Margites · Lexicon

From the book

Alcibiades II

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordMargites is the fool of the comic poem whose statement that he knew many works badly Socrates brings to bear on knowledge without knowledge of the best.
In Alcibiades IIThe poem is introduced at the end of the pilot-and-storm argument.
In this editionNote 27 says the poem was commonly ascribed to Homer in antiquity and cites Aristotle, Poetics 1448b30, alongside the dialogue’s own attribution.
A place to readThe comic quotation follows the picture of knowledge without a pilot.

Meaning

Margites is the fool of the comic poem whose statement that he knew many works badly Socrates brings to bear on knowledge without knowledge of the best. The adjective margos, rendered madcap at 148a, supplies an audible possible play on the character’s name.

Use in the book

The poem is introduced at the end of the pilot-and-storm argument. A person with much learning and craft but no governing knowledge becomes an intelligible counterpart to the fool with many works. Alcibiades challenges the relevance, which gives Socrates occasion to explain that poets characteristically speak in riddles and may conceal what they mean.

The name’s literary force should not be reduced to the grammatical reconstruction alone. Margites is already a recognizable figure of misdirected multiplicity: many accomplishments do not secure a well-conducted life. Socrates’ eventual judgement that he is a sorry fellow aligns him with the sorry commonwealth of experts, whose several talents likewise fail to produce sound direction.

At 148a Alcibiades calls the problem of making a safe choice madcap. The edition notes that the word can be heard as a pun on Margites. That possible echo lets the literary fool’s predicament approach the speaker’s own: the inability to judge a request is no longer merely someone else’s comic defect. The pun remains a reading, not a stage direction announcing laughter.

Places to read

147bThe comic quotation follows the picture of knowledge without a pilot.
147c–147d2Socrates names Margites and attributes the poem to Homer.
148aAlcibiades’ madcap may recall the name of the poem just discussed.

Translation in this edition

Note 27 says the poem was commonly ascribed to Homer in antiquity and cites Aristotle, Poetics 1448b30, alongside the dialogue’s own attribution. The article therefore records that attribution without asserting established Homeric authorship. Note 29 treats the margos echo as a possible pun. The detailed shifts from badly to bad and knew to to know belong with the separate account of poetic interpretation.