Hoplite fighting

Use in the book

At 127a armed fighting supplies the reciprocal case to wool-working. Just as an untrained husband cannot possess his wife's expert concord about her work, a wife who has not learned armed fighting cannot share her husband's knowledge of it. Alcibiades accepts the gendered division of subjects.

Socrates uses that division to expose a difficulty in the account of friendship as concord: distinct roles need not entail shared expertise, yet Alcibiades also claims that performing one's own role generates friendship. The example is therefore part of an aporia about agreement and affection, not a demonstration of women's intrinsic inability to learn combat or a comprehensive program for military education.

Places to read

1. 126e–127bHoplite fighting reverses the wool-working example in the test of spouses’ shared expertise

Translation in this edition

The local ἀνδρεῖον and ἀνδρεῖα are translated “a man's” and “men's”; indexing them indiscriminately under courage would miss their syntax and function. The separate courage argument uses the abstract noun ἀνδρεία at 115b–e2.

ἀνδρεῖος / γυναικεῖος (subjects)

Attested: γυναικεῖον (gynaikeion; 126e); ἀνδρεῖα (andreia; 127a). At 126e: A woman’s subject, the description assigned to wool-working in the argument. At 127a: Men’s subjects, a gendered classification distinct from the abstract virtue courage. Lexical identification: family label: ἀνδρεῖος / γυναικεῖος (subjects). See Hoplite fighting.

ὁπλιτική

Attested: ὁπλιτικῆς (hoplitikēs; 127a). At 127a: Armed fighting, a learned subject the wife is assumed not to share with the husband. Lexical identification: lemma: ὁπλιτική. See Hoplite fighting.