledge of many things, the cleverness of orators and craftsmen, are not phronēsis without the knowledge of the best. The intelligent are “those who know what they must do and say” (140e), and near the end Socrates repeats it, adding “both toward gods and toward men” (150b). The opposite, aphrosynē, is “unintelligence”; Alcibiades first takes Oedipus’ prayer for madness, and the argument makes madness the largest part of unintelligence (139c–140d). Sophia, “wisdom”, is kept apart (143b, 147c), and so is nous, “sense” (146a, 150b).

Madness, and the names of unintelligence (mania; ēlithios, embrontētos, megalopsychos, euēthēs)

To call a man mad (mainesthai) was in Athens, as in English, both a diagnosis and an insult. The dialogue uses it of Oedipus (138c), argues briefly that all the unintelligent are mad, and then divides unintelligence as disease and craft are divided: those who have the largest part of it are called mad; those who have a little less, idiots and “thunderstruck”; and “those who wish to name them by the most auspicious names” call them great-souled, simple, innocent, inexperienced and tongue-tied (140c–d). The joke is that the auspicious names are words of praise: megalopsychos, “great-souled”, is high praise, and euēthēs, “simple”, means literally “of good character”. Both come back. At 149e Socrates calls the Athenians’ boast of their sacrifices “a simple argument”, and at 150c he says that Alcibiades will not use the Spartans’ modest prayer “because of your greatness of soul—for this is the finest of the names in unintelligence, at least”. “Most auspicious” keeps the word in the family of euphēmia (below), as “kindest” would not.

Ignorance, be ignorant (agnoia, agnoein)

Agnoein is not to know, not to perceive, and also not to recognize a person. The dialogue uses both senses on purpose. Alcibiades concludes that ignorance is the cause of men’s praying for the worst things (143a–b); Socrates answers that ignorance of some things is good, and proves it with Orestes and with Pericles: if Alcibiades, meaning to kill his guardian, “were ignorant of him and thought he was someone else”, he would not kill him, nor would Orestes have attacked his mother (144b–c). The English keeps “ignorance” and “be ignorant (of)” throughout, also where “fail to recognize” would be more natural, so that the argument’s one word stays one word. The ignorance that is always bad is “ignorance of the best, and being ignorant of the best” (143e); the knowledge of particular things without that of the best is what the next part of the dialogue attacks. Homer, Socrates says, cannot have been “ignorant that it was impossible to know badly” (147c).

The best, and the knowledge of the best (to beltiston; hē tou beltistou epistēmē)

Beltistos, one of the superlatives of agathos, “good”, is “best”, and its comparative beltiōn “better”. From 143e the dialogue’s whole weight falls on “the best” and “the knowledge of the best”. The orators know how to advise, the general how to make war, the craftsmen their crafts; none of them is intelligent unless he also knows “when it is better” and “for as long a time as is better” (145b), unless, that is, “the knowledge of the best accompanies him”, which Socrates says “was the same as the knowledge of the beneficial” (145c). Without it, “the possession of the other kinds of knowledge” seldom benefits and mostly harms (144d, 146e). A city and a soul must hold fast to it as the sick hold fast to a doctor and the sailor to a pilot (146e–147a). Epistēmē is “knowledge”, and in the plural “kinds of knowledge”; polymathia and polytechnia, “much learning” and “much craft”, are the possessions it should steer (147a). The verb for missing the best is diamartanein, “miss” (146a, 146c); the related hamartēma at 147a, and the verb at 150a, are “mistake” and “make mistakes”.

Benefit and harm, profit (ōphelein, blaptein; lysitelein)

These are the measures of the knowledge of the best. Ōphelein is to help or be of use, blaptein to damage or hinder, and the pair was common coin in Athenian talk of right and wrong: Polemarchus in the Republic defines justice as benefiting friends and harming enemies (334b), and in the Meno Socrates argues that boldness without sense harms and with sense benefits (88b), a close parallel to the argument here. Things that are “present” may “harm more than they benefit” (142d); the possession of other knowledge “seldom benefits and for the most part harms” (144d, 146e); and the knowledge of the best is “the knowledge of the beneficial” (145c). At 146b Socrates turns the adverb into a noun, “the beneficially”, to say that a man must not only do what he knows but do it beneficially; the English keeps his odd phrase. Lysitelein, “to profit”, literally “to pay the costs”, is kept apart from benefit (146b, 146d): “it profits the many neither to know anything nor to think they know” (146d). The words are rendered the same way throughout, and “harm” is never “injure”.

Good and bad (agathos, kakos)

Agathos is the common word for good, of men and of things; kakos, its opposite, is “bad”, never “evil”. Of a man kakos could mean cowardly, worthless or base; of things, as in this dialogue, it means what turns out badly for someone, harm and misfortune, and the English “evil”, with its suggestion of wickedness and of a power at work in the world, would say more than the Greek says here. The things men pray for are “good things” and “bad things” (tagatha, ta kaka); men blame the gods for their “bad things” (142d); and Alcibiades is to “know both bad and good” (150e), where “good” renders Homer’s esthlon, as “the good things” of the poet’s prayer render esthla (143a). The Spartans’ prayer asks for “the fine things on top of the good” (148c): kalos, “fine”, adds beauty and honor to plain goodness, and the prayer asks for it only in addition to the good. In the poet’s prayer the bad things are deila, “the wretched things” (143a, 148b), Buttmann’s correction for deina, “the dreadful things”, which the manuscripts have at 143a and T at 148b. At 141b an earlier state of this edition had “the greatest of goods” for “the greatest of good things”, and at 142b it used “good” for two other words, chrēstos and mochthēros, which are now “worthy” and “worthless”.

Sense, opinion (nous, anoētos; doxa)

Nous is mind, and in “having nous” good sense; the English keeps “sense” for it, as in the Alcibiades I, and “senseless” for anoētos (142e); only in the idioms “pay attention” (140a) and “in your mind” (143a, 150b) does nous go into other English. The craftsman in the commonwealth of experts “has trusted opinion without sense” (146a), and so have the many (146c); near the end “justice and intelligence are held in especial honor both by gods and by men who have sense” (150a–b). At 142b, where an earlier state of this edition had “it would make some sense”, the Greek has logos, not nous, and the English is now “there would be some reason in it”. Doxa, from dokein, “to seem”, is what seems so to a man, his opinion, and also what others think of him, his reputation. In the dialogue it is what a man thinks without knowing (144a, 146a). At 151b Socrates takes “this opinion from you” as an omen: the opinion is taken here to be the good opinion Alcibiades has formed of Socrates’ advice (151a), which the wreath shows; Ast and Buttmann would read “gift” (see the note).

Auspicious speech, ill-omened words (euphēmia, blasphēmein)

At a sacrifice the herald called for euphēmia, literally “good speech”, which meant silence or words of good omen, since a word of bad omen could spoil the rite; blasphēmein was to speak such a word. In Euripides the herald Talthybius proclaims euphēmia and silence to the army before Iphigenia is sacrificed (Iphigenia at Aulis 1563–1564), and when a servant lets fall an ill-omened word at a libation, Ion has the wine poured on the ground and a fresh bowl filled (Ion 1187–1193). The dialogue plays on the family from 140c to 150c. The polite names for unintelligence are “the most auspicious names” (140c); Alcibiades’ cry at the mention of matricide is “Speak auspiciously” (143d); Ammon prefers “the Spartans’ auspicious speech”, which Socrates explains as their prayer (149b); and the other Greeks, praying for whatever comes, are heard by the gods to “speak ill-omened words” (149c), as Alcibiades might be if he went to pray (150c). “Auspicious” is kept in every place, so that the family can be seen. Blasphēmein is never “blaspheme”, which in English means speaking against God.

Sacrifices, offerings, gifts (thysia, anathēmata, pompai, dōra)

The Athenians’ complaint to Ammon is a list of Athenian worship: the most and finest sacrifices (thysiai, from thyein, to offer to the gods by burning), temples adorned with offerings (anathēmata, gifts dedicated and set up in a sanctuary), the most costly processions (pompai), and money paid out (148e–149a). Ammon answers only that he prefers the Spartans’ auspicious speech (149b); Socrates draws the lesson that the gods are not “takers of gifts” (dōrodokoi, the ordinary word for those who take bribes), and that their way is not “to be led astray by gifts, like a bad moneylender” (149e–150a). The same thought appears in Plato: the Republic will not have its guardians be dōrodokoi, nor let them sing that gifts persuade gods and revered kings (390d–e), and the Laws counts as a form of impiety the belief that the gods can be won over by sacrifices and prayers (885b). The words are rendered the same way throughout the passage so that the reader can see the list come back at 149c and 150a. Ta hiera is “temples” where they are adorned (148e) and “rites” where Ammon compares them with the Spartans’ speech (149b).

Perplexity (aporia, aporein)

Aporia, literally “no way through”, is the state of having no way or means. In ordinary Athenian speech it could be want of money or of anything else, as well as the helplessness of a man who does not know what to do; in Plato’s dialogues it is above all the state of one who cannot go on in an argument, the numbness that Meno blames on Socrates as if he were a torpedo fish (Meno 80a–b). It is “perplexity”, and the verb “be at a loss”. Alcibiades is at a loss about disease (139e), Socrates about the gods (142d), the Athenians about how to escape their defeats (148d); and at 147e Socrates names the perplexity Alcibiades shares, in which he shifts “up and down” and slips out of what he thought most firmly. At 150b–c Socrates recalls it as Alcibiades’ own: “you were in great perplexity, lest you should, without noticing it, pray for bad things while thinking them good”. In the Meno Socrates argues that a man brought to perplexity is better off than one who wrongly thinks he knows (84a–c), and the close of this dialogue, where Alcibiades agrees to wait for a teacher, can be read in that light.

Poet, riddle (poiētēs, ainittesthai)

Poiētēs is literally a “maker”, and became the word for a poet, the maker of verses. Athenian boys learned the poets by heart at school (Protagoras 325e–326a), rhapsodes recited Homer at the festivals, and men quoted the poets as authorities on how to live. The dialogue quotes Homer four times (141d, 142d–e, 149d–e, 150d), an unnamed poet’s prayer (143a), the comic Margites, commonly ascribed to Homer in antiquity (147b–d), and Euripides (146a, 151b). Socrates’ account of how to read them is that “all poetry is by nature riddling” (ainigmatōdēs), and that a poet, especially a grudging one, hides his wisdom (147b–c). He then construes the line of the Margites to say what his argument needs, by a rearrangement he admits “falls outside the meter” (147d), a construction that can be read as playful. Plato’s Socrates treats Simonides in the same way in the Republic, where the poet, he says, spoke in riddles, poet-fashion (332b). Ainittesthai, from ainos, a tale or fable, is “speak in riddles” throughout.

Commonwealth, craft (politeia; technē, dēmiourgos)

Politeia is a city’s constitution, and also the city as a body of citizens with its way of life; “commonwealth” is used for it at 145e–146b, where Socrates imagines one made up of experts. Technē is “craft”, any skill that can be taught and has rules, from shoemaking to rhetoric; dēmiourgos, the man who works for the public, is “craftsman” (140b–c), and so is technitēs, the man of a craft (145e). The dialogue uses both to make a point that runs through Plato’s dialogues: craftsmen know what is better “according to that craft” (145d), but not whether and when it is better to use it, and a city of craftsmen without the knowledge of the best is “a sorry one” (146a). In the Apology Socrates finds that the craftsmen, because they practised their crafts well, thought themselves wisest in the greatest matters too (22d–e). Teiresias won his garlands “because of his craft” (151b).