Generalship, exile and informers · Lexicon

From the book

Alcibiades II

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordStratēgia is generalship; phygades are exiles; sykophantai are informers or malicious prosecutors.
In Alcibiades IISocrates turns from a Macedonian tyrant known through report to fellow citizens whose fortunes he says the two speakers know from being present.
In this editionNote 11 offers Thucydides, Alcibiades and the Arginusae generals as possible reader associations.
A place to readSocrates claims firsthand knowledge of the fortunes of Athenian generals.

Meaning

Stratēgia is generalship; phygades are exiles; sykophantai are informers or malicious prosecutors. The rare astratēgētoi describes people who have never been generals. A military office apparently conferring honour becomes something its former holders wish they had never obtained.

Use in the book

Socrates turns from a Macedonian tyrant known through report to fellow citizens whose fortunes he says the two speakers know from being present. The claim gives the warning immediacy and civic proximity. Some desired and gained generalships and are now exiles; others have died. Even those reputed to have done best pass through fear and danger in command and continue to suffer on returning home.

The siege metaphor makes the domestic aftermath resemble the war itself. Informers surround former commanders no less relentlessly than enemies did. The supposed reward of successful public service therefore cannot be assessed from military competence or achievement alone. The trial is whether the dangers and labours lead to benefit, which Socrates says is here the opposite of the appearance.

The prayer to have been never generals is comic in wording and severe in implication. It seeks not merely relief from current troubles but the undoing of a career already lived. It anticipates the palinode in which people withdraw prayers after their requested objects prove harmful. The text offers no mechanism by which the past can be unmade.

For readers familiar with Alcibiades’ later life, the unnamed examples can carry dramatic irony. That resonance must not be promoted into an explicit identification: Socrates names none of the generals. The institutional warning has its own force before particular historical careers are supplied.

Places to read

141e–142aSocrates claims firsthand knowledge of the fortunes of Athenian generals.
142a–142bExile, death and domestic prosecution reverse the expected benefit of office.
142c–142d2Generalship remains among the objects the many rashly request.

Translation in this edition

Note 11 offers Thucydides, Alcibiades and the Arginusae generals as possible reader associations. It states exactly that eight were condemned after Arginusae and six who returned were executed; these details are not in Socrates’ speech. The translation says come to the end of their lives rather than ended their lives, which could wrongly imply suicide. Never generals is rare, not demonstrably coined here.