Oedipus and his sons · Lexicon

From the book

Alcibiades II

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordOedipus is introduced through the reported prayer that his sons should divide their paternal inheritance with bronze, meaning by the sword.
In Alcibiades IIThe story is an inaugural warning about asking gods for harm.
In this editionNotes 1–22 cite Aeschylus, Seven against Thebes 785–790, and Euripides, Phoenician Women 66–70.
A place to readThe curse on the sons gives the opening danger its tragic illustration.

Meaning

Oedipus is introduced through the reported prayer that his sons should divide their paternal inheritance with bronze, meaning by the sword. The dialogue does not name the sons; the edition’s note identifies them as Eteocles and Polynices and supplies their tragic background.

Use in the book

The story is an inaugural warning about asking gods for harm. Oedipus could have prayed for relief from existing troubles, but calls down additional ones. The fulfilment and its dreadful sequels establish that a prayer’s being answered is not a sufficient measure of its success for human life.

Alcibiades’ reply treats Oedipus as a madman and attempts to separate his own situation from the example. This initiates the inquiry into madness, intelligence and unintelligence. When Socrates eventually returns to Oedipus, the emphasis changes: he belongs among those who do and say what they must not, but his anger and conscious harmful intention distinguish him from people who mistakenly seek apparent good.

The figure therefore performs two tasks. He unsettles the assumption that prayer must aim at benefit, and he supplies a limit-case that Socrates must refine before it can reach Alcibiades. The dialogue’s argument does not require that all ordinary prayer reproduce Oedipus’ psychology. It requires only that divine fulfilment can have a damaging object, whether knowingly or ignorantly chosen.

Places to read

138b–138cThe curse on the sons gives the opening danger its tragic illustration.
138c–138d2Alcibiades’ charge of madness launches the first conceptual inquiry.
140e–141a2Oedipus is reassigned to those who do not know what they must do and say, then distinguished by anger.

Translation in this edition

Notes 1–22 cite Aeschylus, Seven against Thebes 785–790, and Euripides, Phoenician Women 66–70. Those tragedians name iron where this dialogue has bronze. The request concerns the sons’ inheritance, not a division of Oedipus’ body or a general prayer for war. The supplied son-names should remain labelled as background.