Alcibiades I | Page 8

complex a notion of the characters both of Alcibiades
and Socrates in the Symposium, should have treated them in so thin
and superficial a manner in the Alcibiades, or that he would have
ascribed to the ironical Socrates the rather unmeaning boast that
Alcibiades could not attain the objects of his ambition without his help;
or that he should have imagined that a mighty nature like his could
have been reformed by a few not very conclusive words of Socrates.
For the arguments by which Alcibiades is reformed are not convincing;
the writer of the dialogue, whoever he was, arrives at his idealism by
crooked and tortuous paths, in which many pitfalls are concealed. The
anachronism of making Alcibiades about twenty years old during the
life of his uncle, Pericles, may be noted; and the repetition of the
favourite observation, which occurs also in the Laches and Protagoras,
that great Athenian statesmen, like Pericles, failed in the education of

their sons. There is none of the undoubted dialogues of Plato in which
there is so little dramatic verisimilitude.
ALCIBIADES I
by
Plato (see Appendix I above)
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Alcibiades, Socrates.
SOCRATES: I dare say that you may be surprised to find, O son of
Cleinias, that I, who am your first lover, not having spoken to you for
many years, when the rest of the world were wearying you with their
attentions, am the last of your lovers who still speaks to you. The cause
of my silence has been that I was hindered by a power more than
human, of which I will some day explain to you the nature; this
impediment has now been removed; I therefore here present myself
before you, and I greatly hope that no similar hindrance will again
occur. Meanwhile, I have observed that your pride has been too much
for the pride of your admirers; they were numerous and high-spirited,
but they have all run away, overpowered by your superior force of
character; not one of them remains. And I want you to understand the
reason why you have been too much for them. You think that you have
no need of them or of any other man, for you have great possessions
and lack nothing, beginning with the body, and ending with the soul. In
the first place, you say to yourself that you are the fairest and tallest of
the citizens, and this every one who has eyes may see to be true; in the
second place, that you are among the noblest of them, highly connected
both on the father's and the mother's side, and sprung from one of the
most distinguished families in your own state, which is the greatest in
Hellas, and having many friends and kinsmen of the best sort, who can
assist you when in need; and there is one potent relative, who is more
to you than all the rest, Pericles the son of Xanthippus, whom your
father left guardian of you, and of your brother, and who can do as he
pleases not only in this city, but in all Hellas, and among many and

mighty barbarous nations. Moreover, you are rich; but I must say that
you value yourself least of all upon your possessions. And all these
things have lifted you up; you have overcome your lovers, and they
have acknowledged that you were too much for them. Have you not
remarked their absence? And now I know that you wonder why I,
unlike the rest of them, have not gone away, and what can be my
motive in remaining.
ALCIBIADES: Perhaps, Socrates, you are not aware that I was just
going to ask you the very same question--What do you want? And what
is your motive in annoying me, and always, wherever I am, making a
point of coming? (Compare Symp.) I do really wonder what you mean,
and should greatly like to know.
SOCRATES: Then if, as you say, you desire to know, I suppose that
you will be willing to hear, and I may consider myself to be speaking to
an auditor who will remain, and will not run away?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly, let me hear.
SOCRATES: You had better be careful, for I may very likely be as
unwilling to end as I have hitherto been to begin.
ALCIBIADES: Proceed, my good man, and I will listen.
SOCRATES: I will proceed; and, although no lover likes to speak with
one who has no feeling of love in him (compare Symp.), I will make an
effort, and tell you what I meant: My love, Alcibiades, which I hardly
like to confess, would long ago have passed away, as I flatter myself, if
I saw you loving your good things, or thinking that you ought to pass