Alcibiades II | Page 5

fever or gout or ophthalmia, although each of these is a disease, which,
according to those whom we call physicians, may require a different
treatment. They are not all alike, nor do they produce the same result,
but each has its own effect, and yet they are all diseases. May we not
take an illustration from the artizans?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: There are cobblers and carpenters and sculptors and
others of all sorts and kinds, whom we need not stop to enumerate. All
have their distinct employments and all are workmen, although they are
not all of them cobblers or carpenters or sculptors.
ALCIBIADES: No, indeed.
SOCRATES: And in like manner men differ in regard to want of sense.
Those who are most out of their wits we call 'madmen,' while we term
those who are less far gone 'stupid' or 'idiotic,' or, if we prefer gentler
language, describe them as 'romantic' or 'simple-minded,' or, again, as
'innocent' or 'inexperienced' or 'foolish.' You may even find other
names, if you seek for them; but by all of them lack of sense is intended.
They only differ as one art appeared to us to differ from another or one
disease from another. Or what is your opinion?
ALCIBIADES: I agree with you.
SOCRATES: Then let us return to the point at which we digressed. We
said at first that we should have to consider who were the wise and who
the foolish. For we acknowledged that there are these two classes? Did
we not?

ALCIBIADES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And you regard those as sensible who know what ought
to be done or said?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: The senseless are those who do not know this?
ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: The latter will say or do what they ought not without
their own knowledge?
ALCIBIADES: Exactly.
SOCRATES: Oedipus, as I was saying, Alcibiades, was a person of this
sort. And even now-a-days you will find many who (have offered
inauspicious prayers), although, unlike him, they were not in anger nor
thought that they were asking evil. He neither sought, nor supposed that
he sought for good, but others have had quite the contrary notion. I
believe that if the God whom you are about to consult should appear to
you, and, in anticipation of your request, enquired whether you would
be contented to become tyrant of Athens, and if this seemed in your
eyes a small and mean thing, should add to it the dominion of all Hellas;
and seeing that even then you would not be satisfied unless you were
ruler of the whole of Europe, should promise, not only that, but, if you
so desired, should proclaim to all mankind in one and the same day that
Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, was tyrant:--in such a case, I imagine, you
would depart full of joy, as one who had obtained the greatest of goods.
ALCIBIADES: And not only I, Socrates, but any one else who should
meet with such luck.
SOCRATES: Yet you would not accept the dominion and lordship of
all the Hellenes and all the barbarians in exchange for your life?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly not: for then what use could I make of them?
SOCRATES: And would you accept them if you were likely to use
them to a bad and mischievous end?
ALCIBIADES: I would not.
SOCRATES: You see that it is not safe for a man either rashly to
accept whatever is offered him, or himself to request a thing, if he is
likely to suffer thereby or immediately to lose his life. And yet we
could tell of many who, having long desired and diligently laboured to
obtain a tyranny, thinking that thus they would procure an advantage,
have nevertheless fallen victims to designing enemies. You must have

heard of what happened only the other day, how Archelaus of
Macedonia was slain by his beloved (compare Aristotle, Pol.), whose
love for the tyranny was not less than that of Archelaus for him. The
tyrannicide expected by his crime to become tyrant and afterwards to
have a happy life; but when he had held the tyranny three or four days,
he was in his turn conspired against and slain. Or look at certain of our
own citizens,--and of their actions we have been not hearers, but
eyewitnesses,--who have desired to obtain military command: of those
who have gained their object, some are even to this day exiles from the
city, while others have lost their lives. And even they who seem to have
fared best, have not only gone through many perils and terrors during
their office, but after their return home they have been beset by
informers worse than they once were by their foes, insomuch that
several of them have wished that they had remained in a private