Greek reading vocabulary — Alcibiades II

Use in the book

These passage-based glosses explain the force of complete phrases and constructions. They are a second route through the text, not a count of additional Greek lemmas; some intentionally revisit a word treated in a full article or register record.

Places to read

1. 148dA dispute or conflict coming into being between the two cities. The oracle anecdote starts with this unnamed conflict rather than specifying a campaign or date, and the lexicon should retain that limited identification.

A quarrel arose

διαφορᾶς γενομένης (diaphoras genomenēs)

A dispute or conflict coming into being between the two cities. The oracle anecdote starts with this unnamed conflict rather than specifying a campaign or date, and the lexicon should retain that limited identification.

Attestations. 148d: Provides the situation for repeated Athenian military reverses.

A short course of life

χρόνον οὐ μακρὸν βίου θέων (chronon ou makron biou theōn)

Running a course of life that will not be long. Burnet prints Stephanus’ corrected “of life” and “running,” so the phrase should not be silently converted into the proposed reading “sailing,” even within the surrounding nautical metaphor.

Attestations. 147b: The warning extends from mistakes to a shortened life.

Accept

δέχεσθαί (dechesthai); ἀποδέχονται (apodechontai); δέχομαι (dechomai)

To receive what is offered, with acceptance itself subject to judgment. The human recipient must not accept a divine gift randomly, the gods may reject offerings, and Socrates finally accepts Alcibiades’ wreath as an encouraging sign.

Attestations. 141c: Receiving a gift can be unsafe; 149c: The gods refuse or might refuse costly worship; 150c: The gods refuse or might refuse costly worship; 151b: Socrates accepts the wreath.

Accompany

παρέπηται (parepētai)

To be present alongside a person or act. Knowledge of the best must accompany the specialist, and “the beneficially” must accompany action; the repeated construction makes the needed qualification something more than the bare ability to perform.

Attestations. 145c: The accompanying knowledge qualifies the intelligent adviser; 146b: The accompanying beneficial manner qualifies practical success.

According to one’s power

εἰς δύναμιν τὴν ἐμήν (eis dynamin tēn emēn); κατὰ τὴν αὑτῆς δύναμιν (kata tēn hautēs dynamin)

Capacity in the attention promised by Alcibiades and effective power in the action of each disease. These related uses concern what a person or condition can do locally, not the political power Alcibiades imagines receiving.

Attestations. 140a: Alcibiades attends as well as he can; 140b: Each disease acts according to its own power.

Adorn

κεκοσμήκαμεν (kekosmēkamen)

To have furnished with adornment or ordered display, here the gods’ temples with offerings. The completed action forms part of the Athenian case for special favor, but outward enhancement is not accepted as a sufficient measure of the worshipper’s character.

Attestations. 148e: The Athenians boast of their unmatched temple offerings.

After waiting a little

ὀλίγον δὲ ἐπισχόντες (oligon de epischontes); ὀλίγον ἐπισχών (oligon epischōn)

After a short interval of delay. Experience between the original request and its retraction supplies the force of the expression: regret follows when the consequences of the desired object become visible.

Attestations. 142d: People retract their earlier prayers; 148b: Alcibiades repeats the same pattern in his admission of caution.

Again, the other way

Πάλιν αὖ μοι δοκεῖ (palin au moi dokei)

Alcibiades’ brief response can mean a renewed assent or another reversal, since “back” and “again” overlap in the wording. This edition reads it as turning the other way again, supported by Socrates’ immediate complaint that he keeps shifting.

Attestations. 147e: The translation deliberately preserves a reading of unstable assent.

Agree

ὡμολόγηται (hōmologētai); Ὡμολόγησα (hōmologēsa); ὡμολογήθη (hōmologēthē)

To assent or reach a shared formulation. The different tenses mark current agreement, a remembered personal assent, and an agreement previously reached; the partners repeatedly use these commitments as premises without making them irreversible.

Attestations. 138d: Existence of the intelligent and unintelligent is agreed; 139b: Alcibiades acknowledges what he previously agreed; 140a: Socrates recalls and reuses the jointly accepted starting points; 140d: Socrates recalls and reuses the jointly accepted starting points.

Always and never

αἰεὶ (aiei); οὔποτε (oupote)

The paired temporal terms make the Pericles case general across repeated occasions: continuing failure of recognition means no attack on the recognized target. The result remains conditional on that particular ignorance and intention.

Attestations. 144b: Always failing to recognize him implies never carrying out the intended attack.

Anger

ὀργῇ (orgēi)

The angry condition associated with Oedipus’ harmful prayer. Socrates immediately distinguishes people who lack this anger yet still pray for harm while believing it good, so the risk cannot be confined to furious or openly malicious requests.

Attestations. 141a: Anger explains the contrast with other mistaken petitioners.

Apart from

χωρὶς (chōris); ἄνευ (aneu)

Without an accompanying condition that the argument regards as necessary for right direction. The words distinguish skill in an activity from judgment about its beneficial use; they do not deny that the isolated skill is genuinely a skill.

Attestations. 145b: Advice, warfare, and coercive acts can be known apart from when they are better; 145e: The city and learned person lack guiding knowledge; 147a: The city and learned person lack guiding knowledge.

Appear openly

ἐμφανὴς γενόμενος (emphanēs genomenos)

To become manifest or appear before the addressee. The god’s appearance is part of a hypothetical offer, not an event asserted to occur in the dramatic scene.

Attestations. 141a: The imaginary appearance frames a test of what Alcibiades would choose; 148a: The imaginary appearance frames a test of what Alcibiades would choose.

Apply

προσφέρειν (prospherein)

To bring or apply to someone what will enable the subsequent learning. The passage leaves these means undescribed, making the word part of a promised educational sequence rather than a specified curriculum.

Attestations. 150e: What follows removal of the mist will enable discrimination of good and bad.

Archery and archer

τοξεύειν (toxeuein); τοξοτῶν (toxotōn)

Shooting with a bow and the practitioners of that skill. Archers may be good at their craft yet belong to a commonwealth unable to determine when or toward whom their competence should be used.

Attestations. 145c: Archery is an example of something known by craft; 145e: Good archers populate the inadequately guided commonwealth.

Assign

νέμοντα (nemonta)

To allot or distribute a share. The act is distorted when each expert allocates the largest part of the commonwealth according to his own strongest activity; allocation therefore requires a criterion beyond local excellence.

Attestations. 146a: The city’s shares are assigned through the specialists’ self-preference.

At first

τὸ πρῶτον (to prōton)

At the original stage, before a later reversal. It identifies the prayer that the ensuing palinode attempts to undo, making the change one of valuation of the same desired object.

Attestations. 142d: The later unpraying is measured against the first request; 148b: The later unpraying is measured against the first request.

At random

εἰκῇ (eikēi)

Without adequate discrimination or examination. Socrates applies the phrase to accepting gifts, condemning ignorance indiscriminately, and casually mentioning a dreadful act; in each case it marks speech or choice insufficiently qualified for its object.

Attestations. 141c: Indiscriminate acceptance is unsafe; 143b–c2: An unqualified attack on ignorance is challenged; 143d: The phrase is used in the discussion of mentioning matricide.

At the beginning

ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ λόγου (en archēi tou logou)

At the beginning of the argument or conversation. The expression organizes recollection across a dialogue that repeatedly returns to its initial practical problem, while allowing that “beginning” can be relative to the portion being recalled.

Attestations. 140d: Recalls the question who the intelligent are; 148b: Recalls the previously quoted poet’s prayer.

Attack

ἐπίθοιο (epithoio); ἐπιθέσθαι (epithesthai)

To set upon a person. The question is whether the intended victim can become the object of an attack when the agent does not recognize that person, rather than whether the agent knows how to wield a weapon.

Attestations. 144b: Both Pericles and Orestes’ mother are considered under this condition.

Be disposed toward

διακεῖσθαι (diakeisthai); διακειμένοις (diakeimenois); διάκεινται (diakeintai)

To stand in a particular state or attitude toward the people, acts, or objects concerned. A harmful disposition can make ignorance advantageous, while the ending demands learning the right disposition toward gods and humans before resuming prayer.

Attestations. 144c: The benefit of ignorance is limited to persons so disposed; 149a: The Athenians charge the Spartans with negligent disposition; 150d: Proper disposition is the object of the required learning.

Be willing

ἐθέλειν (ethelein); ἐθέλοις (ethelois); θελόντων (thelontōn)

To consent or be prepared to do something. The form is kept distinct from ordinary wishing: it appears in refusals to impute a terrible intention, in the gods’ refusal of offerings, and in the final qualification that the hoped-for day depends on their willingness.

Attestations. 143c–d: Alcibiades’ actual willingness is expressly not alleged; 144a: Alcibiades’ actual willingness is expressly not alleged; 149d: The gods are unwilling to partake; 151b: The arrival of the future day depends on divine willingness.

Before long

οὐ διὰ μακροῦ (ou dia makrou)

After no long interval. Alcibiades hopes the awaited day will come soon, but immediately qualifies the hope by the gods’ willingness rather than fixing a date.

Attestations. 151b: The optimistic timetable remains conditional.

Bereaved

στερηθῆναι (sterēthēnai)

To be deprived, in context deprived of children through misfortune. The passive form leaves the particular cause of loss unspecified, concentrating on the parent’s deprivation rather than inventing a narrated death scene.

Attestations. 142b–c: Even worthy children can become the source of grief through their loss.

Besieged

πολιορκούμενοι (poliorkoumenoi); πολιορκίαν (poliorkian)

Surrounded and pressed, here metaphorically by informers after actual campaigning. The repetition of the siege word compares civic prosecution with enemy pressure and makes the apparent contrast between war and home unstable.

Attestations. 142a: The generals’ legal troubles are likened to an enemy siege.

Between, in the middle

διὰ μέσου (dia mesou)

Between two stated alternatives. The spatial idiom is used to ask whether a third mental condition can intervene between intelligence and unintelligence, rather than to locate an actual person or place.

Attestations. 139a–b2: An intermediate condition is considered and excluded.

Beyond one’s lot

ὑπὲρ μόρον (hyper moron)

Beyond the portion or lot assigned, in the quoted description of sorrows brought on by human recklessness. The phrase distinguishes self-produced excess suffering within the quotation; it is not expanded here into a systematic theory of fate.

Attestations. 142d–e: The poetic wording supports the question of responsibility for harmful requests.

Blame

αἰτιῶνται (aitiōntai); ψέγοντας (psegontas)

To assign responsibility or find fault, with distinct local objects. The first form comes from the poetic complaint about men blaming gods; the second introduces Socrates’ objection that condemning ignorance without qualification may itself be mistaken.

Attestations. 142d: The Homeric quotation contests a transfer of responsibility to the gods; 143b–c2: The partners’ blanket fault-finding with ignorance is challenged.

Blessed gods

θεοὺς μάκαρας (theous makaras)

The blessed gods, a poetic designation in the account of the Trojan sacrifices. Their exalted description accompanies refusal to partake of the offering, so its sweetness and magnificence do not oblige their acceptance.

Attestations. 149d: The gods decline the share of sacrificial savor offered to them.

Boxing and boxer

πυκτεύειν (pykteuein); πυκτικόν (pyktikon); πυκτικὴν (pyktikēn)

The activity and expertise of boxing. The craft has its own internal better and worse, which can justify calling someone a boxer without establishing the broader practical judgment Socrates calls intelligence.

Attestations. 145c–d: A second explicit example of craft-relative competence.

Bronze

χαλκῷ (chalkōi)

The metal names the weapon by which the sons are to divide their inheritance. The edition explains this as the sword; the Greek here says bronze, so a lexicon should not replace it with the iron of parallel tragic accounts.

Attestations. 138c: Instrumental wording gives the prayer its violent sense.

By itself on its own

αὐτὴ καθ’ αὑτήν (autē kath’ hautēn)

The city acting in its own affairs, contrasted with its dealings toward another city. The pair makes the argument about advice apply both internally and externally.

Attestations. 144e–145a: The scope of civic action is expanded beyond foreign policy.

By land and by sea

κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν (kata gēn kai kata thalattan)

The two arenas of military action. The pairing makes the reported failure comprehensive across theaters rather than dependent on one kind of warfare.

Attestations. 148d: Athens is represented as losing whenever battle occurs in either arena.

By nature

φύσει (physei)

As belonging to the character of poetry itself in Socrates’ explanation. He then adds the separate condition of a grudging poet, distinguishing a general difficulty of poetic language from an individual wish to conceal wisdom.

Attestations. 147b–c: Poetry’s riddling character and a poet’s concealment are separate factors.

Camp

ἔπαυλιν ποιουμένους (epaulin poioumenous)

Making a camp or encampment, the Trojans’ situation in the Homeric example. Their actual ritual activity in that setting supplies another test of whether splendid sacrifice necessarily obtains divine acceptance.

Attestations. 149d: Introduces the Trojans’ rejected hecatombs.

Carpenter

τέκτονας (tektonas); τέκτονές (tektones)

A worker in carpentry, treated as one craftsperson among others. The example makes the same point as disease and its varieties: membership in a broader class is not identity with every subclass.

Attestations. 140b–c2: Carpenters exemplify a determinate part of craftsmanship.

Cast a vote against

ἀντίψηφον (antipsēphon)

Voting or taking a side in opposition. Alcibiades uses civic decision-making language to explain his assent to the god’s apparent judgment, but his refusal to oppose is not itself a fresh demonstration of the reasoning.

Attestations. 150b: The political metaphor marks deference to divine authority.

Caution

φυλακῆς (phylakēs)

Watchfulness against committing the error under discussion. Alcibiades applies it to his own prayer, and Socrates later couples it with examination of what one should and should not say, making caution an active demand on judgment.

Attestations. 148b: Prayer requires care against unnoticed harmful requests; 149c: Caution is paired with scrutiny of speech.

Charge someone with

καταγνώσομαι (katagnōsomai)

To attribute a fault or make an adverse judgment about someone. Socrates explicitly refuses to impute willingness to commit matricide to Alcibiades, separating a hypothetical examination from an accusation about his actual intentions.

Attestations. 143c: Socrates denies that the example charges Alcibiades with the deed.

Clearly follows

δῆλον οὖν ὅτι (dēlon oun hoti)

A marker that Socrates takes the next conclusion to be evident from what precedes. In the Margites interpretation, the apparent clarity still depends on the assumption that the previous arguments are trustworthy.

Attestations. 147d: Introduces the inference that harmful knowledge shows Margites to be a sorry fellow.

Come to the end of life

τὸν βίον ἐτελεύτησαν (ton bion eteleutēsan)

To have died or reached the end of life. This ordinary statement about some former generals does not by itself specify suicide, execution, or another cause of death; the edition deliberately avoids the misleading English “ended their lives.”

Attestations. 142a: Death is one outcome for men who obtained the office they wanted.

Come, then

φέρε (phere)

An invitation to attend to the next question or example, not an instruction to carry an object. Its repetitions help Socrates restart or redirect the conversation after assent, difficulty, or apparent completion.

Attestations. 138b: Introduces the first religious question and the examination of intelligence; 138d: Introduces the first religious question and the examination of intelligence; 139c: Reopens the practical implications of an argument; 147e: Reopens the practical implications of an argument.

Condition undergone

πάθος (pathos); πεπονθέναι (peponthenai); πεπόνθασιν (peponthasin)

A state in which a person finds himself or a condition he has undergone. In the opening reasoning it covers the mental states between which the speakers attempt to divide people; it does not here mean emotion alone.

Attestations. 139a–b2: A third condition is denied and one of the alternatives required; 141a: Other petitioners are said to be in the opposite condition from Oedipus.

Confusion

ταραχῆς (tarachēs)

Disturbance or disorder in the imagined commonwealth. It is the practical result predicted when many experts compete for precedence without knowledge of the best or someone able to direct their appropriate use.

Attestations. 146b: The city’s condition is described as full of great confusion.

Contests and athletes

ἀγωνίας (agōnias); ἀθλητῶν (athlētōn)

Competitive exercises and their trained performers. Their inclusion broadens the illustrative city beyond political and military professionals, so the problem is coordination of genuine but partial competences.

Attestations. 145c: Other contests extend the examples of knowable crafts; 145e: Athletes form part of the imagined city of specialists.

Costly and solemn

πολυτελεστάτας (polytelestatas); σεμνοτάτας (semnotatas); πολυτελεῖς (polyteleis)

Very expensive and impressive in religious dignity or display. These are the Athenians’ descriptions of their processions, whose magnificence is subsequently set against the gods’ attention to prayer and soul.

Attestations. 148e: Forms part of the Athenians’ comparative self-praise; 149c: Costly display is explicitly denied automatic acceptance; 150a: Costly display is explicitly denied automatic acceptance.

Customary things

τὰ νομιζόμενα (ta nomizomena)

The other conventional observances or offerings associated with worship. Alcibiades promises these along with wreaths later, which makes the postponement compatible with continuing religious practice.

Attestations. 151b: The promised future worship includes established customary acts.

Dagger

ἐγχειρίδιον (encheiridion)

A handheld dagger, the concrete instrument in the hypothetical attack on Pericles. Having the equipment and intention does not suffice to carry out the act if recognition of the intended victim is missing.

Attestations. 143e: The weapon belongs to the hypothetical example, not an action performed in the scene.

Dangers and fears

κινδύνων (kindynōn); φόβων (phobōn)

Exposure to peril and the fear accompanying it. Socrates includes both during command and after returning home, so relief from wartime danger cannot be assumed to follow civic success.

Attestations. 142a: Even generals thought to have fared best pass through many dangers and fears.

Dare

τολμῆσαι (tolmēsai); τολμήσαις (tolmēsais)

To venture on an act, with the agent’s recognition and judgment affecting whether it can be attempted. Alcibiades initially rules out sane daring to make Oedipus’ prayer; the later examples test whether recognition of a victim would permit a mistaken intention to become an act.

Attestations. 138c: A healthy person is not expected to dare such a prayer; 143d: Orestes’ action and the hypothetical attack on Pericles test conditions of daring; 144b: Orestes’ action and the hypothetical attack on Pericles test conditions of daring.

Deliberate

βουλευομένοις (bouleuomenois)

To consider what course to take before acting. The Athenians deliberate and decide to consult Ammon, but this deliberation does not yet correct the assumption that the quantity of offerings should determine divine favor.

Attestations. 148e: Consultation is chosen as the next step.

Desire and strive

ἐπιθυμήσαντες (epithymēsantes); σπουδάσαντες (spoudasantes)

Wanting an object and working seriously to obtain it. Socrates allows that the agents attain what they actively seek, then asks whether the outcome rewards that effort; desire and effort are not themselves measures of the good.

Attestations. 141d: Men strive to acquire tyranny; 141e–142a: Citizens desire and obtain a generalship.

Despise

καταφρονοῦσιν (kataphronousin)

To regard as having little claim on one’s judgment or favor. The gods’ disregard concerns gifts and ceremonial expense offered as inducements, since they are not takers of gifts; it does not mean that the dialogue abolishes worship altogether.

Attestations. 150a: Outward expenditure is denied controlling weight.

Device or means

μηχανῇ (mēchanēi)

A means of bringing about the desired escape from present troubles. In their perplexity the Athenians seek a practical way out, but the oracle redirects attention from a new technique of winning favor to the character of their prayer.

Attestations. 148d–e: The search for a device leads to consultation.

Differ

διαφέρειν (diapherein); διαφέρουσα (diapherousa)

To differ in operation or character while still belonging to a shared category. The disease-and-craft examples permit differences inside unintelligence; later the Spartan prayer is said to differ greatly from other prayers in what it requests.

Attestations. 140b: Different effects and different crafts support distinctions within a class; 140d: Different effects and different crafts support distinctions within a class; 149b–c: The Spartan prayer is distinguished from indiscriminate requests.

Divide among themselves

διειληφότες (dieilēphotes)

To have taken or apportioned distinct shares. The completed division provides an analogy rather than a measured psychological scale: Socrates moves from distributed crafts to differently named portions of unintelligence.

Attestations. 140b–c2: The same form links the craft analogy to the mental classification.

Do and say

πράττειν καὶ λέγειν (prattein kai legein)

The paired activities make sound judgment cover action and speech together. Since prayer is spoken conduct, it belongs inside this ordinary pair rather than occupying an exempt sphere where good intentions suffice.

Attestations. 140e: Knowing what one must do and say identifies the intelligent; 150b: The same formulation is extended explicitly toward gods and human beings.

Doctor

ἰατροὺς (iatrous); ἰατροῦ (iatrou)

The practitioner cited as able to distinguish diseases by their effects. The same occupation returns as the person on whom the sick depend, making expertise an admitted need even while the dialogue questions knowledge detached from the best.

Attestations. 140b: Doctors identify differences among diseases; 146e: Dependence on a doctor models holding fast to guiding knowledge.

Doors and being inside

τὰς θύρας (tas thyras); ἔνδον (endon); εἴσω (eisō)

The doors, being within, and movement inside establish the spatial sequence of the Pericles example. Access to the correct house and sight of the actual man leave room for failure to recognize him, isolating the effect of that particular ignorance.

Attestations. 144a–b: The hypothetical attacker reaches the intended place but may not identify its occupant.

Dreadful

δεινά (deina); δεινὸν (deinon)

Terrible or alarming in consequence, as distinct from the edition’s “wretched” in the poet’s prayer. The word describes both legendary calamities and the thought that the gods might prefer gifts to the giver’s character.

Attestations. 138c: Further dreadful consequences follow Oedipus’ curse; 143d: Alcibiades treats matricide as too dreadful to mention casually; 149e: Divine attention to gifts rather than soul would be dreadful.

Emulate

ἐζηλωκότες (ezēlōkotes)

To follow a model with admiration or imitation. Socrates offers emulation of the poet only as one explanation of Spartan practice, leaving open that the Spartans reached their prayer by their own examination.

Attestations. 148b–c: The relation between the poet’s prayer and Spartan prayer remains an alternative explanation.

Every year

ἀν’ ἕκαστον ἔτος (an’ hekaston etos)

Annually, a repeated rhythm of expenditure and observance. Regularity adds to the Athenians’ boast but cannot establish righteousness, since a person or city with many mistakes can still afford the same yearly rites.

Attestations. 148e–149a2: The Athenians emphasize repeated annual payments; 150a: Annual ritual can coexist with wrongdoing.

Evidently

δῆλον ὅτι (dēlon hoti)

An inference presented as evident by the speaker. Socrates uses it to explain why the prophet gives no other answer, attributing the limitation to the god; it is the narrator of the anecdote’s explanatory comment, not a separate quoted pronouncement.

Attestations. 149a–b: Marks the inferred reason for the prophet’s restricted answer.

Exactly as

ἀτεχνῶς ὥσπερ (atechnōs hōsper)

Quite simply or precisely as in the proposed comparison. Although the adverb contains the letters of the word for craft, here it strengthens the analogy and does not mean that the doctor or pilot lacks expertise.

Attestations. 146e: Introduces dependence on the doctor and pilot as clarifying comparisons.

Exile

φυγάδες (phygades); φυγάδα ποιεῖν (phygada poiein)

A person excluded from his city or fatherland. Exile appears first as a consequence suffered by officeholders and later as an action whose technical execution is insufficient without knowing when and against whom it is better.

Attestations. 142a: Some who obtained generalship remain exiles; 145b: Making someone an exile is distinguished from judging its proper use.

Eyes on the ground

εἰς γῆν βλέπειν (eis gēn blepein)

To look toward the ground, the bodily posture accompanying Alcibiades’ gloomy expression. Socrates reads it as suggesting thought, so a direction of sight starts an inquiry into the direction of practical judgment.

Attestations. 138a: A visible posture is treated as a possible sign of pondering.

Fair victor

καλλίνικος (kallinikos); καλλίνικα (kallinika)

Winning finely or gloriously, first attached to the garlands in the tragic verse and then made Socrates’ aspiration. The verbal recurrence transforms Alcibiades’ wreath into a hoped-for victory over his other lovers, not a victory already secured.

Attestations. 151b: The quoted garlands carry the language of victory; 151c: Socrates hopes to become the fair victor over Alcibiades’ lovers.

Fall far short

πολλοῦ φήσομεν ἐνδεῖν (pollou phēsomen endein)

To lack a great deal of what would be needed for the proposed status. Alcibiades agrees emphatically that possessing one specialized expertise falls far short of making a person intelligent.

Attestations. 145d–e2: Marks the denied inference from technical knowledge to intelligence.

Fever

πυρέττειν (pyrettein); πυρέττοντες (pyrettontes)

To have fever, used as another particular form of illness. All who have it are sick, but the reverse statement is rejected; the resulting asymmetry prepares the division of unintelligence into kinds.

Attestations. 139e: A familiar case illustrates inclusion without equivalence; 140a: A familiar case illustrates inclusion without equivalence.

First, then at last

πρῶτον (prōton); τὸ τηνικαῦτ’ ἤδη (to tēnikaut’ ēdē)

A sequence in which one preparation must precede further instruction. The mist must first be removed from the soul before the means of recognizing bad and good can be applied, so the ending does not pretend Alcibiades already has that capacity.

Attestations. 150e: Removal precedes positive educational application.

Fitting

εἰκὸς (eikos)

Suitable or what one would reasonably expect. Alcibiades’ statement that opposition to the god would not be fitting expresses the propriety of his response in this context, not a statistical claim about how often people disagree with gods.

Attestations. 150b: Qualifies his refusal to cast an opposing vote.

Flute-playing and flute-player

αὐλητικὴν (aulētikēn); αὐλητικόν (aulētikon); αὐλητῶν (aulētōn)

The craft and practitioner rendered “flute-playing” and “flute-player” by the edition. The example behaves like horsemanship and boxing: technical excellence gives a specific professional description, not an automatic title to direct the whole commonwealth.

Attestations. 145d: The craft-to-practitioner pattern is extended; 145e: Flute-players appear among the city’s competent but unguided specialists.

For some people in some state

ἔστιν οἷς καὶ ἔχουσί πως (estin hois kai echousi pōs)

A qualification of the persons and circumstances to which a judgment applies. Socrates needs it to turn the general condemnation of ignorance into a discriminating claim: ignorance of a particular object can help a person already disposed to misuse recognition.

Attestations. 143c: The repeated qualification defines the scope of beneficial ignorance; 144c: The repeated qualification defines the scope of beneficial ignorance.

Forethought

προμηθείας (promētheias)

Consideration beforehand, needed because the error may enter the request itself. It is not merely preparation for how to obtain a desired object; it is advance care about whether that object is good.

Attestations. 138b: Prayer is said to need a great deal of forethought.

Fortunate and unfortunate

εὐτυχεῖς (eutycheis); εὐτυχεῖν (eutychein); δυστυχεῖν (dystychein)

Faring well or badly in what happens. The Spartans are not claimed to succeed in every event, and the Athenians’ repeated defeats motivate their consultation; such outcomes raise but do not by themselves answer questions about the quality of worship.

Attestations. 148c: Spartan fortune is favorable but explicitly not universal; 148d: Athenian lack of success prompts the oracle story.

Fortune’s following wind

ἐπουρίσῃ τὸ τῆς τύχης (epourisēi to tēs tychēs)

Fortune imagined as a favorable wind blowing behind the voyager. Without direction, stronger favorable conditions produce greater mistakes rather than greater safety; Burnet’s “fortune” follows Stallbaum’s conjecture where the principal manuscripts read “soul.”

Attestations. 147a: The nautical metaphor joins external advantage to the risk of misguided action.

From the plain into heaven

ἐκ τοῦ πεδίου (ek tou pediou); οὐρανὸν εἴσω (ouranon eisō)

The upward route of the sacrificial savor from the battlefield plain into heaven. Physical arrival at the gods’ sphere is contrasted with refusal of participation, making mere transmission insufficient for successful worship.

Attestations. 149d: The winds carry the savor, but the gods decline it.

Fulfilled

ἐξετελέσθη (exetelesthē)

Brought to completion or accomplished. The fulfilment of Oedipus’ words supplies the first concrete example of why successful prayer cannot simply be counted as a good result.

Attestations. 138c: The requested bad things and their consequences come about.

Full of

μεστὴν (mestēn)

Filled or permeated with the stated condition. The word intensifies the description of a commonwealth whose expertise has produced confusion and lawlessness instead of coordinated good.

Attestations. 146b: The predicted disorder is pervasive rather than a single isolated error.

Getting money

χρημάτων κτῆσιν (chrēmatōn ktēsin)

The acquisition of material resources. It is one example of favorable fortune whose increased scale can enlarge the mistakes of an unguided possessor, rather than an independently sufficient good.

Attestations. 147a: Money is the first explicit external advantage in the wind image.

Gilded-horn cattle

χρυσόκερως βοῦς (chrysokerōs bous)

Oxen with gilded horns, a visibly splendid form of sacrificial offering. Socrates includes them among the material gifts that cannot redeem an indiscriminate prayer for whatever occurs to the worshipper.

Attestations. 149c: The ornate victims form part of the contrast with Spartan prayer.

Give

διδόναι (didonai); δίδου (didou); δώσομεν (dōsomen)

To give or bring about what is requested, with no guarantee that the recipient can use it well. The opening distribution of gifts, the poet’s appeal to Zeus, and Alcibiades’ final promise all retain the ordinary language of giving, but reverse who gives to whom.

Attestations. 138b: The gods give some requests to some people; 143a: The poet asks Zeus to give the good things; 151b: Alcibiades promises customary gifts to the gods later.

Gloomy face

ἐσκυθρωπακέναι (eskythrōpakenai)

To wear a gloomy or downcast expression. Socrates begins from an observable appearance, but only compares it to the look of someone pondering; the text does not disclose an independently narrated cause of Alcibiades’ mood.

Attestations. 138a: The expression supplies the opening question’s occasion.

Go back and start again

πάλιν ἐπανέλθωμεν (palin epanelthōmen)

To return to an earlier starting point in the discussion. After the classification has been repaired, Socrates resumes the original question of who the intelligent and unintelligent are rather than pretending that the intervening analogy already answered it.

Attestations. 140d: The inquiry returns to its original task.

Go on one’s way

πορεύῃ (poreuēi); πορευόμενος (poreuomenos)

The opening verb makes the inquiry an interruption of an actual journey to pray. The same participle returns in the imaginary divine offers, keeping speculation attached to the errand Alcibiades is about to perform.

Attestations. 138a: Socrates asks about Alcibiades’ destination; 141a: The god is the one to whom Alcibiades is on his way; 148a: The god is the one to whom Alcibiades is on his way.

Good enough

ἱκανὸς (hikanos)

Adequate to perform the specified task. Here it is the competence everyone assumes he has to pray for his own best; the dialogue has made that ordinarily modest self-assessment doubtful.

Attestations. 143b: Universal confidence in one’s ability to pray well is exposed.

Gout

ποδαγρᾶν (podagran); ποδαγρῶσιν (podagrōsin)

To have gout, one specified bodily disease in the analogy. Its point is not medical explanation but non-exhaustiveness: a person can be sick without having gout, just as a general class need not be identical with one of its members.

Attestations. 139e: Gout is one illness among others; 140a: Gout is one illness among others.

Great-souled

μεγαλοψύχους (megalopsychous); μεγαλοψυχίαν (megalopsychian)

A high-sounding description made into a euphemism for unintelligence. Its return as Alcibiades’ “greatness of soul” explains why Socrates thinks he will reject the modest Spartan prayer: grand aspiration is being gently redescribed as an obstacle to prudent limitation.

Attestations. 140c: The first expressly auspicious label; 150c: The noun is mockingly called the finest name in unintelligence.

Grief

λύπας (lypas); λυπούμενοι (lypoumenoi)

Painful distress, here the parents’ sustained response to their children’s condition or fate. The vocabulary connects the harm to the person who made the original prayer, rather than considering birth only as an isolated successful request.

Attestations. 142b: Parents can spend their whole lives grieving.

Grudging

φθονεροῦ (phthonerou)

Unwilling to share what one knows. Applied to the hypothetical poet, it intensifies the difficulty of interpretation when someone uses an already riddling medium to hide wisdom deliberately.

Attestations. 147c: A poet’s refusal to disclose is added to poetry’s intrinsic obscurity.

Happy or prosperous

εὐδαίμων (eudaimōn)

Faring well or enjoying a successful life, the condition Archelaus’ killer imagines tyranny will bring him. His death after a few days of rule exposes the gap between the anticipated prosperous condition and the actual consequences of acquiring the desired office.

Attestations. 141d–e2: The hoped-for happiness is the killer’s expectation, not the narrator’s judgment of his success.

Hard to make out

δύσγνωστον (dysgnōston)

Difficult to recognize or understand. The difficulty concerns what each poet means, and results in the explanation from both poetic riddling and the poet’s reluctance to show his wisdom.

Attestations. 147c: Describes the interpreter’s problem.

Hateful or hated

ἀπήχθετο (apēchtheto); ἀπηχθημένους (apēchthēmenous)

Being an object of aversion to the gods. This relation explains the uselessness of the Trojans’ gifts in the cited example; the passage does not give a general formula by which every military defeat proves divine hatred.

Attestations. 149d–e: Ilium, Priam, and his people are unwelcome despite perfect offerings.

Have it in mind

διενοεῖτο (dienoeito); ἐν νῷ ἔχεις (en nōi echeis)

To intend a particular act or entertain a thought relevant to the discussion. The first construction specifies Orestes’ determinate target; the second invites Alcibiades to disclose a response rather than letting apparent assent stand without inquiry.

Attestations. 144c: Orestes’ intention concerns his own mother; 143a: Socrates asks what countervailing thought Alcibiades has; 150b: Socrates asks what countervailing thought Alcibiades has.

Having been there

αὐτοὶ παρόντες οἴδαμεν (autoi parontes oidamen)

Knowing through one’s own presence at events. The claim strengthens the generals’ example by distinguishing it from the preceding remote story; it does not name any general or particular trial.

Attestations. 141e: Socrates invokes shared first-hand knowledge.

Healthy

ὑγιαίνων (hygiainōn); ὑγιαίνοντές (hygiainontes)

Being healthy, with an initial implication of soundness of mind. Alcibiades uses the singular to exclude a sane person from Oedipus’ conduct; Socrates then takes up the word in a bodily contrast with sickness, which becomes an analogy for mental classifications.

Attestations. 138c: Soundness of mind is implied in the response about Oedipus; 138d: Bodily health is contrasted with sickness.

Hear from others

ἄλλων ἀκηκόαμεν (allōn akēkoamen); ἤκουσα (ēkousa)

To receive information through someone else’s report. Socrates explicitly distinguishes this from first-hand presence when discussing Athenian generals, but presents the Ammon story as something once heard from unspecified people.

Attestations. 141e: Second-hand report is contrasted with personal knowledge; 148d: The oracle anecdote is introduced as a report; “the older men” is bracketed by Burnet.

Hecatombs

ἑκατόμβας (hekatombas)

Large sacrificial offerings, bearing a conventional name associated with a hundred cattle. The quoted passage calls the Trojans’ hecatombs perfect without enumerating victims, and the gods’ refusal shows that ritual completeness does not guarantee acceptance.

Attestations. 149d: The perfect hecatombs can be compared with the allegedly maimed Spartan victims at 149a.

Hit the right mark

τοῦ καιροῦ τυχεῖν (tou kairou tychein)

To arrive at what is fitting or apt in the circumstances. The question concerns both accepting an offered object and selecting one’s own request, so the right mark is not identical with getting whatever one initially wants.

Attestations. 148a: Socrates asks how either form of choice could now be made correctly.

Hold fast to

ἀντέχεσθαι (antechesthai)

To cling to or maintain dependence on what can guide one. The city and soul should relate to knowledge of the best as the sick person does to a doctor and the sailor to a pilot; the image concerns continuing reliance, not merely acquiring an isolated fact.

Attestations. 146e: Introduces the two practical analogies of guidance.

Hold for a few days

τρεῖς ἢ τέτταρας ἡμέρας (treis ē tettaras hēmeras)

Three or four days, the brief duration assigned to the killer’s possession of tyranny. The approximate number matters as a measure of unstable success, not as an independently confirmed historical dating.

Attestations. 141e: The new tyrant’s apparent advantage lasts only a few days.

Horseman and riding

ἱππεύειν (hippeuein); ἱππικόν (hippikon); ἱππικὴν (hippikēn)

Riding and competence in horsemanship supply a deliberately limited description of expertise. Knowing what is better according to this craft warrants the title horseman, but the argument refuses to infer unqualified intelligence from it.

Attestations. 145c–d: Horsemanship is the first named example of domain-specific competence.

I think

οἶμαι (oimai); ᾠήθην (ōiēthēn)

The speaker’s ordinary avowal of belief or judgment, with the past form allowing an earlier thought to be reconsidered. Socrates often marks an assertion as his own assessment with “I think,” while Alcibiades can acknowledge that matters are not as he thought; neither expression alone supplies a proof.

Attestations. 139d: Alcibiades revises the belief produced by the failed classification; 141a–b: Socrates describes what he thinks Alcibiades would welcome; 147c–d2: The interpretation of the poet is presented as Socrates’ judgment.

Idiots

ἠλιθίους (ēlithious)

The first of the two blunt labels for those said to have a little less unintelligence than the mad. The word occurs before Socrates introduces people who choose the “most auspicious names,” so it should not be represented as itself one of those five expressly flattering descriptions.

Attestations. 140c: Paired with “thunderstruck” in the lower degree of the classification.

If I can

Ἂν δυνηθῶ (an dynēthō)

Alcibiades’ qualified agreement to follow what comes next. The response admits a possible limit to his ability, unlike the unqualified confidence about choosing goods attributed to ordinary petitioners.

Attestations. 145a: Alcibiades agrees conditionally to consider the next implication.

If indeed

εἴπερ γε (eiper ge); εἴπερ (eiper)

A condition treated as important to the inference that follows. It preserves the dependence of the claim on the stated premise, especially when Socrates says that ignorance profits the many if their knowledge would only make harmful action more eager.

Attestations. 146d: The startling conclusion about the many is explicitly conditional; 147d–e: The reading of Margites and trust in the arguments are tied to stated assumptions.

In a word

ἑνὶ δὲ λόγῳ (heni de logōi)

A signal that several examples are being gathered into one summary. Socrates broadens the list of public advice to what the city does toward other cities or on its own, rather than supplying a new technical sense of λόγος.

Attestations. 144e–145a: Summarizes the civic reach of orators’ advice.

In especial honor

διαφερόντως τετιμῆσθαι (diapherontōs tetimēsthai)

To be particularly valued or honored. Justice and intelligence receive this status with gods and sensible people, reversing the scale of value implied by Athens’ boast about its costly rites.

Attestations. 150a–b: The standard of honor is moral and practical rather than monetary.

In exchange for

ἀντί (anti)

In place of or as the price of something else. The comparison between universal dominion and Alcibiades’ own soul or life breaks the assumption that more external possession is always preferable; the later poetic discussion uses the same ordinary preposition for replacing one word with another.

Attestations. 141c: Land and tyranny are rejected if acquired at the cost of soul or life; 147d: Socrates describes substitutions in his reading of the poet.

In fact

τυγχάνομεν εὐχόμενοι (tynchanomen euchomenoi); τυγχάνουσιν ἄφρονες ὄντες (tynchanousin aphrones ontes); τυγχάνει κράτιστος ὤν (tynchanei kratistos ōn)

With a participle, this construction presents what is actually so and is consistently rendered “in fact” in the edition. It should not be translated as chance occurrence in these uses, though other constructions of the same verb can concern what happens or is obtained.

Attestations. 138b: What people in fact pray for; 139c: People of Alcibiades’ age who are in fact unintelligent; 146a: The specialist’s actual strongest pursuit in the adapted verse.

In private and in public

ἰδίᾳ καὶ δημοσίᾳ (idiai kai dēmosiai)

The paired adverbs cover personal and civic prayer. Their recurrence in the Spartan example makes the proposed alternative apply to both scales already included in the opening question.

Attestations. 138b: The danger concerns both kinds of prayer; 148c: The Spartans use the modest prayer in both settings.

In proportion to these

ἀνὰ λόγον τούτοις (ana logon toutois)

By the same corresponding pattern as the preceding cases. Socrates uses it to extend the naming of practitioners from their crafts without individually listing every expertise; it does not introduce a mathematical proportion to be calculated.

Attestations. 145d: Generalizes from horseman, boxer, and flute-player.

In vain

μάτην (matēn)

Pointlessly or without the result that would justify an action. Men may blame the gods in vain for self-caused troubles, while sacrifices may be vain when their givers’ condition makes them unacceptable.

Attestations. 142d: Blaming the gods may misidentify the source of trouble; 149e: Gifts cannot secure acceptance for the hated Trojans.

Inexperienced

ἀπείρους (apeirous)

Lacking experience, used as one of the softened names given to the unintelligent. No particular craft or life stage is specified in this occurrence, so the word should not be turned into a diagnosis of Alcibiades’ age alone.

Attestations. 140d: A polite designation within the list, not a separate educational theory.

Inheritance

τὰ πατρῷα (ta patrōia)

The paternal possessions that Oedipus’ sons are to divide. The familial object makes the curse concrete: division of an inheritance becomes destruction of the heirs through the specified means of division.

Attestations. 138c: Oedipus prays for his sons’ division of their inheritance.

Innocent

ἀκάκους (akakous)

Free from badness or guile in its favorable sound, here another polite designation for unintelligence. The list does not establish that ignorance makes someone morally innocent; it exposes how a reassuring name may obscure the defect under discussion.

Attestations. 140d: The first of the final three names, on the line where section d begins.

It lies with the gods

ἐπὶ τοῖς θεοῖς (epi tois theois)

The outcome is within the gods’ power or discretion. Even the defended form of prayer is not presented as a mechanism compelling its fulfilment, since the gods can give what is asked or its opposite.

Attestations. 148c–d: Divine discretion qualifies the appeal to Spartan fortune.

Just now

ἄρτι (arti)

A short time before the current point in the conversation. It lets the argument explicitly compare a new conclusion or example with something the partners recently said, without treating their earlier view as their permanent position.

Attestations. 144c: The earlier belief that ignorance is simply bad is recalled; 145e: The specialists in war and killing are the people mentioned just now.

Keep from a gift

ἀπόσχοιτο (aposchoito); ἀπόσχοιντο (aposchointo)

To refrain or hold oneself back from accepting what is offered. The action is harder than admitting that a type of possession can cause harm, which explains why the warning concerns reception as well as prayer.

Attestations. 142c: Few would refrain when tyranny or generalship was actually available.

Keep quiet

ἡσυχίαν ἔχειν (hēsychian echein)

To remain at rest or refrain from the immediate action. Here it is the prudent alternative to going ahead with a prayer one cannot judge; the next sentence gives that restraint a positive endpoint in learning.

Attestations. 150c: Socrates recommends restraint before the proposed sacrifice.

Keep silent

μὴ σιώπα (mē siōpa)

Do not remain silent when there is something to say against the proposal. Socrates invites an objection after praising the poet’s prayer, keeping favorable evaluation open to the partner’s response.

Attestations. 143a: Alcibiades is asked to state any opposing thought.

Labors

πόνοι (ponoi)

Troubles or efforts endured in pursuing or exercising office. Socrates does not reject difficulty as such; he says that dangers and labors would have a rationale if they led to benefit.

Attestations. 142b: The value of effort depends on its result.

Land or territory

χώραν (chōran)

The land associated with dominion over Greeks and non-Greeks. As an object Alcibiades could possess only while alive to use it, territory belongs among the external goods whose value depends on the possessor’s condition.

Attestations. 141c: The largest imagined territory is set against the loss of soul or life.

Leave it to someone

ἐπιτρέψειεν (epitrepseien)

To entrust or permit a choice to the person himself. The second divine-offer scenario tests whether Alcibiades could choose safely even if the god did not restrict him to a preselected gift.

Attestations. 148a: The god might let Alcibiades formulate his own prayer.

Led astray by gifts

ὑπὸ δώρων παράγεσθαι (hypo dōrōn paragesthai)

To be diverted or induced by presents from the proper basis of judgment. Socrates denies that the gods act this way, making the bad moneylender a negative comparison rather than a description of divine conduct.

Attestations. 149e: The ordinary language of inducement exposes the mistaken purchasing model of worship.

Led by each one

ἀγόμενος (agomenos); μιᾶς ἑκάστης (mias hekastēs)

Being drawn or guided successively by the separate kinds of knowledge. Without the knowledge of the best, each partial competence can exert its own pull, reproducing in one person the lack of coordination imagined in the commonwealth.

Attestations. 147a: The learned person’s capacities do not supply a single governing direction.

Live rightly

ὀρθῶς βιώσεσθαι (orthōs biōsesthai)

To conduct or pass one’s life correctly. Socrates applies the phrase to both soul and city, giving the guiding knowledge a practical purpose larger than successful execution of any single craft.

Attestations. 146e: Right living is the end for which the knowledge must be held fast.

Long ago

πάλαι δὴ (palai dē)

Already a long time before now. The duration strengthens the objection: if nearly everyone around them were mad, harm ought not still to be merely a future possibility.

Attestations. 139d: Elapsed ordinary civic life tests the proposed equation of madness and unintelligence.

Look at it this way

τῇδέ πῃ ἀθρητέον (tēide pēi athrēteon)

The proposal that the matter must be viewed along another line. The deliberately provisional “somehow this way” marks the move from the failed opposition argument to distinctions within disease and craft.

Attestations. 139d: Introduces the replacement analogy.

Look into

ἐπισκεψώμεθα (episkepsōmetha); σκεπτέον (skepteon); σκόπει (skopei)

To examine or consider a question rather than accept its first appearance. These are related forms of the dialogue’s inquiry vocabulary, directing attention first to who the intelligent are, then to the possible benefit of ignorance and the limits of specialized knowledge.

Attestations. 138d: The identity of intelligent and unintelligent people is proposed for examination; 140d: The identity of intelligent and unintelligent people is proposed for examination; 143e: Further examples are introduced for scrutiny; 144d: Further examples are introduced for scrutiny.

Look to

ἀποβλέπουσιν (apoblepousin); ἀποβλέπων (apoblepōn)

To direct attention to the relevant object or criterion. Alcibiades must have something in view when classifying people, and the gods are said to attend to soul rather than gifts; the visual verb thereby expresses evaluative orientation.

Attestations. 145a: The classification of intelligent and unintelligent presupposes a criterion; 149e: The decisive object of divine attention is the giver’s soul.

Looks as though

κινδυνεύει (kindyneuei)

A guarded formulation meaning that something looks likely or seems to be the result. It is not always a claim about danger: Socrates uses it for conclusions about madness, the poet’s intelligence, and the value of knowledge, keeping an inferential reserve in the wording.

Attestations. 139c: Introduces the provisional identity of madness and unintelligence; 142e: Qualifies the favorable assessment of the praying poet; 144d: Qualifies major claims about knowledge and divine honor; 150a: Qualifies major claims about knowledge and divine honor.

Lose one’s life

τοῦ βίου ἀπαλλαγῆναι (tou biou apallagēnai); τὸν βίον ἀφῃρέθησαν (ton bion aphēirethēsan)

To be separated from life or robbed of it. These expressions state the most extreme possible cost of apparent success, making the warning about harmful gifts concrete without asserting that all who obtain power die violently.

Attestations. 141c–d: Loss of life is the final risk of an indiscriminately accepted gift; 141d: Plots deprive some successful aspirants to tyranny of life.

Madcap

μάργον (margon)

Rash or foolishly unrestrained, Alcibiades’ description of making such a choice offhand. The edition notes its verbal connection with Margites, allowing a comic echo of the fool just discussed without making Alcibiades literally that character.

Attestations. 148a: Alcibiades recognizes the recklessness of an immediate answer.

Make an attempt

ἐγχειροῖς (encheirois)

To try to put the intended action into effect. The hypothetical repetition shows that ignorance of the victim’s identity blocks the act even if the intention and attempts continue.

Attestations. 144b: Many attempts still fail if Pericles is never recognized.

Mean or have in view

νοοῦσιν (noousin); βούλεται (bouletai)

To intend a meaning, rather than merely to wish for an object. These ordinary verbs frame the poetic reinterpretation as an attempt to recover what the poet has in mind behind a grammatically altered paraphrase.

Attestations. 147c: The question is what the poets mean; 147d: Socrates claims that his metrically altered version preserves the intended meaning.

Misfortunes

συμφοράς (symphoras); συμφοραῖς (symphorais)

Adverse events befalling people, distinguished in the translation from the more general language of ill fortune. Parents may suffer them through worthless children or through the loss of worthy ones, so good character alone does not remove the possible pain of the requested gift.

Attestations. 142b–c: The example of children gives two different routes to parental suffering.

Miss the best

διημαρτηκότα (diēmartēkota); διημαρτηκέναι (diēmartēkenai)

To fail to reach or hit the appropriate good. The directional force fits the dialogue’s later question about hitting the right mark: successful performance in one craft can coexist with missing the good of the city and oneself.

Attestations. 146a: The ambitious specialist misses the relevant best; 146c: The majority’s error is described by the same verb.

Mistakes

ἁμαρτήματα (hamartēmata); ἡμαρτηκότας (hēmartēkotas)

Failures or wrongful errors in action. The noun names the enlarged mistakes caused by unguided good fortune; the participle later identifies people or cities whose costly rites coexist with many mistakes toward gods and humans.

Attestations. 147a: Stronger favorable resources increase the scale of mistakes; 150a: Mistakes are not cancelled by the ability to pay for annual worship.

Mixed among them

ἀναμεμειγμένων (anamemeigmenōn)

Combined or mingled with the first group. The imagined commonwealth assembles different genuine abilities, including war and killing, but mixture alone does not yield a principle for their beneficial use.

Attestations. 145e: Military and coercive specialists are added to the other craftsmen.

Moneylender

τοκιστήν (tokistēn)

One who lends at interest, specified here as bad in the comparison. Socrates invokes the familiar venal figure to deny that divine judgment can be redirected by gifts; he does not make a general claim about every lender.

Attestations. 149e: The gods are contrasted with a bad moneylender.

More eager

μᾶλλον προθυμήσονται (mallon prothymēsontai); προθυμίαν (prothymian)

Readiness or eagerness to act, whose value depends on its direction. Greater confidence can make the many more active in harming themselves, whereas the unnamed educator’s eagerness is directed toward Alcibiades’ improvement.

Attestations. 146d: Increased knowledge or presumed knowledge may intensify harmful action; 151a: The prospective educator is said to have remarkable eagerness about Alcibiades.

More strongly

λαμπρότερον (lamproteron)

More vigorously or strongly, describing the fair wind of fortune in this edition. Burnet prints Lennep’s correction here, with an accompanying transposition; the resulting sense should not be treated as an uncontested manuscript wording.

Attestations. 147a: Intensified good fortune increases mistakes in the absence of guidance.

Most extreme

τό γε ἔσχατον (to ge eschaton)

The furthest or most startling point of the preceding sequence. Praying for the worst for oneself is presented as an intensification beyond simply doing it, since the person explicitly asks for the harmful outcome.

Attestations. 143a–b: The phrase marks the climax of Alcibiades’ admission.

Most gladly

ἥδιστα (hēdista); ἡδέως (hēdeōs)

With the greatest pleasure or willingly and gladly. Alcibiades’ eagerness to meet the educator and Socrates’ pleasure in receiving a further gift register the warmth of the ending without guaranteeing that its educational promise has already been fulfilled.

Attestations. 150d: Alcibiades would gladly see who the educator is; 151b: Socrates gladly accepts the token and welcomes more.

My dear fellow

ὦ μακάριε (ō makarie)

A familiar form of address, rendered “my dear fellow.” It accompanies a gentle warning to reconsider the result and should not be taken as a philosophical assertion that Alcibiades is blessed or happy.

Attestations. 139d: Socrates softens the invitation to see that the conclusion may be wrong.

My excellent friend

ὦ βέλτιστε (ō beltiste)

A courteous or gently ironic address using the language of “best.” It does not establish that the addressee already possesses the knowledge of the best whose absence the discussion is investigating.

Attestations. 143b: Introduces the imagined wiser critic of the partners; 147b: Accompanies the explanation that poets speak in riddles.

Name or call

καλοῦμεν (kaloumen); κατονομάζειν (katonomazein); ὀνόματα (onomata); ὀνομάτων (onomatōn)

To give someone a designation, with a contrast between blunt descriptions and socially agreeable labels. The passage makes naming itself part of the joke: a favorable-sounding word can conceal the very unintelligence it names.

Attestations. 140c–d: Socrates enumerates names for different degrees or forms of unintelligence; 150c: He returns to the flattering force of “greatness of soul”.

Necessity

Ἀνάγκη (anankē); ἀναγκαῖον (anankaion)

What must follow or be the case under the conditions being considered. The word can mark a proposed logical division, a supposed requirement of action, or the practical need to wait; it therefore needs its local premise, rather than functioning everywhere as an unconditional law.

Attestations. 139a–b2: Necessity is claimed for occupying one of two states; 144d: Knowing or thinking one knows is proposed as a prerequisite of ready action; 150c–d: Waiting for education is judged necessary.

Neglectfully disposed

ὀλιγώρως διάκεινται (oligōrōs diakeintai)

Taking little care in one’s attitude toward the gods, as the Athenians allege of the Spartans. This is a claim inside the reported complaint, not Socrates’ independent conclusion about the adequacy of Spartan worship.

Attestations. 149a: The charge explains the Athenians’ bewilderment at Spartan victories.

Neither condition

μηδέτερα τούτων (mēdetera toutōn)

Neither member of the pair under examination. First denied as a possible alternative to bodily health or sickness, the construction then helps exclude a third mental condition; its force depends on which two states have been specified.

Attestations. 139a: Socrates asks whether anyone is in neither bodily condition; 140e: Neither of the required kinds of knowledge means knowing neither what to do nor what to say.

Never a general

ἀστρατηγήτους (astratēgētous)

Not having served as generals, the counterfactual status some former officeholders now desire. The rare word sharpens their reversal: merely ceasing to hold office would not undo the experience they regret.

Attestations. 142a: Successful aspirants pray to have never held their command.

No less money

χρήματα οὐδὲν ἐλάττω (chrēmata ouden elattō)

Resources at least equal to those of the comparator. The Athenians add the point to prevent Spartan less costly worship being excused by poverty, but the oracle rejects the assumption that equal resources require equal ritual display.

Attestations. 149a: The financial comparison strengthens the complaint it will help overturn.

No less than

οὐκ ἐν ἐλάττονι (ouk en elattoni)

Not in a smaller degree or quantity than the comparison supplied. In the ending it makes Socrates’ rough sea at least equal to Creon’s without specifying an exact measure of danger.

Attestations. 151c: The comparative intensifies the uncertainty of Socrates’ hopeful position.

Non-Greeks

βαρβάρων (barbarōn)

The people grouped as outside the Greeks, rendered “barbarians” in the edition’s pairing. In the imagined offer, Greeks and non-Greeks together give the widest human scope to land and tyranny, yet even that scope cannot compensate Alcibiades for the loss of his life.

Attestations. 141c: The paired peoples enlarge the offer whose price would be one’s soul or life.

Not because of the prayer

⟨οὐ⟩ διὰ τὴν ἐκείνων εὐχήν (ou dia tēn ekeinōn euchēn)

The denial that occasional Spartan misfortune should be attributed to their prayer. The negative is supplied in Burnet from a corrector of a later manuscript, a textual fact essential to the translated claim rather than a decorative editorial mark.

Attestations. 148c–d: The supplied negative preserves the defense of the modest prayer.

Nothing further

οὐκέτι περαιτέρω (ouketi peraiterō)

No additional reply beyond what has just been said. The prophet’s brevity puts weight on the single contrast between Spartan auspicious speech and the combined rites of the Greeks; the narrative gives no fuller divine explanation.

Attestations. 149b: Closes the oracle’s reported answer.

Nothing prevents

οὐθὲν κωλύει (outhen kōlyei); οὐδὲν κωλύει (ouden kōlyei)

There is no obstacle sufficient to exclude the proposed possibility. The same construction allows that an ignorant person could mistake the worst for best and that wrongdoers could still afford expensive worship; it establishes compatibility, not that every such person acts in that way.

Attestations. 144a: Ignorance leaves room for a disastrous judgment; 150a: Costly rites can coexist with many mistakes against gods and men.

Now, even if not then

Καὶ εἰ μὴ τότε, ἀλλὰ νῦν (kai ei mē tote, alla nyn)

A temporal concession rather than an unqualified retrospective endorsement. Alcibiades accepts how the claim appears to him at the current point, leaving open whether he accepted it when first stated.

Attestations. 146e: His answer is weaker than Socrates’ request for acknowledgment of genuine demonstration.

Occur to someone

παρεσταίη (parestaiē); παραστῆναί (parastēnai)

To present itself or arise in someone’s thought. A disastrous plan can occur to a person ignorant of the best, and Socrates makes that possibility explicit without asserting that Alcibiades presently entertains it.

Attestations. 143e–144a2: The plan and the opinion of its value are hypothetical mental occurrences.

Of no use

οὐδὲν αὐτοῖς ἦν προύργου (ouden autois ēn prourgou)

Serving no useful purpose toward the hoped-for outcome. The phrase evaluates the Trojans’ sacrifices as ineffective because the gods will not accept them, not because the rites lack material cost or ceremonial completeness.

Attestations. 149e: Payment of gifts is fruitless in the specified condition.

On behalf of all

κοινῇ ὑπὲρ ἁπάντων (koinēi hyper hapantōn)

In common for everyone concerned. Socrates imagines the poet formulating one protective prayer for his senseless friends together, replacing their separate ill-judged requests with a shared qualification of what should be given.

Attestations. 142e: The poet’s prayer is made for all his misguided friends.

On top of what is already there

πρὸς τοῖς ὑπάρχουσιν (pros tois hyparchousin)

In addition to troubles already possessed or present. The expression gives the curse an accumulative structure: prayer can increase the very burden from which its speaker might instead ask release.

Attestations. 138c: Oedipus calls down further bad things.

One or the other

τὸ ἕτερον τούτων (to heteron toutōn)

One of two conditions presented as exhaustive. The expression turns the refusal of an intermediate condition into the positive claim that a person must occupy one side of the contrast.

Attestations. 139b: Used in the attempted identification of madness and unintelligence.

Open sea

ἐν πελάγει (en pelagei)

Out at sea, where continued motion without a pilot is exposed to danger. The phrase places the learned person in a setting that requires direction, not just additional propulsion.

Attestations. 147a–b: The unguided possessor continues his perilous course.

Ophthalmia

ὀφθαλμία (ophthalmia)

An inflammation of the eyes, the disease singled out for the clearest formulation of the class-and-member distinction. The speakers agree that all ophthalmia is disease while denying that all disease is ophthalmia.

Attestations. 139e–140a: The explicit two-way test repairs the preceding confusion.

Orders

προσταττομένων (prostattomenōn)

Things prescribed or directed by the educator. The language gives the hoped-for teacher practical authority, but the dialogue does not enumerate commands or show their execution.

Attestations. 150e: Alcibiades promises not to evade what is prescribed.

Orphaned of guidance

ὀρφανὸς (orphanos)

Deprived of the knowledge that would guide the other kinds. The familial metaphor portrays intellectual abundance together with crucial absence; it does not state anything about the person’s literal parents.

Attestations. 147a: The man of much learning and craft lacks the directing knowledge.

Outside the meter

ἔξω μὲν τοῦ μέτρου (exō men tou metrou)

Outside the verse’s metrical pattern once the proposed meaning is put together. Socrates acknowledges this cost of his paraphrase, claiming fidelity to the intended sense rather than to the original poetic form.

Attestations. 147d: The reconstructed statement is prose-like in rhythm.

Overjoyed

περιχαρῆ (pericharē)

Exceedingly glad at an apparent great acquisition. The joy belongs to a hypothetical first response before the possibility of harmful use is raised; it is therefore an index of confident valuation, not proof that the gift is good.

Attestations. 141b: Alcibiades imagines leaving the god’s offer in delight.

Part or share

μέρη (merē); μέρος (meros)

A portion assigned within a larger whole. The language first divides craftsmanship and unintelligence among different bearers, and later exposes each specialist’s ambition to give his own field the largest share of the commonwealth.

Attestations. 140b–c2: Craft and unintelligence are described through distributed portions; 146a: The specialist assigns his strength the largest civic share.

Pay attention

προσέχῃς τὸν νοῦν (prosechēis ton noun); προσέχω (prosechō)

To attend with one’s mind to the speaker’s reasoning. Alcibiades promises the best attention within his power, so the exchange presents inquiry as cooperative effort even when the result remains uncertain.

Attestations. 140a: Socrates requests attention before reformulating the disease analogy.

Pay out

ἐτελοῦμεν χρήματα (eteloumen chrēmata); δῶρα τελεῖν (dōra telein)

To spend resources or render gifts. The monetary emphasis makes explicit the mistaken expectation that greater expenditure should secure greater favor; paying is distinguishable from the moral condition of the payer.

Attestations. 148e–149a2: The Athenians compare their spending with all other Greeks; 149e: The Trojans’ payment of gifts proves useless.

Pay the penalty

δίκην δεδωκέναι (dikēn dedōkenai)

To have suffered the consequence or paid for one’s exposure. The phrase here describes being attacked while living among supposed madmen; it does not narrate a court judgment or establish that Socrates and Alcibiades deserve legal punishment.

Attestations. 139d: The imagined penalty has not in fact overtaken the speakers.

Perceive

αἰσθήσεσθαι (aisthēsesthai)

To become aware of or recognize an evident fact. In the offer of tyranny, universal recognition by others is part of the attraction: Alcibiades is imagined not merely possessing rule but being known to possess it.

Attestations. 141b: Everyone will perceive that Alcibiades is tyrant.

Perhaps

τυχὸν (tychon); ἴσως (isōs)

Expressions of possibility that leave an assertion short of certainty. The dialogue uses them both hopefully, for a discovery made together, and cautiously, for an unwelcome consequence or an unexpected objection.

Attestations. 140a: The partners may discover the answer together; 143b: An imagined wiser critic or a strange-looking implication is introduced tentatively; 144d: An imagined wiser critic or a strange-looking implication is introduced tentatively; 150c: An additional consequence of bad prayer is left unspecified.

Pilot

κυβερνήτου (kybernētou)

The person who directs a vessel through its course. A pilot models the directing knowledge that keeps other resources from becoming dangerous; being without one then develops into the extended image of storm and a shortened voyage of life.

Attestations. 146e: The sailor needs a pilot for safety; 147a–b: The learned but unguided person is at sea without one.

Plot against

ἐπιβουλευθέντες (epibouleuthentes); ἐπιβουλευθεὶς (epibouleutheis)

To become the target of another person’s hostile plan. Tyranny exposes both its original holder and his successful attacker to the same danger, so acquisition repeats the threat rather than resolving it.

Attestations. 141d–e2: Both successful tyrants and Archelaus’ killer become targets.

Political blast

πολιτικὸν φύσημα φυσώντων (politikon physēma physōntōn)

Blowing a civic or political puff, the vivid phrase for the rhetoricians’ contribution to the imagined city. The repeated root gives their impressive public sound a comic bodily image without treating that sound as evidence of wise guidance.

Attestations. 145e: Rhetorical display is added to the unguided collection of skills.

Pondering

συννοούμενος (synnooumenos); σύννοιαν (synnoian)

Thinking something over or being absorbed in thought. Socrates playfully answers the question what anyone might ponder with “the greatest pondering,” immediately specifying the danger in prayer rather than supplying a report of what Alcibiades was already thinking.

Attestations. 138a–b: The opening exchange turns an apparent private preoccupation into a shared problem.

Possession

κτῆμα (ktēma); κεκτημένος (kektēmenos)

Something acquired and held, here especially knowledge available to its possessor. The material language makes an important question possible: possessing an intellectual resource does not establish that one is benefiting from it.

Attestations. 144d: The possession of other kinds of knowledge is evaluated by its use; 146d–e: The possession of other kinds of knowledge is evaluated by its use; 147a: Much learning and craft may be possessed without the guiding knowledge.

Possible

οἷόν τε (hoion te)

Able to be so or possible. At 139a Burnet prints this wording in a question whose argument might seem to want “necessary”; the edition notes the proposed correction but translates the printed text. Later the negative form expresses the alleged impossibility of “knowing badly” on which Socrates’ poetic reinterpretation depends.

Attestations. 139a: The printed text asks about possibility, not a silently corrected necessity; 147c: Knowing badly is said to be impossible.

Prepared to shrink from nothing

παρεσκεύασμαι (pareskeuasmai); μηθὲν ἂν φυγεῖν (mēthen an phygein)

Being ready to refuse or evade none of the educator’s requirements. Alcibiades makes this expansive commitment conditional on becoming better, so it is a declaration of readiness for care, not evidence that the care has already succeeded.

Attestations. 150e: He accepts the prospective teacher’s demands whoever the man is.

Pretty well all

σχεδόν τι πάντες (schedon ti pantes)

Almost or pretty much all, a qualified generalization. Socrates says poets in general speak in riddles while stopping short of a strictly exceptionless assertion.

Attestations. 147b: Qualifies the extension from the quoted poet to the others.

Private person

ἰδιώτην (idiōtēn)

An individual person in contrast with a city. Both can afford magnificent ritual while having made many mistakes, so neither personal nor civic expenditure substitutes for the condition of the worshipper.

Attestations. 150a: The criticism applies on both personal and public scales.

Promise

ὑποσταίη (hypostaiē)

To undertake or promise that the offered dominion will be Alcibiades’. The added immediate fulfilment removes mere delay as a reason for hesitation, so the test is about the value of possession itself; the repeated “and this” and contrasting “but” in Burnet’s sentence are supplied conjectures.

Attestations. 141b: The god promises wider rule and its fulfilment that same day.

Put in place of

παράγων (paragōn)

To substitute or redirect the wording in Socrates’ reading of the verse. The verbal operation replaces “badly” with “bad” and finite “knew” with “to know,” producing a claim about harmful knowledge rather than defective performance.

Attestations. 147d: The alteration is explicitly described rather than hidden.

Put off

ἀναβάλλεσθαι (anaballesthai)

To defer the proposed act until later. Alcibiades now makes the practical decision the discussion has prepared: the sacrifice will wait until the relevant education is available.

Attestations. 151a: The initial errand is suspended rather than completed.

Put on a wreath

περιθήσω (perithēsō)

To place the wreath around or upon Socrates. The action is Alcibiades’ concrete response to advice he now judges good, redirecting the available ceremonial object at the close of the interrupted errand.

Attestations. 151a–b: Alcibiades announces the crowning of Socrates.

Rare to find

σπάνιον εὑρεῖν (spanion heurein)

Uncommon to encounter in experience. The phrase qualifies the claim about restraint: Socrates says abstainers are rare, rather than denying that any person can refrain from a tempting gift.

Attestations. 142c: Few decline the gifts whose dangers have been illustrated.

Readily

προχειροτέρως (procheiroterōs); προχείρως (procheirōs)

With readiness or facility in proceeding to speech or action. The comparative form appears in the first statement and the simpler form in the recapitulation, linking confidence or knowledge to increased willingness to act rather than automatically to better results.

Attestations. 144d–e: Ready performance is connected to knowing or thinking one knows; 146b: The proposition is restated before its consequences are drawn.

Really or in reality

τῷ ὄντι (tōi onti)

In fact or genuinely, used to distinguish actual knowledge from the thought that one knows and to strengthen a claimed conclusion. Its force must be kept apart from a merely apparent result, especially when Alcibiades’ response grants only how matters seem to him now.

Attestations. 144d: Real knowledge is contrasted with thinking one knows; 146b: Real knowledge is contrasted with thinking one knows; 146e: Socrates asks whether his claim was really shown right; 147a: The expression emphasizes a real consequence or difference; 149b: The expression emphasizes a real consequence or difference.

Receive first-fruits

ἀπαρχὰς (aparchas)

An initial or dedicatory portion of what has been won, here the garlands received by Teiresias from the enemy because of his craft. Within the quoted comparison, the token of victory becomes something that Creon and then Socrates can take as an encouraging sign.

Attestations. 151b: The literary example gives the wreath its association with successful expertise.

Release from troubles

ἀπαλλαγὴν (apallagēn)

A getting free of present bad things. The Athenians ask what they must do to find this release; the answer offers a comparison of prayer rather than a newly prescribed scale of expenditure.

Attestations. 149a: The practical objective of the oracle consultation.

Remember

μέμνησαι (memnēsai)

To recall an earlier assent or admission and make it available for the present argument. Socrates uses the same ordinary request for memory in the early logical exercise and when bringing Alcibiades back to the practical danger of prayer.

Attestations. 139b: Recalls the conceded opposition of madness and intelligence; 150b: Recalls the danger of unnoticed error in prayer.

Rough sea

κλύδωνι (klydōni)

A swell or turbulent sea, used first in the tragic quotation and then by Socrates of his own position. It revives the dialogue’s maritime danger imagery at the ending, now locating the uncertainty in his rivalry for Alcibiades’ allegiance.

Attestations. 151b–c: Socrates declares himself in no less turbulence than Creon.

Run a risk

παρακινδυνεύειν (parakindyneuein)

To venture despite exposure to a serious hazard. Socrates approves postponement as safer than this course, turning the abstract problem of bad requests into an immediate choice about conduct.

Attestations. 151a: The risk of proceeding justifies the delay.

Safe

ἀσφαλές (asphales); ἀσφαλῶς (asphalōs); ἀσφαλέστερον (asphalesteron)

Secure from the harmful consequence at issue. Safety does not mean successful acquisition of whatever one wants: the safer course may be the poet’s qualified request, guided sailing, or postponement of the sacrifice.

Attestations. 141c: Acceptance of a gift is unsafe when it will harm its recipient; 143a: The poet speaks safely and a sailor seeks safe passage; 146e: The poet speaks safely and a sailor seeks safe passage; 150c: Prayer is postponed because delay is safer; 151a: Prayer is postponed because delay is safer.

Sail

πλεῖν (plein)

To make a sea voyage. The desire to sail safely makes guidance a familiar practical requirement before the image is transferred to the conduct of life.

Attestations. 146e–147a2: Safe sailing is the second analogy for dependence on guiding knowledge.

Savor

κνῖσαν (knisan)

The aroma of the sacrificial offering, carried upward in the quoted poetic description. Its sweetness and successful ascent do not guarantee acceptance, since the gods refuse to take a share.

Attestations. 149d: Sensory attractiveness is separated from divine willingness to partake.

Sculptor

ἀνδριαντοποιοὺς (andriantopoious); ἀνδριαντοποιοί (andriantopoioi)

A maker of human statues, rendered “sculptor” in this edition. The specific occupation completes the named trio used to show that a plurality of different crafts can all fall under craftsmanship.

Attestations. 140b–c2: The third named occupation in the class-and-kind analogy.

Seem and appear

δοκεῖ (dokei); φαίνεται (phainetai); ἔοικεν (eoiken)

To present itself as so to the interlocutor, in ordinary statements of appearance and assent. These forms can register acceptance of a provisional result or a changed assessment, so their repeated use must not erase the difference between how a claim now seems and what has been established by an argument.

Attestations. 139c: Alcibiades says the provisional identification appears so; 144c: The qualification of ignorance is accepted as seeming so; 147e: Apparently firm assent is followed by renewed reversal.

Seldom and for the most part

ὀλιγάκις (oligakis); τὰ πλείω (ta pleiō)

Infrequently and in the larger share of cases. These qualifications are integral to the claim that other knowledge without knowledge of the best tends to harm: the wording allows exceptions and must not be summarized as “knowledge always harms.”

Attestations. 144d: The principal claim includes both qualifications; 146e: The principal claim includes both qualifications; 146d: The majority’s harmful action is likewise described as prevailing rather than exceptionless.

Shoemaker

σκυτοτόμους (skytotomous); σκυτοτόμοι (skytotomoi)

A particular craftsman in the division of craftsmanship. Shoemakers belong to the larger class without exhausting it, so their inclusion does not justify calling every craftsman a shoemaker.

Attestations. 140b–c2: One of the three explicitly named crafts.

Show and hide

ἐνδείκνυσθαι (endeiknysthai); ἀποκρύπτεσθαι (apokryptesthai)

To make one’s wisdom apparent or conceal it from others. Their opposition explains Socrates’ proposed need to read beyond the surface wording, though it remains his account of what the poet intends.

Attestations. 147c: The imagined poet chooses maximum concealment rather than disclosure.

Sick or weak

ἀσθενοῦντες (asthenountes); ἀσθενοῦντα (asthenounta)

Being sick or in a weakened bodily condition. The early classification example and the later dependence on a doctor share this practical meaning: the sick person has need of direction that bodily resources alone cannot supply.

Attestations. 138d: Sick people are contrasted with healthy people; 146e: The sick person holds fast to a doctor.

Simple

εὐήθεις (euētheis); εὐήθη (euēthē)

Good-natured or simple, a favorable-sounding name that the list turns toward lack of judgment. Its later application to the argument that costly Athenian worship should buy superior favor activates the earlier joke: apparent innocence becomes foolish reasoning.

Attestations. 140c: The second expressly auspicious label; 149e: The argument from greater expenditure is called simple.

Slip out of

ἐκδεδυκέναι (ekdedukenai)

To have got out of or slipped free from a position. The bodily image makes an apparently firm opinion something Alcibiades soon escapes, explaining why a fresh practical test is needed.

Attestations. 147e–148a: His strongest-seeming judgments do not remain settled.

So to speak

ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν (hōs epos eipein)

A qualification of the manner in which the broad claim is being put. Alongside “looks as though,” “seldom,” and “for the most part,” it prevents the sentence about unguided knowledge from becoming an unqualified universal indictment.

Attestations. 144d: Moderates the formulation of the knowledge claim.

Some and not others

τὰ μὲν διδόναι, τὰ δ’ οὔ (ta men didonai, ta d’ ou)

The opening contrast limits what is granted before the conversation asks what should be requested. A second contrast between recipients immediately follows, so divine giving is selective in both object and person.

Attestations. 138b: Some requested things are given and others are not.

Some reason in it

εἶχεν ἄν τινα λόγον (eichen an tina logon)

It would have some rationale or defensible point. The phrase is conditional on benefit and must not be turned into a claim about possessing νοῦς, the separately rendered “sense.”

Attestations. 142b: Hardship would be intelligible if it brought benefit.

Something else besides

ἕτερόν τι προσαπολαύσῃς (heteron ti prosapolausēis)

To receive something additional as a consequence, ominously left unspecified. Socrates suggests that bad prayer might bring more than refusal of the sacrifice, but the text does not identify a particular punishment.

Attestations. 150c: A further risk reinforces the recommendation to delay.

Sometimes

ἐνίοτε (eniote)

On some occasions, rather than invariably. The word qualifies both the gods’ giving of requested things and people’s subsequent reversal of their prayers, avoiding a claim that every prayer is fulfilled or regretted.

Attestations. 138b: Divine giving is intermittent and selective; 142d: Prayers are sometimes retracted after experience.

Sorrows

ἄλγε’ (alge’)

Pains or sorrows in the Homeric words Socrates invokes. Their connection to the agents’ own recklessness or unintelligence makes them consequences in the argument, rather than merely signs of divine hostility.

Attestations. 142e: Completes the quotation about human responsibility for additional suffering.

Speak against

ἀντιλέγειν (antilegein)

To contradict or argue in reply. Alcibiades says it is hard to oppose what has been well said, but this does not end the inquiry: his next generalization about ignorance is itself immediately tested.

Attestations. 143a: Praise of the poet precedes a fresh claim that requires qualification.

State or disposition of the giver

ἕξει (hexei)

The state in which the gods are envisaged as giving what is prayed for. This local use identifies one part of the danger, since the mistakenly desired object may actually be granted; it does not introduce a developed account of divine habits.

Attestations. 138b: The gods may be in the state of granting the request.

Stop

παύσαιτο (pausaito); παύῃ (pauēi)

To cease an ongoing activity. Socrates contrasts the scarcity of people willing to stop praying for dangerous goods with Alcibiades’ later inability to stop shifting his judgment, two very different failures of settled direction.

Attestations. 142c: Stopping a prayer is a possible but rare response to danger; 147e: Alcibiades does not stop moving between opinions.

Storm

χειμῶνι (cheimōni)

A storm or severe weather, the consequence awaiting the person at sea without a pilot. The image makes the danger of unguided expertise more vivid than mere theoretical inconsistency.

Attestations. 147a: A great storm is the counterpart of the earlier apparently favorable wind.

Strange

ἄτοπον (atopon)

Unexpected or apparently out of place. Socrates anticipates this reaction to the claim that possessing other kinds of knowledge without the best can mostly harm their possessor, and offers an argument instead of demanding acceptance because it is paradoxical.

Attestations. 144d: Introduces the startling next step about knowledge.

Strength of body

σώματος ῥώμην (sōmatos rhōmēn)

Bodily vigor or strength. Like money, it expands an agent’s capacities without determining the right use of those capacities, so more strength can bring larger mistakes under poor guidance.

Attestations. 147a: The second explicit example of favorable resources.

Strive for honor

φιλοτιμούμενόν (philotimoumenon)

Competing or pressing one’s claim for honor. Each specialist’s ambition helps explain why he assigns the largest civic share to his own field, rather than considering what is best for the city as a whole.

Attestations. 146a: Specialist self-importance contributes to civic disorder.

Strongest

κράτιστος (kratistos)

At one’s greatest strength within a particular pursuit, in the adapted poetic quotation. The wording does not establish that this pursuit is best for the city; Socrates immediately distinguishes craft-relative superiority from civic and personal good.

Attestations. 146a: Describes the specialist’s own favored field in the quotation.

Struck and pelted

παιομένους καὶ βαλλομένους (paiomenous kai ballomenous)

Being hit and having things thrown at one. The blunt bodily vocabulary supplies the comic practical test of a purely verbal conclusion: a city mostly populated by the mad should already have injured the interlocutors.

Attestations. 139d: Imagined consequences force reconsideration of the classification.

Suffice

ἐξαρκέσει (exarkesei)

To be enough for the recipient. In the imagined divine offer, the question tests the scale of Alcibiades’ ambition; its repetition after the argument tests whether he can now identify any sufficient and safe good to accept.

Attestations. 141a: Tyranny of Athens is offered as a possible sufficient possession; 148a: The question is repeated after the argument has unsettled confident choice.

Sufficient adviser

ἀποχρῶντα σύμβουλον (apochrōnta symboulon)

An adviser adequate for the city and for himself. Adequacy is attributed when relevant skill is accompanied by knowledge of the best, not when the speaker merely knows the mechanics of giving advice.

Attestations. 145c: Public and personal adequacy share the same condition.

Suppose

ὑπολαμβάνομεν (hypolambanomen); ὑπολαμβάνεις (hypolambaneis)

To take someone or something to fall under a description. Socrates uses ordinary accepted classifications as the foothold for argument; the verb itself does not certify that every supposition so elicited is correct.

Attestations. 139d: Ill people and craftsmen are taken as familiar kinds; 140b: Ill people and craftsmen are taken as familiar kinds; 140e: Alcibiades is asked whom he counts intelligent.

Surpass

περιεῖναι (perieinai)

To have an advantage over or exceed someone. Athens’ claim to surpass the Spartans “in this” refers to the material-religious comparison under discussion, which Socrates treats as a simple or foolish basis for expecting favor.

Attestations. 149e: The supposed advantage in offerings is exposed as an inadequate standard.

Sweet

ἡδεῖαν (hēdeian)

Pleasant to the senses, here describing the rising savor. The adjective heightens the contrast between an attractive offering and the moral or personal reason for its refusal.

Attestations. 149d: The gods reject even the sweet sacrificial savor.

Take a share

δατέεσθαι (dateesthai)

To partake or receive a portion, in the quoted account of the blessed gods. Their refusal of a share shows that the sacrifice is not accepted merely because the offering reaches them.

Attestations. 149d: The gods decline participation in the Trojan sacrifice.

Take away property

χρήματα ἀφαιρεῖσθαι (chrēmata aphaireisthai)

To deprive someone of possessions or money. It is included among actions that can be performed with technical competence while remaining in need of judgment about occasion and target; the dialogue does not authorize any particular confiscation.

Attestations. 145b: A coercive skill is distinguished from knowing its beneficial use.

Take in

ἐννοῶ (ennoō)

To grasp or bring something into one’s thought. Alcibiades uses it for his recognition that ignorance causes many bad things, a recognition that Socrates then sharpens by distinguishing kinds and conditions of ignorance.

Attestations. 143a: Alcibiades identifies what he takes the discussion to have shown.

That very day

αὐθημερόν (authēmeron)

On the same day, without a period of waiting. The speed makes the offer more attractive and isolates Alcibiades’ imagined joy from the labor ordinarily required to gain power.

Attestations. 141b: The promised tyranny can become manifest immediately.

The few and the many

ὀλίγους (oligous); τοὺς πολλούς (tous pollous)

Relative numbers used to describe the intelligent minority and unintelligent majority. Their argumentative role is to expose the absurd practical consequence of calling all unintelligent people mad and later to extend the risks of uninformed expertise to ordinary civic life.

Attestations. 139c: The numerical contrast makes a city of madmen the apparent consequence; 145a: The majority’s lack of the best grounds the qualified argument against their knowledge; 146c–d: The majority’s lack of the best grounds the qualified argument against their knowledge.

The first person one meets

τὸν ἐντυχόντα (ton entychonta); τὴν προστυχοῦσαν (tēn prostychousan); τοῦ προστυχόντος (tou prostychontos)

An arbitrary person encountered, contrasted with the particular intended victim or qualified interpreter. Not attacking just anyone explains why failure of recognition can block murder; not everyone being able to interpret poetry makes mere encounter inadequate to understanding.

Attestations. 144b–c: Pericles and Orestes’ mother are determinate targets, not interchangeable passers-by; 147b–c: Poetry cannot be understood by just anyone.

Those of one’s age

ἡλικιωτῶν (hēlikiōtōn)

People of the same age as Alcibiades. The nearby addition of older people prevents the conclusion about unintelligence from being confined to youthful inexperience.

Attestations. 139c: Socrates extends the consequence of the definition to young and older citizens.

Throughout life

διὰ τέλους (dia telous); ὅλον τὸν βίον (holon ton bion)

Continuance to the end or over the whole of one’s life. The children’s continuing bad character and the parents’ continuing grief enlarge the example beyond one passing disappointment.

Attestations. 142b: The endurance of both the cause and the suffering is emphasized.

Thunderstruck

ἐμβροντήτους (embrontētous)

Stupefied or stunned, rendered through the vivid literal-sounding “thunderstruck.” It is a label for unintelligence, not a report that the people concerned have been physically struck by thunder; like “idiots,” it precedes the explicitly auspicious names.

Attestations. 140c: The second blunt designation in the list.

To the point

πρὸς λόγον (pros logon)

Relevant or fitting to the matter being discussed. Alcibiades initially denies that the poet’s words meet this standard, and Socrates’ reinterpretation of the quotation is offered to show why they do.

Attestations. 147b: The disagreement concerns the quotation’s relevance, not merely its literal wording.

Tongue-tied

ἐνεούς (eneous)

Speechless or unable to speak, rendered “tongue-tied” in this catalogue. It is one of the softened names for unintelligence, not evidence that the dialogue identifies a physical speech impairment with a moral defect.

Attestations. 140d: The final named label before Socrates allows that many others could be found.

Trivial and sorry

φαῦλον (phaulon); Φαύλην (phaulēn); φαῦλός (phaulos)

Of little worth, with the translation adjusted to its object. Athens alone may look “trivial” to an ambitious chooser, whereas a disordered commonwealth and the inadequately guided Margites are “sorry”; the later uses do not mean socially obscure or insignificant people.

Attestations. 141a: Possible contempt for an apparently limited offer; 146a: Alcibiades judges the unguided commonwealth; 147d: Margites is judged by the harm his knowledge causes.

Trust

πεπιστευκότα (pepisteukota); πιστεύσαιμι (pisteusaimi); πιστεύειν (pisteuein)

To rely on an opinion or argument. The dialogue distinguishes misplaced trust in opinion without sense from Alcibiades’ avowed trust in the reasoning just given, while his subsequent wavering leaves the firmness of the latter in question.

Attestations. 146a: Unguided opinion is trusted; 146c: Unguided opinion is trusted; 147d–e: Trust in the preceding arguments is invoked and affirmed.

Two together

σύν τε δύο σκεπτομένω (syn te dyo skeptomenō)

The two participants considering the matter together. The edition identifies an adaptation of a Homeric phrase about two going together; replacing travel with examination makes shared inquiry the local point of the allusion.

Attestations. 140a: Joint consideration is proposed as a possible way to discover the answer.

Unborn

ἀγένητα (agenēta)

Not having come into being, the state the grieving parents would prefer to their children’s birth. The form supplies another reversal of an earlier successful wish and does not express a universal judgment that children should not be born.

Attestations. 142c: Some parents wish the original object of prayer had never come about.

Up and down

ἄνω καὶ κάτω (anō kai katō)

In opposite directions, used metaphorically for unstable judgment. The spatial contrast depicts Alcibiades’ repeated reversals rather than a literal bodily movement in the scene.

Attestations. 147e: Socrates describes his partner’s persistent changes of mind.

Up to the present time

εἰς τὸ παρῆκον τοῦ χρόνου (eis to parēkon tou chronou)

Over the time that has elapsed so far. This limits the favorable comparison of Spartan fortune to the period under discussion, rather than promising permanent or exceptionless success.

Attestations. 148c: The Spartans’ record is stated with a temporal boundary.

Very plain

καταδήλων (katadēlōn)

Manifest or clearly evident. Socrates sets the apparent obviousness of disastrous examples against people’s continuing eagerness to acquire the same things, showing that noticing others’ outcomes is not yet reliable judgment of one’s own requests.

Attestations. 142c: Plain examples nevertheless fail to deter most aspirants.

Vexed

ἀγανακτοῦντας (aganaktountas)

Distressed or indignant at an unwelcome situation. The Athenians’ reaction belongs to their experience of defeat and motivates deliberation; it does not establish that their judgment of comparative religious merit is correct.

Attestations. 148d: Frustration precedes the inquiry at Ammon.

Wait until

περιμένειν ἕως (perimenein heōs)

To remain waiting until a specified condition has been met. The condition is learning the proper disposition toward gods and humans, so the delay is educational rather than an unexplained postponement for its own sake.

Attestations. 150c–d: The required knowledge supplies the endpoint of waiting.

Walls and harbors

τειχῶν οἰκοδομίας (teichōn oikodomias); λιμένων κατασκευῆς (limenōn kataskeuēs)

The building of walls and construction of harbors, practical civic works offered as examples of public advice. Technical knowledge about such works does not itself decide whether or when the city should undertake them.

Attestations. 144e: Material infrastructure joins war and peace among the orators’ subjects.

Way out

ἀποτροπήν (apotropēn); ἀποτροπὴν (apotropēn)

A turning away or averting of existing bad things. Oedipus could have sought this instead of adding calamity, while the Athenians later deliberate how to find it in their continuing military misfortunes.

Attestations. 138c: A possible object of prayer left unchosen; 148d–e: The Athenians seek a device for averting their troubles.

What diseases bring about

τὴν ἀπεργασίαν αὐτῶν (tēn apergasian autōn)

The effects or working-out produced by the diseases. Their membership in a common class does not erase differences in how they act, which is precisely the qualification needed for the subsequent varieties of unintelligence.

Attestations. 140b: Doctors are cited for the different effects of diseases.

Whatever comes

ἅττ’ ἂν τύχῃ (hatt’ an tychēi)

Whatever happens to present itself as a request, without discrimination between good and bad. Here the chance expression differs from the participial idiom translated “in fact,” and depicts the arbitrariness of other Greeks’ prayers.

Attestations. 149c: Indiscriminate requests explain why costly gifts can be refused.

When and for how long

ὁπότε βέλτιον (hopote beltion); τοσοῦτον χρόνον ὅσον βέλτιον (tosouton chronon hoson beltion)

The appropriate occasion and duration of an action. These temporal questions supply concrete content to guidance by the best: knowing how to wage war does not determine when to begin or how long to continue.

Attestations. 145b: Warfare is the explicit example of timing and duration; 145e–146a: The commonwealth needs someone who knows when to use each specialist.

Whom and in relation to whom

ὅντινα βέλτιον (hontina beltion); πρὸς τίνα (pros tina)

The person appropriately affected by an action or the recipient toward whom a skill is used. The qualification prevents the beneficial from being reduced to competent execution independently of its target.

Attestations. 145b: Knowing how to kill, dispossess, or exile does not identify the proper person; 146a: Guidance must decide toward whom to use each civic expertise.

Why on earth

ἀνθ’ ὅτου ποτὲ (anth’ hotou pote)

An emphatic request for the reason in exchange for which or because of which something happens. The Athenians ask why victory goes to the Spartans despite their own asserted ritual superiority, exposing the expectation the oracle will challenge.

Attestations. 148e: Introduces the Athenians’ comparison of sacrifice and success.

Win or obtain

κεκυρηκότα (kekyrēkota); τυχόντες (tychontes)

To come into possession of the desired object. The first form marks the imagined gain of the greatest good things; the later form records that some men really obtained generalship, which did not protect them from exile, death, or prosecution.

Attestations. 141b: The apparent success that produces joy; 141e–142a: Obtaining the desired office begins rather than ends the test of its value.

Wish and prefer

βουλόμενοι (boulomenoi); βουληθείης (boulētheiēs); βούλεσθαι (boulesthai); βουλοίμην (bouloimēn)

To wish, choose, or prefer, distinct from the prayer verb even where desire supplies a prayer’s object. Its local constructions include wishing to use flattering names, refusing dominion at the cost of life, preferring one form of worship, and the polite “I should like”; it therefore should not everywhere be rendered as an act of prayer.

Attestations. 140c: Some wish to name the unintelligent auspiciously; 141c: Alcibiades would not wish for universal dominion at the stated price; 149b: Ammon would rather have Spartan auspicious speech; 150b: Socrates expresses what he would like to learn or achieve; 151c: Socrates expresses what he would like to learn or achieve.

With impunity

χαίροντας (chairontas)

Literally a form associated with being glad, here rendered “with impunity” in the question whether the speakers could live safely among innumerable madmen. It belongs to an idiom about escaping unpleasant consequences, not a claim that the citizens are positively happy.

Attestations. 139c–d: The absurd conclusion is tested against the speakers’ uninjured civic life.

Without noticing it

λήσεται αὑτὸν (lēsetai hauton); λήσουσιν αὑτοὺς (lēsousin hautous); λάθῃς σεαυτὸν (lathēis seauton)

To fail to notice what one is oneself doing. With the accompanying participles the expression makes the agent’s error internal to apparently deliberate speech and action: someone can knowingly ask for an object while missing that the request is harmful.

Attestations. 138b: One may pray for bad things while taking them to be good; 140e: Ignorant agents fail to notice their improper speech and conduct; 150b–c2: The same danger is recalled before the sacrifice is postponed.

Wonderful eagerness

θαυμαστὴν ὅσην (thaumastēn hosēn)

Remarkably great in degree, an exclamatory description of the educator’s interest. Socrates offers reassurance about the strength of that concern while leaving the educator’s identity indirect.

Attestations. 151a: The teacher’s eagerness answers Alcibiades’ willingness.

Worthless and worthy children

μοχθηρῶν (mochthērōn); χρηστῶν (chrēstōn)

Bad or worthy in character, the two contrasting descriptions of the children. The contrast is crucial: prayer for children can bring grief even when they turn out well, because bereavement remains possible.

Attestations. 142b–c: Two opposed kinds of child lead to similarly unhappy parental outcomes.

Wrestling

παλαίειν (palaiein)

To wrestle, one of the named competitive activities a person may know. It joins riding, archery, and boxing in illustrating the variety of specialized skills that do not independently settle the good of their exercise.

Attestations. 145c: Included in the list before Socrates states the general craft-relative criterion.

Yesterday and the day before

χθιζά τε καὶ πρωϊζὰ (chthiza te kai prōiza)

An expression of very recent events, quoted from poetry in the story of Archelaus. The edition flags the historical mismatch created by treating his death as recent in a conversation with Alcibiades; the phrase must not be used to harmonize the dialogue’s chronology.

Attestations. 141d: The supposedly recent death illustrates the hazards of tyranny.

Some requests and some people

τὰ μὲν διδόναι, τὰ δ’ οὔ (ta men didonai, ta d’ ou)

138b. The gods give some requested things and not others. The following contrast adds that some people receive them and others do not. The two distinctions keep the opening from implying either that every prayer is answered or that every petitioner is treated identically.

Without noticing oneself

λήσεται αὑτὸν εὐχόμενος (lēsetai hauton euchomenos)

138b. The danger is not simply that the person prays in secret. He fails to notice the character of his own petition, thinking the harmful objects good. The same structure returns when acting and speaking wrongly pass unnoticed.

When it was open to him

ἐξὸν αὐτῷ (exon autōi)

138c. Oedipus had an available alternative: to pray for an escape from his existing troubles. His curse adds harms instead. The participial expression makes the contrast one between available courses of action, not a claim that no other prayer was possible.

The same thing, tentatively

κινδυνεύει ταὐτὸν εἶναι (kindyneuei tauton einai)

139c. Madness and unintelligence look as though they may be the same. The wording is tentative; the next consequence leads to withdrawal and a division into kinds or shares. It should not be detached as an unqualified final definition.

Having paid the penalty

δίκην δεδωκέναι (dikēn dedōkenai)

139d. The speakers would long since have suffered for living among a cityful of people imagined as violently mad. This is a comic consequence of the proposed identification. It does not describe a named court judgment against Socrates or Alcibiades.

Together, two looking into it

σύν τε δύο σκεπτομένω (syn te dyo skeptomenō)

140a. Joint examination adapts the Homeric thought that two travellers can perceive more than one. The change from going together to looking into a problem makes a poetic tag serve cooperative inquiry. It is an invitation, not evidence that agreement between two people guarantees truth.

All these, yet different

πάντα δὲ ταῦτα ἀφροσύνη ἐστίν (panta de tauta aphrosynē estin)

140d. The assorted labels all fall under unintelligence, but their cases differ as crafts and diseases differ. The claim combines class membership with internal differentiation. It reverses the earlier collapse of unintelligence into a single madness.

In exchange for your soul

ἀντί γε τῆς σῆς ψυχῆς (anti ge tēs sēs psychēs)

141c. The proposed exchange asks whether dominion would be worth losing the soul or life. Alcibiades’ reason is practical: without life he could not use the possessions. This local answer does not yet provide the fuller account of moral character attached to soul near the end.

Accepting at random

εἰκῇ δέχεσθαι (eikēi dechesthai)

141c. Receiving what is offered without discrimination is unsafe. The point extends the inquiry beyond spoken prayer to acceptance of a gift or apparent opportunity. Being given something does not establish that possessing it is beneficial.

What is most extreme

τό γε ἔσχατον (to ge eschaton)

143b. Alcibiades marks harmful prayer for oneself as an especially startling culmination of ignorance. The expression intensifies the preceding harmful doing. Its force is rhetorical; it is not a formal ranking of every possible bad action.

A wiser person might say

φαίη ἄν τις ἀνήρ (phaiē an tis anēr)

143b. Socrates introduces an imagined wiser critic of their shared conclusion. This softens the transition to the claim that some ignorance can be good and prevents the previous assent from ending the inquiry. The unnamed person is not presented as a historically identified authority.

Without the best

ἄνευ τοῦ βελτίστου (aneu tou beltistou)

144d. Burnet prints the compact phrase without an explicit word for knowledge after “without.” The later recapitulation at 146e spells out knowledge of the best. The source note records the proposed expansion rather than silently inserting it into the Greek.

Seldom and for the most part (contextual phrase)

ὀλιγάκις μὲν ... τὰ πλείω (oligakis men ... ta pleiō)

144d. The central claim is asymmetrical and qualified: other knowledge without the best seldom benefits and mostly harms. “Always harms” would be stronger than the wording here. The contrast belongs to the possession and exercise of knowledge under the specified condition.

Whether, when and for how long

πότερον βέλτιον καὶ ὅτε βέλτιον (poteron beltion kai hote beltion)

145b. The adviser needs to know whether an action is better and when it is better, with duration added for warfare. These questions concern the appropriate exercise of an ability. The printed “when” itself rests on the reading discussed in the source note.

The accompanying beneficially

παρέπηται δὲ τὸ ὠφελίμως (parepētai de to ōphelimōs)

146b. The adverb is explicitly treated as something accompanying the action: the acting must be done beneficially. The edition preserves the grammatical oddity as “the beneficially.” Skill at the act does not supply this qualification merely by being skill.

If they will be more eager

εἴπερ γε μᾶλλον προθυμήσονται (eiper ge mallon prothymēsontai)

146d. The severe claim about knowing or thinking one knows carries this condition: it increases eagerness for actions that will harm more often than benefit. Removing the if-clause would turn a conditional warning about agency into a general recommendation against all knowledge.

Holding fast to the knowledge

ταύτης τῆς ἐπιστήμης ἀντέχεσθαι (tautēs tēs epistēmēs antechesthai)

146e. City and soul must adhere to the knowledge just discussed as sick people to a doctor or a sailor to a pilot. The image concerns reliance on guiding judgment. It does not identify every political ruler or every self-confident adviser as the required expert.

To the point (contextual phrase)

πρὸς λόγον (pros logon)

147b. Alcibiades questions the relevance of the poetic line and Socrates insists that it bears directly on the argument. Here logos concerns the connection between quotation and discussion. It is not a separate occurrence of nous or a new account of rational mind.

Outside metre

ἔξω μὲν τοῦ μέτρου (exō men tou metrou)

147d. Socrates explicitly reconstructs the verse’s alleged sense in a form that no longer preserves its metre. The phrase tells the reader that a grammatical and interpretive transformation is being performed. The paraphrase must not be cited as the unchanged poetic line.

Fine things on top of good

τὰ καλὰ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς (ta kala epi tois agathois)

148c. The Spartan prayer asks for what is fine in addition to what is good. The wording connects the two evaluations without merely treating them as one English adjective. It restrains the specification of particular possessions while preserving an aspiration to fine outcomes.

More than that

πλείω δ’ οὐδεὶς (pleiō d’ oudeis)

148c. No one would hear the Spartans asking for more than the stated prayer. The limit belongs to the content of the petition, not to a claim that their lives contain no other wishes or that their worship has no other practices.

The way of the gods

τὸ τῶν θεῶν (to tōn theōn)

149e. The compressed expression concerns what is characteristic of the gods. Socrates denies that it can be diverted by presents like a bad moneylender. The translation does not turn it into a separately named divine substance or a systematic theological definition.

Something else besides (contextual phrase)

ἕτερόν τι προσαπολαύσῃς (heteron ti prosapolausēis)

150c. The warning suggests an additional unwelcome consequence beyond rejection of the sacrifice. It deliberately leaves that consequence unspecified. Naming a particular divine punishment would go beyond the words.

If these are willing

τούτων θελόντων (toutōn thelontōn)

151b. The hoped-for day will come soon with the gods’ willingness. The phrase qualifies Alcibiades’ expectation instead of recording a secure date or an already fulfilled promise. Its pronoun looks to the gods just mentioned.

This opinion as an omen

τὴν δόξαν ταύτην οἰωνὸν τίθεμαι (tēn doxan tautēn oiōnon tithemai)

151b. Socrates takes Alcibiades’ good opinion, manifested in the crown, as a favourable sign. Opinion is the printed reading, while gifts are proposed alternatives in the apparatus. Even under the printed reading, an omen is not proof of the educational victory hoped for.

No smaller a storm

οὐκ ἐν ἐλάττονι κλύδωνι (ouk en elattoni klydōni)

151c. Socrates compares his present situation with Creon’s storm in the tragic quotation. The image introduces risk at the very moment of accepting a crown. The final wish to be the fair victor over Alcibiades’ lovers is therefore framed as an uncertain contest, not a completed triumph.