DiotimosReading Desk

Dramatic setting and interpretation

Dramatic time and setting

Dramatic time is the date implied for the conversation, distinct from the date of composition, the dates of later historical events, and the dates of manuscripts or printed editions.

From the book

Alcibiades I

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordDramatic time is the date implied for the conversation, distinct from the date of composition, the dates of later historical events, and the dates of manuscripts or printed editions.
  • In Alcibiades IThe dialogue supplies relative clues but no calendar date.
  • In this editionThis is an editorial category, not an attested technical Greek expression.
  • A place to readYears of silence end in the present approach.

Meaning

Dramatic time is the date implied for the conversation, distinct from the date of composition, the dates of later historical events, and the dates of manuscripts or printed editions. Setting here is primarily the private encounter before Alcibiades enters public political life.

Use in the book

The dialogue supplies relative clues but no calendar date. Alcibiades expects to come before the Athenians within a very few days; he is not yet quite twenty; Pericles is alive and still associates with Damon. Socrates says he has observed him for years without speaking and is now allowed to approach. At 118b the two are explicitly alone. No narrator describes a precise street, house, gymnasium or time of day, and named locations in the royal comparison should not be mistaken for the physical scene.

The supplied Introduction proposes about 433–432 BC by combining age and Pericles’ life with external chronology. It also acknowledges that the details do not all agree. The chief internal difficulty it identifies is Lampido’s family: the dialogue describes her father, husband and son as men who have all been kings, whereas the note places Agis’ accession later than the proposed scene. Consequently an exact dramatic year should not be presented as securely established by all the clues. Nor is the proposed dramatic period a date of authorship.

Two sorts of time organize the encounter more securely than a reconstructed year. First is educational timeliness: earlier Alcibiades could not usefully listen; now his ambition makes him reachable; recognizing ignorance at his present age still permits care, unlike the more difficult hypothetical case of fifty. Second is the future left open by the ending. Alcibiades says from this day he will attend Socrates and begin caring for justice. Socrates wishes him perseverance and fears the city’s strength.

The edition interprets these fears against the later careers of both men. That is retrospective dramatic irony: knowledge supplied by the reader and historical notes, not a report by the speakers of already completed events. It would be an error to make the ending a simple prediction fulfilled within the dialogue, since no subsequent action is narrated. The text’s immediate achievement is a new resolution under acknowledged risk.

Places to read

  1. 103a–103bYears of silence end in the present approach.
  2. 105a–105bThe appearance before the people is expected within a few days.
  3. 118b–118cOnly two interlocutors are present; Pericles still associates with Damon.
  4. 123dAlcibiades is not yet quite twenty.
  5. 124a (editorial)The royal-family description produces the chronology problem discussed in the note.
  6. 127d–127eCurrent youth is contrasted with recognizing the condition at fifty.
  7. 135d–135eThe new beginning is joined to fear about the future.

Translation in this edition

This is an editorial category, not an attested technical Greek expression. Historical dates reported by the supplied notes have not been used to force a consistency the edition itself denies. “Dramatic irony” describes a reading of the ending, not an additional Greek noun in it.

ῥώμη

Attested: ῥώμην (rhōmēn; 135e). At 135e: The city’s strength, feared as capable of defeating the educational undertaking. Strength, the city’s power that Socrates fears will overcome both of them. Lexical identification: lemma: ῥώμη. See Power; Dramatic time and setting.

Source note

The supplied Introduction, “A note on the persons,” offers the approximate dramatic dating; note 47 on 124a gives the Agis difficulty. Note 77 on 135e supplies historical background for the ending and carefully distinguishes a charge reported by Xenophon (Memorabilia 1.2.12) from evidence that the charge was made at Socrates’ trial.