Alcibiades 2 (140-141)

Soc. Well, if you will attend to me, two together [*] will be searching, and so mayhap we shall find what we seek.

Alc. Nay, but I am attending, Socrates, to the best of my power.

Soc. Then we have admitted that while every ophthalmia is a disease, every disease, on the other hand, is not ophthalmia?

Alc. We have.

Soc. And our admission seems to me quite right. For everyone in a fever is sick, but yet not everyone who is sick has a fever or the gout or ophthalmia, I take it; though everything of the sort is a disease, but differs—to quote those whom we call doctors— in its manifestation. [*] For they are not all alike, nor of like effect, but each works according to its own faculty, and yet all are diseases. In the same way, we conceive of some men as artisans, do we not?

Alc. Certainly.

Soc. That is, cobblers and carpenters and statuaries and a host of others, whom we need not mention in particular; but any way, they have their several departments of craft, and all of them are craftsmen; yet they are not all carpenters or cobblers or statuaries, though these taken together are craftsmen.

Alc. No, indeed.

Soc. In the same way, then, have men divided unwisdom also among them, and those who have the largest share of it we call mad, and those who have a little less, dolts and idiots; though people who prefer to use the mildest language term them sometimes romantic, [*] sometimes simpleminded, [*] or again innocent, inexperienced, or obtuse; and many another name will you find if you look for more. But all these things are unwisdom, though they differ, as we observed that one art or one disease differs from another. Or how does it strike you?

Alc. That is my view.

Soc. Then let us turn at this point and retrace our steps. For we said, you know, at the beginning that we must consider who the unwise can be, and who the wise: for we had admitted that there are such persons, had we not?

Alc. Yes, we have admitted it.

Soc. Then you conceive those to be wise who know what one ought to do and say?

Alc. I do.

Soc. And which are the unwise? Those who know neither of these things?

Alc. The same.

Soc. And those who know neither of these things will say and do unawares what one ought not?

Alc. Apparently.

Soc. Well, just such a person, as I was saying, Alcibiades, was Oedipus; and even in our time you will find many who do the same, not in a fit of anger, as he was: they think they pray not for something evil, but for something good. He neither prayed for that, nor thought he did, but there are others who are in the opposite case. For I imagine that if the god to whom you are now going should appear to you and first ask you, before you made any prayer, whether you would be content to become sovereign of the Athenian state and, on your accounting this as something poor and unimportant, should add and of all the Greeks also; and if he saw you were still unsatisfied unless he promised you besides the mastery of all Europe, and should not merely promise you that, but on the self-same day a recognition by all men, if you so desired, of Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, as their sovereign—I imagine you would actually depart in a transport of delight, as having secured the greatest of goods.

Alc. So would anybody else, I imagine, Socrates, at such a stroke of luck!

Soc. But still you would not wish to sacrifice your life even for the territory and sovereignty of all the Greeks and barbarians together.

Alc. I should think not. How could I, without a prospect of making any use of them?

Soc. And what if you had a prospect of making an evil and injurious use of them? Not in this case either?

Alc. No, indeed.

Soc. So you see it is not safe either to accept casually what one is given, or to pray for one’s own advancement, if one is going to be injured in consequence, or deprived of one’s life altogether. Yet we could tell of many ere now who, having desired sovereignty, and endeavored to secure it, with the idea of working for their good, have lost their lives by plots which their sovereignty has provoked. And I expect you are not unacquainted with certain events

of a day or two ago,

Hom. Il. 2.303 when Archelaus, the monarch of Macedonia, was slain [*] by his favorite, who was as much in love with the monarchy as Archelaus was with him, and who killed his lover with the expectation of being not only the monarch, but also a happy man: but after holding the monarchy for three or four days he was plotted against by others in his turn, and perished.