Daedalus and Hephaestus

Use in the book

Socrates repeats Alcibiades’ “ours too” with comic exactness. A claim that seemed to distinguish the ambitious aristocrat can also be made by the questioner. The important distinction, Socrates immediately says, is not the final divine ancestor but the intervening succession: the foreign houses consist of kings sprung from kings, whereas Socrates and Alcibiades and their fathers are private persons. The genealogy is therefore both affiliative and deflationary. It puts the two Athenians on a common footing and undermines the assumption that a distant divine connection supplies present political competence. The dialogue does not state that Socrates works as a craftsman; interpreting the joke in that occupational light depends on the edition’s external note.

Places to read

1. 121aSocrates matches Alcibiades’ genealogy and then introduces the private/royal distinction.

Translation in this edition

The supplied note explains Daedalus as the legendary craftsman and connects Socrates’ family to stone-working through other sources. These are explanatory background, not additional propositions spoken here.

Δαίδαλος

Attested: Δαίδαλον (daidalon; 121a). Daedalus, the craftsman-ancestor claimed by Socrates in the pedigree joke. Lexical identification: lemma: Δαίδαλος. See Daedalus and Hephaestus.

Ἥφαιστος

Attested: Ἥφαιστον (hēphaiston; 121a). Hephaestus, son of Zeus, to whom Socrates traces Daedalus. Lexical identification: lemma: Ἥφαιστος. See Daedalus and Hephaestus.