Alcibiades

Use in the book

At the opening Alcibiades possesses almost everything that might establish a young aristocrat’s superiority: conspicuous beauty and height, powerful relations on both sides, Pericles as guardian, and wealth. Socrates presents these as the young man’s own grounds for needing nobody. His resistance to lovers is consequently a miniature political victory: proud suitors have been defeated by greater pride. The portrait is admiring as well as critical. Socrates does not deny his looks, and at the close expressly distinguishes fear of the city’s strength from distrust of Alcibiades’ nature.

The decisive lack is preparation for the public role he proposes to assume. His education in letters, music and wrestling is not denied; what is challenged is the unearned extension of that competence into knowledge of justice and the advantageous. His remembered certainty during childhood games makes the difficulty biographical: he cannot identify a period in which he recognized ignorance and therefore sought the relevant understanding. When he later concedes that most politicians are uneducated, he initially treats their deficiency as a reason to avoid training himself. Socrates redirects his competition toward foreign kings before redirecting it more fundamentally toward care.

Alcibiades is an active respondent rather than a blank recipient of teaching. He accuses Socrates of teasing and insolence, proposes the distinction between justice and advantage, admits his confusion, suggests friendship and concord as political goods, and finally asks what he must do. His acknowledgement that he does not know what he is saying occurs twice, at 116e and 127d. These are changes in his self-assessment, not independent evidence that every intervening Socratic inference is sound.

The name becomes philosophically charged at 130e: Socrates says his words address Alcibiades, not the young man’s face. At 133d the example returns: one cannot know that Alcibiades’ belongings belong to him without knowing Alcibiades. These moves depend on the preceding provisional account of the person; the dialogue itself acknowledges at 130c–d that its investigation has not precisely established the self itself.

The final role reversal promises a continuing relationship. Alcibiades will attend Socrates and begin caring for justice. The dialogue does not narrate the successful completion of that programme. Socrates wishes for perseverance and fears that the city may prevail over both of them. A historical reader may hear a warning about later events, but the dramatic action ends with an intention and an apprehension.

Places to read

1. 103a–105e234The lover’s approach inventories the young man’s advantages and unlimited hopes.
2. 106e–107a2Alcibiades confirms the limited list of his lessons.
3. 110a–110d2Socrates recalls confident accusations in childhood games.
4. 116eFirst admission of not knowing what he is saying.
5. 119b–119c2Natural superiority is offered as a substitute for training.
6. 123dHe is described as not yet quite twenty.
7. 127d–127eRenewed perplexity is made an opportunity appropriate to his age.
8. 130c–130e2The provisional account of the human being changes what the name addresses.
9. 133dThe person and the attribution of his belongings are linked.
10. 135d–135ePromise of attendance and justice is followed by Socrates’ fear.

Translation in this edition

The edition leaves authorship disputed and supplies historical background separately. Its account of Alcibiades’ later career must not be inserted as something reported by the two speakers. “Alcibiades the beautiful” preserves the collision between a prestigious public description and his newly exposed ignorance.

Ἀλκιβιάδης

Attested: Ἀλκιβιάδη (alkibiadē; 104e); Ἀλκιβιάδης ὁ καλὸς (alkibiadēs ho kalos; 113b). Alcibiades, the young Athenian interlocutor; the second attestation adds the social description beautiful. Lexical identification: lemma: Ἀλκιβιάδης. See Alcibiades.

Use in the book

The opening visual portrait is suggestive rather than explanatory: Alcibiades looks gloomy and downward, like someone pondering. He answers the question about the errand but does not disclose a definite intended petition. Socrates instead constructs hypothetical requests that reveal his readiness to treat great political power as a supreme good.

Alcibiades is an active, sometimes unstable respondent. He objects that Oedipus was mad, admits perplexity over the disease analogy, accepts delight at the offer of tyranny, draws the lesson that ignorance causes terrible prayers and protests at the mention of matricide. His answers often create the next difficulty rather than merely ratifying a completed lesson.

The edition reads his response at 147e as another reversal: what seemed convincing now seems otherwise. Socrates describes him as shifting up and down. This moment matters because the argument’s apparent completion does not produce stable judgement. When the god’s offer is renewed, Alcibiades cannot give an immediate answer. He has become more aware of risk without yet acquiring the knowledge that resolves it.

At the end he accepts postponement, expresses readiness to obey the unknown educator and crowns Socrates for advising him well. These are actions within the scene and genuine changes of orientation. They do not show the later educational outcome. His insistence that he would submit to instruction whoever the man is preserves the uncertainty around the teacher’s identity.

The historical career summarized in the edition makes tyranny, command, exile and violent death resonant warnings. That irony belongs to the informed reader’s perspective. It should not erase the text’s younger interlocutor, who is still deciding what to do with the sacrifice and wreath immediately before him.

Places to read

1. 138aThe unnamed intended prayer and the gloomy downward gaze set the scene.
2. 141a–141cHis patronymic and eager response to the imaginary dominion give ambition a personal focus.
3. 143a–143d2He draws an epistemic lesson and reacts strongly to the matricide example.
4. 147e–148b2Unstable assent becomes an admission that a safe request is not obvious.
5. 150d–151b2He asks for education, accepts delay and crowns Socrates.

Translation in this edition

Note 28 allows another interpretation of palin au moi dokei at 147e, further assent rather than reversal, while explaining the translation’s choice. The Introduction dates Alcibiades’ death before the death of Archelaus and records the resulting anachronism. The lexicon should not silently harmonize that contradiction.