From the book
Alcibiades II
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordPompai are ceremonial processions; hiera can designate sacred things, sanctuaries or rites according to context.
- In Alcibiades IIIn the embassy’s speech ceremonial expenditure is cumulative: sacrifices, sanctuary dedications, processions and money all support the claim that Athens honours the gods more fully than Sparta.
- In this editionThe source’s rendering rites at 149b and temples at 148e reflects the immediate action attached to hiera.
- A place to readThe Athenian complaint claims unsurpassed annual splendour and spending.
Meaning
Pompai are ceremonial processions; hiera can designate sacred things, sanctuaries or rites according to context. The Athenian embassy stresses processions that are supremely costly and solemn and recur annually. Festival is a useful contextual label, but no particular named festival is identified.
Use in the book
In the embassy’s speech ceremonial expenditure is cumulative: sacrifices, sanctuary dedications, processions and money all support the claim that Athens honours the gods more fully than Sparta. Annual recurrence adds regularity to splendour. The argument therefore cannot be dismissed as concern with an isolated gesture; it examines the proposed merit of an established public pattern of worship.
Ammon’s answer compares Spartan auspicious speech with all the Greeks’ rites together. Socrates then repeats costly processions beside sacrifices when explaining what the gods reject. Repetition turns the Athenians’ own evidence against their inference: being able to finance such acts does not entail a sound petition or a just soul.
At 150a both private people and cities can maintain the annual cost while having made many mistakes toward gods and humans. The inclusion of both agents prevents a simple opposition between collective ceremony and individual inwardness. The relevant divide runs through each: visible observance may coexist with wrongful action, and neither agent can purchase exemption from scrutiny of its conduct.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The source’s rendering rites at 149b and temples at 148e reflects the immediate action attached to hiera. No Panathenaic procession, Mysteries or other named festival should be silently inserted. The headword gathers the text’s ceremonial vocabulary rather than asserting a separate Greek word for festival in these passages.