deal of
humour in the manner in which the pride of Alcibiades, and of the Greeks
generally, is supposed to be taken down by the Spartan and Persian
queens; and the dialogue has considerable dialectical merit. But we
have a difficulty in supposing that the same writer, who has given so
profound and 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 l