Plato’s Alcibiades II Lexicon

A prayer interrupted

Alcibiades is on his way to pray when Socrates asks him to consider what he is asking for. A granted request can be a disaster. Power, military command and children are objects of familiar hopes; possession of them does not establish that the recipient knows how to live with them. The dialogue consequently shifts from the propriety of particular petitions to the relation between practical judgment and every other kind of knowledge. Its closing recommendation is a delay: learn how to be disposed toward gods and people before carrying out the intended sacrifice.

This lexicon accompanies Diotimos Editions' Alcibiades II, in Greek and English. Its textual scope is the complete dialogue, 138a–151c, together with the edition's introduction, Key Words, forty-one explanatory notes, outline, glossary and editorial discussion. The Greek is Burnet's text as reproduced there. The English headwords follow this edition where possible, so that a reader who encounters “unintelligence,” “unpray,” “the beneficially” or “greatness of soul” can find the particular problem those expressions preserve. The lexicon does not replace the facing Greek and English or silently modernize the translation.

The traditional attribution to Plato identifies a place in the transmitted corpus. It is not a conclusion about authorship. The edition presents the work as almost certainly inauthentic, records an ancient doubt and leaves its date unsettled. Here “the dialogue,” “Socrates argues,” and “Alcibiades agrees” distinguish the work, its dramatic speakers and the historical author. A striking Socratic assertion is not automatically a doctrine held by Plato. Nor is the failure of one argument permission to disregard the dialogue's larger inquiry.

Diotimos Editions, Alcibiades II, Introduction, “The dialogue,” “What is most exposed,” and “A note on the persons.” The ancient alternative attribution is reported from Athenaeus 11.506c; it is not independent proof of Xenophontic authorship. The incompatibility between the recent death of Archelaus (141d) and the living Pericles of the hypothetical encounter (144a) matters separately from any proposed philosophical school or date.

How to use the lexicon

The full articles are arranged alphabetically by English headword. Each begins with Greek and transliteration, then distinguishes ordinary meaning, local argumentative work, annotated passage references, and this edition's translational or textual choices. A grouped headword can contain several related words; it does not claim that those words are interchangeable. Greek displayed as a source form can be inflected, while a dictionary lemma names the family. Conceptual headings such as “Excluded middle” are modern aids to analysis, not claims that the corresponding technical phrase appears in the Greek.

The defined register supplements the articles with smaller words, concrete objects, characterizations and ordinary idioms that matter to the reading. Its records contain explanations and exact attestations, rather than merely directing the reader elsewhere. Contextual glosses explain short stretches of language in their particular argumentative setting. Aliases are navigation aids only; their number is not represented as a count of independent definitions. The three indexes offer English and Greek routes into the vocabulary, an ordered passage route through the dialogue, and thematic routes through its arguments and images.

References use Stephanus page and section: 143c means section c of page 143, regardless of the page on which that passage falls in a modern book. A range such as 143c–144c follows one argument across several sections. An annotated reference need not mean that every Greek word in the article's heading occurs at every location: some locations establish a contrast, consequence or later return. This distinction matters especially for grouped families and for a concept first introduced under one expression and developed under another.

The movement of the argument

138a–c: Asking and receiving

Socrates' opening observation is small and physical: Alcibiades looks gloomy and has his eyes on the ground. His destination is prayer to an unnamed god. The “greatest pondering” is whether one can request what is harmful while supposing it good. Two events must coincide for the feared result: the mistaken request and divine willingness to grant it. Prayer therefore cannot be evaluated simply by whether it succeeds. Oedipus' curse supplies the disturbing example of a petition actually fulfilled.

138c–139c: A tempting identity

Alcibiades calls Oedipus mad. Socrates moves through soundness and sickness, intelligence and unintelligence, then the supposed impossibility that one thing should have two opposites. If madness and unintelligence are both opposite to intelligence, they appear identical. The argument relies on more than the observation that some people are intelligent and others not: it needs exhaustive alternatives and an account of opposition. Its outcome is tentatively worded, and the next exchange tests it rather than installing it as a definition.

139c–140d: Consequence, retreat and division

Most citizens are unintelligent, the speakers agree; if that means all are mad, life among them would be a continual assault. This consequence motivates retreat. Socrates proposes that madness belongs within a larger class, as fever and ophthalmia belong within disease and particular trades within craftsmanship. People have different shares of unintelligence. The escalating and euphemistic names are comic as well as classificatory. This new arrangement avoids the previous identity; the analogies do not by themselves prove its full adequacy.

140d–141d: Judgment and the offer of power

Intelligent people know what they should do and say. Socrates recalls Oedipus, now characterized by anger and a deliberate wish that harmful things should happen. Others unknowingly petition for what harms them. The imagined god offers Alcibiades progressively greater rule. Alcibiades welcomes it but will not exchange his soul or life for it, and will not accept what he would use badly. The qualifications reveal that having the apparent good depends on conditions not supplied by its name.

141d–143b: Fulfilment, regret and a safer prayer

Archelaus' death, the troubles of generals and the grief brought by children give concrete forms to the earlier warning. Petitioners can reverse themselves, “sing a palinode” and “unpray.” The Homeric Zeus rejects the idea that the gods are solely responsible for human suffering: the dialogue adds unintelligence to the quoted account of recklessness. An unnamed poet's prayer asks Zeus to give good things even without a request and to ward off bad ones even when requested. Alcibiades infers that ignorance causes many bad things for people, including the self-directed danger of prayer.

143b–144c: A necessary distinction within ignorance

Socrates refuses the inference that every ignorance is bad. If Orestes or a would-be killer of Pericles failed to recognize the intended victim, the harmful action could be prevented. The counterexample distinguishes knowing the best from possessing the information needed to carry out a mistaken intention. Ignorance of the best is bad; ignorance of a particular person can be beneficial to someone already disposed to act badly. This is neither a general praise of ignorance nor a claim that failing to recognize one's mother constitutes practical wisdom.

144d–145e: Expertise needs a governing judgment

The possession of other knowledge without the best seldom benefits and generally harms, Socrates now proposes. Political advisers know, or think they know, about war, peace, walls and harbours. The question is whether their competence extends to whether and when action is better and how long it should continue. Riding, boxing and flute-playing make the distinction easier to see: a recognizable skill does not alone make its possessor intelligent. “The knowledge of the best” is equated with knowledge of the beneficial, but its content is not worked out into a complete science or curriculum.

145e–146e: An expert city without direction

A commonwealth can contain accomplished archers, athletes, soldiers and orators and nevertheless lack the knowledge of the best and a person able to direct when each expertise should be used. Its problem is not too little specialized capability. Each contributor follows what he can do, trusting opinion without sense, and the aggregate is confusion and lawlessness. Socrates then returns to the individual: if knowing or supposing one knows produces more eager harmful action, the resulting ignorance may be safer. The condition attached to that disturbing conclusion must remain visible.

146e–147e: Guidance, fair winds and a poet's bad knowledge

City and soul must hold fast to the governing knowledge as a sick person to a physician or a traveller by sea to a pilot. Wealth and bodily strength can make the unguided voyage worse: a favourable wind increases the consequences of bad direction. The person of much learning and many crafts meets a storm. The Margites is then reread so that knowing many works “badly” becomes its being bad for the hero to know them. Socrates openly changes grammatical forms and reconstructs the sense outside metre. The interpretation illustrates his conclusion; it is not a neutral demonstration of what the poetic line must mean.

147e–148d: Instability and the Spartan alternative

Alcibiades' agreement does not settle him. This edition reads his short reply at 147e as another reversal, while noting that further assent is also possible. The god's offer returns, and Alcibiades now finds the question too hazardous to answer. Socrates presents the Spartan prayer, used privately and publicly, for fine things in addition to good things. Its restraint avoids dictating the particular possessions that have caused trouble. The Spartans' experience supports the example; the passage does not promise every petitioner automatic success.

148d–150b: What the gods value

The reported Athenian consultation of Ammon contrasts elaborate expenditure and apparent neglect. The oracle prefers Spartan auspicious speech to the other Greeks' rites. Socrates interprets that speech as their prayer. He then extends the point through the Trojans' rejected offerings and the analogy of a bad moneylender who can be misled by gifts. Gods look to the quality of the soul, to holiness and justice. Intelligence returns as knowing the proper things to do and say toward gods and people. The argument corrects the valuation of worship; it does not announce that sacrifices have ceased to matter.

150b–151c: Waiting, seeing and an unsettled victory

Socrates recommends quiet until Alcibiades learns the right disposition. The future educator is “the man who cares about you,” left unnamed. Athena's removal of mist from Diomedes' eyes supplies an image for removing a condition that obstructs discrimination of bad and good. Alcibiades promises obedience, postpones sacrifice and crowns Socrates. The final tragic quotation makes the crown an omen of victory, while Socrates' rivalry with Alcibiades' lovers supplies the immediate dramatic stakes. Sacrifice is deferred, the teacher is not explicitly identified and the wished-for educational victory has not been shown to occur.

Distinctions to keep in view

Intelligence and cleverness. The dialogue does not deny that craftsmen know their work. It denies that possession of a skill establishes sound judgment about its exercise. Reading phronēsis as a general test score would erase the distinction for which the craft examples exist.

Bad things and wickedness. “Bad” commonly concerns damage, loss or misfortune here. The edition avoids “evil” for kakos, preserving the question whether apparently desirable possessions are beneficial. This does not eliminate moral evaluation: murder, injustice and holiness remain part of the inquiry.

A harmful intention and a harmful petition. Oedipus can wish harm in anger; another petitioner can wish what seems good and be mistaken about it. The dialogue puts both under scrutiny without making their intentions identical.

Ignorance of value and ignorance of a person. The ambiguity of “be ignorant of” is productive. It lets Socrates show why more information need not benefit the person who has not corrected a bad practical judgment. Treating both ignorances as one undifferentiated deficiency would miss the counterexample.

The best and the beneficial. Their explicit identification does not explain every difficulty about who benefits, over what period and through what kind of judgment. The city and the individual both enter the argument. Nothing warrants replacing “best” with an entirely specified later philosophical doctrine.

Analogy and proof. Disease, craft, medicine and navigation illuminate structures in the argument. An analogy can reveal a distinction or make a danger intelligible without proving every property of the compared cases. The comic city of madmen and the rudderless commonwealth should be read for the particular inference each is testing.

The prayer and the worshipper. Verbal restraint, intention and character are connected, not collapsed. “Auspicious speech” is more than the mechanically correct pronunciation of an acceptable formula, while justice and intelligence are more than expensive religious display. The conclusion still anticipates future observance.

Source reading and proposed correction. Burnet's printed words control this translation. The variants noted at 139a, 143a, 144d, 145b–e, 147a–d, 148b–d and 151b materially affect interpretation. A plausible emendation cannot be silently substituted for the words the reader actually has.

Text, sources and further reading

A separate public scan of Platonis Opera, volume II, provides selected checks of printed readings and apparatus. It is a corroborating printed witness.

Burnet, Platonis Opera, II, as reproduced in the supplied edition, 138a–151c. The public Perseus file identifies its basis as Oxford, 1910. Comparison here distinguishes continuous wording from capitals, accentuation, spacing, editorial brackets and page lineation; agreement in normalized wording is not a claim that every typographical detail is identical. Selected print checks concern 138a–c, 141a–d, 146b–147c, 147c–148a, 150b–e and 151a–c.

The edition's own notes are the first route for its translation choices. Its “Editorial Note” explains B and T, later hands, additions, deletions and the treatment of poetic quotation. Those explanations concern Burnet's apparatus; they do not imply that the present lexicon has collated the manuscripts. The bibliographic links below lead to the digital Greek, a catalog record and the separate printed volume.

Perseus Greek text: Alcibiades II, edited by John Burnet Perseus canonical Greek XML Perseus catalog record for Burnet's Alcibiades II Public scan of Burnet, Platonis Opera II

This is a scholarly reading companion rather than a morphological concordance or a replacement critical edition. It supplies definitions, interprets their local work and exposes important uncertainties where they affect the reading. It does not claim manuscript collation or external human classical peer review.