The unnamed poet’s prayer · Lexicon

From the book

Alcibiades II

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordThe unnamed poet addresses King Zeus, asking for good things with or without prayer and for the warding off of wretched things even when requested.
In Alcibiades IISocrates introduces the poet as apparently intelligent and imagines him surrounded by senseless friends who act and pray for what seems better to them but is not.
In this editionNote 14 reports the couplet without an author’s name in Greek Anthology 10.108 and in Proclus’ commentary quoting this passage.
A place to readSocrates introduces the intelligent poet, imagines his friends and quotes the prayer.

Meaning

The unnamed poet addresses King Zeus, asking for good things with or without prayer and for the warding off of wretched things even when requested. The prayer is a short literary model for subordinating a speaker’s wishes to an assessment of what is genuinely good.

Use in the book

Socrates introduces the poet as apparently intelligent and imagines him surrounded by senseless friends who act and pray for what seems better to them but is not. The common prayer is presented as care for that group. This imagined occasion is Socrates’ reconstruction, not independent biographical information about an identified author.

The two halves correct opposite limitations of ordinary petition. A person may fail to request something beneficial, so good should be given even without the request; a person may request harm, so a damaging object should be withheld even with the request. The structure breaks the supposed equivalence between compliance with desire and benefit to its owner.

Socrates calls the wording both good and safe, and Alcibiades finds it hard to oppose. When caution returns at 148b, Socrates recalls the same prayer and suggests that the Spartans have either imitated its poet or reasoned similarly. The inference of resemblance is stronger than any claim of a documented historical line of influence.

The poem does not directly resolve every educational problem. Alcibiades still needs to learn how to be disposed and how to discriminate good from bad, and Socrates doubts he will consent to modest asking. A guarded formula illustrates practical wisdom, but possession of the words alone is not shown to confer the knowledge of the best.

Places to read

142e–143aSocrates introduces the intelligent poet, imagines his friends and quotes the prayer.
143a–143bAlcibiades’ response turns toward ignorance as the cause of harmful petitions.
148b–148cThe poet is recalled and the Spartan prayer is offered as an analogous practice.

Translation in this edition

Note 14 reports the couplet without an author’s name in Greek Anthology 10.108 and in Proclus’ commentary quoting this passage. Those witnesses read lygra, baneful things. Burnet prints Buttmann’s deila, wretched things, against deina in the principal Platonic manuscripts; note 31 records the parallel choice at 148b. No author should be invented from the phrase that poet.

Source note

The edition's note 14 compares the anonymous couplet with Greek Anthology 10.108 and Proclus' quotation of this dialogue. They have lygra, ‘baneful things’; Burnet prints Buttmann's deila, ‘wretched things’, against the Platonic manuscripts' deina, ‘dreadful things’. At 148b the repeated couplet again prints deila, with different readings reported for B and T in note 31. These are textual alternatives, not three adjectives simultaneously present in the prayer.