Plato’s Alcibiades I Lexicon

Introduction

This lexicon accompanies the complete Alcibiades I, 103a–135e, in the supplied Diotimos Editions Greek and English volume of 2026. It explains the dialogue's vocabulary in the course of its arguments, its dramatic action and its particular translation. The central question is how someone who wants to govern others can learn what it means to care for himself. The inquiry moves through the young Alcibiades' confidence, his inability to defend that confidence, his imagined foreign rivals, and the claim that care must be directed towards the soul. It ends with a beginning of care and a warning about the city's power, not with proof that the education has succeeded.

The title retains the dialogue's traditional attribution to Plato. That attribution is disputed. Neither its presence in the ancient corpus nor its usefulness as an introduction to philosophy settles who wrote it. Statements about what the dialogue says do not presuppose a decision about authorship. Where an article speaks of the author, the reference is to the writer of this work, whoever that was.

The text and the edition

The controlling source is the supplied Alcibiades I: John Burnet's Greek text, identified in its final editorial material as the Oxford edition of 1901, second edition 1910, in a later impression printed by John Johnson; the facing translation and notes are by Diotimos Editions, 2026. The Greek text, translation, apparatus, explanatory notes, introductory essays and glossary are distinct layers. An ancient word printed in the dialogue is not the same evidence as a modern explanation of it in the notes.

The Greek has been compared throughout with the public Perseus transcription of Burnet's second volume. This comparison gives a useful check on transcription and precise Stephanus divisions. It does not supply an independent manuscript witness: both digital texts derive from Burnet. The principal difference is a six-word phrase at 104a, present in the supplied text and missing from the Perseus transcription; several further differences concern accents or breathings. The lexicon follows the supplied text. A further visual check against a scanned 1946 impression of Burnet's second volume confirmed the printed text and apparatus at 120a9, 130c–d and 133c1–17. These targeted checks do not amount to a complete collation of printed impressions or medieval manuscripts.

Perseus Digital Library, Platonis Opera, vol. 2, edited by John Burnet, Oxford, 1910, text identifier tlg0059.tlg013.perseus-grc2. The public TEI transcription is available through the Perseus canonical Greek repository. It was used to check the supplied Greek and Stephanus segmentation, with the supplied edition controlling differences. A public scan of the 1946 impression supplied the separate printed checks: the passages at 120a9, 130c–d and 133c1–17. Its imprint lists 1901 as the first edition and reprints through 1946; it is not claimed to be the same physical impression underlying the supplied volume.

Burnet's square brackets mark words he regarded as intrusive, while angle brackets mark words supplied from conjecture or another witness. The supplied translation generally omits the former and renders the latter. A lexical form in a rejected passage therefore cannot be cited without qualification as a word translated on the English page. Articles discussing such material identify its textual status. The most consequential case is the extended image of god as the finest mirror at 133c8–17: it is supplied from Eusebius, absent from the principal manuscripts B and T, and disputed. The divine likeness of the soul's knowing region at 133b–c is already present before those supplied lines. Rejecting the extension would not remove all divine language from the argument.

How to use the book

The 175 main articles are arranged under English headwords. Each begins with Greek forms, a readable transliteration and, where useful, a labelled dictionary lemma or phrase. An attested inflection and the dictionary form under which one might look it up are kept distinct. The five recurring divisions are The word, In Alcibiades I, The places, In this edition and See also. They move from local lexical meaning to the work done by the expression, then to annotated passages, translation or textual issues, and connected readings. An analytical English heading is not a claim that an identically named Greek technical noun occurs in the dialogue.

The first index combines original forms, transliterations and English aliases. Its Greek vocabulary register contains 499 individually defined and attested records. These short records give useful meanings in their own right; following their links is optional. A register record may identify a lemma, a phrase or a carefully labelled family. Its count must not be mistaken for the number of full articles or for a count of distinct dictionary lemmas. There are also 202 further contextual glosses and 1792 lexical access labels. These labels are finding aids, not additional definitions. The counts of articles, register records, contextual glosses and access labels describe different kinds of material and should not be added into a claim about distinct Greek lemmas.

The passage index traverses all 162 extant Stephanus letter sections, 103a–135e. The short first page contains only 103a and 103b; there are no missing entries for 103c–e. Ranges in an article identify the stretch of discussion being interpreted. They do not assert that every form displayed in that article occurs in every section of the range. The compact register supplies exact sample attestations. The thematic index offers overlapping routes through ethics, knowledge, education, political ambition, the body, love, divine guidance, images and historical persons.

A map of the argument

103a–105e: An unusual lover and an unlimited ambition. Socrates explains a long silence by a divine opposition which has now ceased. He recounts the advantages on which Alcibiades relies, then imagines an ambition too large to be satisfied even by European supremacy. His claim to be indispensable is also a lover's claim. At this point the prospect of education is entangled with competition for influence over the young man.

106a–107d: What qualifies an adviser? Socrates offers questions rather than a long display speech. Knowledge is said to come through learning or discovery, both requiring a desire to acquire what one does not suppose one already knows. Alcibiades' acknowledged education does not cover building, shipbuilding, medicine or divination. He identifies the city's affairs, especially war and peace, as his intended advisory domain.

107d–109c: Better in what respect? Examples from wrestling and music make Alcibiades specify the expertise that determines what is better. In warfare and peace the decisive standard becomes justice. The transition is not merely from ignorance of a name to knowledge of it: the young man must say what warrants a proposed course of action and what sort of understanding he claims.

109d–112d: Where was justice learned? Alcibiades cannot name a time before he thought he knew what was just, so cannot account for discovering it. The many provide a possible alternative source. Their shared command of ordinary Greek is granted, but their violent disagreements over justice make them poor teachers of that subject. Epic and recent battles illustrate the disagreement. The many are not dismissed as incapable of teaching anything.

112e–113c: Whose conclusion is it? Counting and spelling examples establish that the respondent supplies the answer. Socrates presses Alcibiades to accept responsibility for the admissions from which his ignorance follows. The altered quotation from Euripides makes that responsibility a dramatic accusation. It does not erase the questioner's control over the sequence of questions.

113d–116d: Justice and advantage. Alcibiades argues that public deliberation is about advantage, which he separates from justice. The rescue of comrades distinguishes courage, through which an action is fine, from injury or death, through which it is bad. Socrates asks whether the contrary judgments hold in the same respect. The argument then connects fine action with doing well and happiness, and combines the accepted links from just to fine, good and advantageous. Its dependence on the respondent's premises and the ambiguity of doing well must remain visible.

116e–119a: Ignorance that thinks it knows. Alcibiades' unstable answers become the symptom of a specific ignorance. Acknowledged inability need not lead to error: someone who knows he cannot steer or cook can leave the task to another. The dangerous condition is nonknowledge coupled with a belief in knowledge, especially about the greatest practical questions. Pericles' ability to teach is challenged, despite his association with recognized intellectual figures; Zeno provides the contrasting example of named pupils.

119b–124b: The scale of the rivals. Alcibiades thinks natural superiority will suffice against uneducated politicians. Socrates shifts the comparison to Spartan and Persian rulers. Royal ancestry, training, wealth and institutional discipline expose the inadequacy of that confidence. The speech is an exhortation built from exaggerated contrasts and imagined royal judgments, not a neutral ethnographic inventory. The command to know oneself first concerns where Alcibiades stands relative to those he intends to confront.

124b–127e: Good at what and good for whom? Socrates includes himself in the need for care. The apparent ideal of the fine and good man is tested through the ordinary structure of being good at something. Alcibiades names good counsel as the knowledge of civic rule and friendship or concord as its product. Differences of expertise within a household make the proposed connection with doing one's own business difficult. His admission that he does not know what he is saying opens a new possibility for care while he is still young.

127e–129b: Caring for a thing and its belongings. Shoes and feet, rings and fingers, clothes and the body distinguish care of an object from care of what belongs to it. The proper craft is what makes its own object better. To identify the craft of caring for oneself, the inquiry must determine what oneself is. The Delphic command is no longer satisfied by a competitive assessment of social resources.

129b–130e: The user and the body. Speech, cutting tools, musical instruments and bodily organs establish the proposed difference between a user and what is used. The body is ruled; the soul rules. Of soul, body and their combination, the soul is accordingly identified as the human being. Socrates immediately qualifies the result as adequate rather than precise, because the self itself has not yet been examined with the intended exactness. The practical conclusion supports the claim that the conversation addresses soul to soul.

131a–132c: The true beloved and the dangerous people. Bodily knowledge and concern for possessions are separated from self-knowledge and care. Socrates says he loves Alcibiades himself and will remain when admirers of bodily bloom leave. Yet Alcibiades may become a lover of the people. The erotic warning, Homeric quotation and image of educational antidotes join the inner question to the public ambition from which the discussion began.

132c–133c: Seeing oneself. An eye sees its reflection in another eye, at the region responsible for sight. A soul is analogously directed towards soul, particularly its knowing and wise region. This is not a recommendation to inspect physical appearance indefinitely, nor an explicit complete theory of introspection. The retained divine comparison and the supplied god-as-mirror extension must be interpreted with their different textual standing in view.

133c–134c: Revising the concession and governing well. Knowing oneself is treated as temperance. The earlier concession that someone might know what belongs to him while not knowing himself is now revised: discriminating self, its own and what belongs to its own requires the relevant connected understanding. Error in those relations damages private and public conduct. The city needs virtue; material power alone cannot supply happiness. The aspiring ruler must acquire what he proposes to impart.

134d–135c: Virtue before license. Orientation towards what is divine and bright is opposed to godless darkness. The sick tyrant and the unskilled helmsman show how unrestricted power can damage oneself and others. The conclusion recommends justice and temperance rather than the mere ability to do whatever one wishes. Before acquiring virtue, being ruled by someone better is said to be preferable. The ethical contrast between freedom and slavery uses ancient social categories that must not be silently modernized.

135c–e: A promise under a warning. Alcibiades expects Socrates to release him from his shameful state; Socrates adds the condition of divine willingness. Their roles as pursuer and attendant are reversed, and the stork image makes love reciprocal. Alcibiades promises to begin caring for justice. Socrates wishes him success but fears that the city's strength will defeat them both. Nothing in the closing exchange demonstrates a completed or permanent conversion.

Distinctions that govern the reading

The dramatic speaker and the author. Socrates' claims, Alcibiades' concessions, imagined royal speeches, poetic quotations and editorial explanations do not have identical authority. A claim made to awaken ambition may function differently from a premise established by the questioning. The articles identify these shifts rather than attributing every statement indiscriminately to Plato.

The meanings of good and fine. Being good at shoes differs from being good without qualification. A beautiful body and a fine action share the kalos family without being the same object of evaluation. Courage in a rescue and death resulting from it are distinguished before the relation between the fine and the good is argued. The inference should neither be flattened into a slogan nor silently repaired into a more familiar modern theory.

Ignorance and self-recognition. The dialogue condemns more than a lack of information. Alcibiades' presumption blocks learning and makes him intervene where he should defer. Recognition of that condition is progress, but does not itself deliver all the expertise he lacks. His perplexity and final willingness are stages of an educational relationship, not substitutes for its completion.

Care and possession. A person, that person's body, and the body's equipment are distinguished through relations of use and ownership. The inquiry later revises what it allowed about knowing these levels separately. Care is therefore not reducible to maintenance of belongings, but neither does the final argument make material relationships irrelevant to knowledge.

Provisional identity and exact inquiry. The soul's identification as the person provides the needed direction for care, yet the text expressly postpones greater precision. Neither an unqualified dualist dogma nor a dismissal of the soul conclusion captures this combination. The difficult expressions for the self itself and each thing itself remain interpretive problems with consequences for the argument.

Self-knowledge and the other. The eye analogy directs the eye towards another eye and the soul towards soul. It gives a relational image rather than merely commanding private inward inspection. How the divine comparison completes that image is partly a textual question and partly an interpretive one. The disputed supplied lines must not be made the only foundation for claims already present before them.

Scope and scholarly use

This reading lexicon covers concepts, ordinary words with argumentative force, examples, social roles, names and images. It is not a token-by-token morphological concordance. Smaller candidates receive definitions and exact attestations; related senses are grouped where that clarifies a passage.

Checks include the supplied text, a complete digital Greek comparison, targeted printed verification and an independent omission and argument review. They do not constitute external human peer review or manuscript collation. For disputed textual and authorship questions, consult critical editions and specialist scholarship. Denyer's commentary is an important reference, not an authority followed throughout.

Nicholas Denyer, ed., Plato Alcibiades, Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics, Cambridge University Press, 2001. Publisher's record. The supplied edition discusses Denyer's defence of authenticity and his rejection of the additional mirror passage; those are distinct judgments and need not stand or fall together.