Crown

Use in the book

The wreath gives visible expression to an evaluative change. Alcibiades began ready to pray and ends prepared to delay. Crowning Socrates acknowledges the benefit of the intervention rather than the granting of the originally desired object, which has never been specified. What is honoured is advice that makes the act safer.

The transfer does not abolish religious observance. Alcibiades promises gods wreaths and the other customary things when the hoped-for day arrives. The dialogue therefore differentiates the present gratitude to Socrates from a future properly prepared act of worship. It supplies no basis for declaring that Socrates has become the object of sacrifice.

Socrates receives the wreath and compares its significance with Teiresias’ garlands, which Creon takes as an omen. The comparison shifts the crown from an already achieved compliment to a sign of hoped-for victory over rival lovers. The danger expressed by the rough sea remains. A favourable gesture is meaningful but does not settle the learner’s future allegiance.

The printed opinion at 151b makes the relation between object and judgement especially important. The wreath manifests Alcibiades’ good opinion of Socrates’ advice; that opinion is what Socrates says he takes as an omen. Translating the phrase directly as gift would erase a textual choice that the edition deliberately retains.

Places to read

1. 151aAlcibiades postpones sacrifice and offers his present wreath for good advice.
2. 151bFuture customary wreaths for the gods are promised; Socrates accepts the present one.
3. 151b–151cTeiresias’ garlands and Creon’s omen recast the gesture as hope of victory.

Translation in this edition

Note 41 identifies the Euripidean source and Burnet’s supplied your in the quotation. It explains doxa as the good opinion embodied by the wreath. Ast’s dōrea and Buttmann’s dosis are conjectures for words meaning gift, not the printed reading. The edition does not establish an additional ritual performed when the crown is transferred.

Use in the book

The person clothed with the heavens is crowned with stars, receiving a sovereignty of enjoyment rather than legal rule over the sky. Love is the crown of rewards because material goods cannot complete happiness without living fellowship. The crown of thorns then brings royal language into the humiliation of Christ, present in every beholder's inward vision. A monetary crown has a quite different function in the imagined test of charity: the last coin can preserve a brother's life. The senses meet thematically in the question of real honour, but should not be conflated lexically. What crowns a person most truly may be the love expressed in relinquishing the money ordinarily counted as wealth.

Places to read

1. I.29Stars crown the person who receives the world as an intimate inheritance.
2. I.86The crown of thorns is present in the eyes and affections of Christ’s beholders.
3. II.62Love is the crown of rewards and the indispensable completion of created riches.
4. IV.58A crown is a coin in the hypothetical case of costly aid to a brother.

In this edition

The coin at IV.58 requires a monetary gloss; the crowns in the other selected passages do not. The metaphor of completion should also be distinguished from an actual object worn on the head.