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Part 4 of 5 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here)

In our previous installment, Socrates has convinced Alcibiades that he is ignorant of justice. Therefore, he should not go into politics until he is educated. But Socrates undermines his argument by pointing out that none of the other eminent Athenians, even Pericles himself, knows what justice is. From this, Alcibiades concludes that if his rivals for power are equally ignorant, he has no need to waste time on education, because he is confident that he can beat them based on his superior nature.

Socrates is defeated by his own argument. But he is unflappable. Immediately he changes course. Instead of continuing the dialogue, he makes a speech. The content of his speech is a story; the Greek word for “story” is “mythos.” The purpose of the myth is to shame Alcibiades. It is highly effective.

Socrates laments that Alcibiades’s idea that he can simply glide through life on his looks and connections is “unworthy” of him (119c). Alcibiades has a strong sense of pride, so he is eager to know in what way he is not living up to his potential. Then Socrates pulls the old ‘I’m not mad, son, just disappointed’ routine. Socrates is disappointed that Alcibiades is only concerned with competing with his fellow Athenians. When Alcibiades asks, ‘With whom, then?’ Socrates shames him again, saying that the question is “unworthy of someone who thinks of himself as great-spirited” (119c).

Greatness of Spirit & Greatness of Soul

“Great-spirited” translates “megalophroneia,” which is an unusual Greek word found in Plato and also in the Discourses of Epictetus. Megalophroneia is similar to the more commonly used Greek word “megalopsychia.” The root “megalo” means “great,” as in “megalomania.” “Psyche” means “soul.” So “megalopsychia” literally means “greatness of soul.” The Latin equivalent is “magnanimity,” which is in English usage as well. Another translation is “high-mindedness.”

Megalopsychia is the supreme virtue of the aristocrat. The canonical treatment of the idea is in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (). Magnanimity is a higher-order virtue. It presupposes all-round excellence, including the possession of the other virtues. Magnanimity involves awareness of one’s excellence. The magnanimous man feels entitled to recognition for his achievements. But magnanimity is more than justified pride. It is also ambition. The magnanimous man sets great goals, because small goals are not worthy of him.

Magnanimity also encompasses how superior individuals at the top of the social hierarchy get along with the rest of society, which consists mostly of their inferiors. Magnanimity lubricates social interactions in a hierarchical society, preserving the dignity of the inferior and the status of the superior. Magnanimous people recognize that most people are not their equals and adjust their expectations accordingly. When confronted with the failings of others, they are tolerant, forgiving, and “big.” When we compliment a person for being “mighty big,” we are referring to the “magna” in magnanimity. Great-souled men have a quality of aloofness and unflappability. They don’t trifle over small things.

Magnanimous individuals also refrain from calling attention to their superiority. One way they do this is though what the Greeks called “irony,” which is a form of false modesty. It is the only virtuous form of lying. The magnanimous man conceals his superiority to spare the feelings of others. The opposite of magnanimity is pusillanimity (mikropsychia) or “small-mindedness.” The small-minded man loves to make lesser men feel inferior, generally because he gnawed by feelings of inferiority to still greater men. Pusillanimous men are the strivers, the greasy pole climbers, whose basic motto is “suck up and shit down.” They will seize on any petty advantage if it allows them to pull themselves up and put others down.

“Megalophroneia” is derived from “megalo” and “phren,” which is the root of “phronesis,” which means practical wisdom or prudence. “Phren” is an archaic Greek word that refers both to the mind and to the diaphragm muscle in the chest that allows us to breathe. The phren is thus associated with thumos or “spiritedness,” which resides in the chest. Hence W. R. M. Lamb translates megalophroneia as “high-spiritedness.” Plato chooses this word well to evoke Alcibiades’ highly competitive nature. Socrates, in short, is trying to inflame Alcibiades’ competitiveness against his complacency.

Socrates points out that if Alcibiades truly aims to rule the Athenians, then his competitors would not be his fellow Athenians but the rulers of Athens’ great rivals, Sparta and Persia. Alcibiades agrees with this. But he still doesn’t think that the Spartans and the Persians are all that special.

Socrates first offers a pragmatic response. If Alcibiades thinks the Spartans and Persians are formidable enemies, he will try to improve himself to be a worthy opponent. Self-improvement is never a bad thing. Thus dismissing the superiority of the Spartans and Persians would be bad because it promotes complacency rather than self-improvement. Note that this is not an argument for the truth of Socrates’s claims about the Spartans and the Persians. It also indicates that Socrates has ample incentive to exaggerate just how formidable they really are.

Socrates characterizes his second argument as probabilistic: “it is probable that noble races should produce better natures” (120e). The well-born, if well-raised, will “probably be perfected in virtue.” Then Socrates argues that the Spartan and Persian kings are of noble descent by citing myths about their divine origins. The Spartan kings descend from Hercules; the Persian kings stem from Perseus the son of Zeus. It is hard to credit Socrates with taking these arguments seriously, but clearly he hopes that Alcibiades will.

Again, though, Socrates falls into his own trap, for Alcibiades responds that he is not inferior to the Spartan and Persian kings due to his dissent from Eurysaces, son of Zeus. As if to throw in the towel. Socrates responds that even he is descended from Zeus, which almost reduces his argument to absurdity. For the Greeks, being descended from Zeus may have about as common as being descended from Adam, i.e., it puts us all on equal footing. It does not establish that some are better than others.

But Socrates changes tack. The point is not descent but upbringing. Socrates and Alcibiades may descend from Zeus just as much as the Spartan and Persian kings. But their upbringings differ. Spartan and Persian kings come from long lines of kings, and they are raised to carry on their dynasties. By contrast, Socrates and Alcibiades are merely private persons, the sons of private persons for generations back, and have been raised to be private persons.

Socrates says that if Alcibiades were to cite his lineage and upbringing and wealth in order to impress the great king of Persia, Artaxerxes, he would be laughed at. This is designed to inflame Alcibiades’ thumos. “I am afraid,” says Socrates, that “we are quite outdone by those persons in pride of birth and upbringing altogether” (121b).

A Royal Tale

Then Socrates launches into a speech lauding the family lives, upbringing, education, and wealth of the Spartan and Persian kings. First Socrates mentions how both royal lines assure their continuation and the legitimacy of their offspring.

In Sparta, the queens are closely guarded by the ephors to prevent cuckoldry. One wonders who guards the ephors, however, since they were not eunuchs. Beyond that, when Plato wrote these words, he knew what was in Alcibiades’ future. After defecting to the Spartans in 415 BCE, Alcibiades did not find any insuperable barriers to seducing the Spartan queen, Timaea, the wife of king Agis II. Alcibiades fathered a son with Timaea, Leotychides of Sparta. She did not hide his paternity from king Agis. Thus the throne passed to Agis’ brother, Agesilaus II.

As for the Persians, Socrates says that their king is so feared that none of them would dare cuckold him. If this were true, however, then the Great King would have no need of the army of eunuchs who attended him.

In short, an informed reader in Plato’s time and ours would see the farcical and contradictory elements of Socrates’ speech and rapidly conclude that Socrates is trying to fool Alcibiades. Indeed, he’s testing Alcibiades to see how gullible he may be.

According to Socrates, when a Persian heir is born, his birthday becomes a holiday throughout the empire, whereas in Athens not even the neighbors notice their births. The Persian princes are cared for by eunuchs. When they are seven, they learn to ride and hunt. When they are 14, they are turned over to four royal tutors, eminent men of mature age, renowned as the wisest, most just, most temperate, and most courageous men in the empire. Wisdom (sophia), justice (dikaiosyne), temperance (sophrosyne), and courage (andreia) are the four cardinal virtues of Plato’s Republic.

The wisest tutor teaches the Magian lore of Zoroaster, the worship of the gods, and everything connected to kingship. This has little to do with sophia (theoretical wisdom) as Plato understood it. The just man teaches truthfulness; the temperate man, mastery of the appetites; and the brave man, mastery over fear.

Pericles, by contrast, gave Alcibiades only one tutor: an elderly and otherwise useless servant Zopyrus the Thracian. But nobody really cares about the education of young Athenians, unless they are lucky enough to find a lover like Socrates who is interested not in their bodies but in their souls.

Socrates also points out that the fabulous wealth and luxury of the Persians puts Alcibiades to shame, even though Alcibiades was quite wealthy by Athenian standards, and even though he didn’t think that much of money. (Of course, if you have a lot of money, you can afford not to think that much about it.)

The Spartans too have enormous wealth, despite their reputation for austerity and toughness. But  it is their virtues—including “temperance, orderliness, coolness, even-temperedness, magnanimity, discipline, courage, endurance, and love of toil, victory, and honor” (122b)—that most put Alcibiades to shame.

Socrates then underscores the wealth and luxury of the Persians by reporting the story of Greek who travelled to the court of the Great King, passing through districts whose entire revenue was dedicated solely to creating single items of clothing for the Persian queen.

Then Socrates’ argument takes a strange turn. As in the Symposium, where Socrates relates the speech of the priestess Diotima, as in the Menexenus, where Socrates relates a speech of Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, Socrates here speaks through two women who were both wives and mothers of kings: Amestris of Persia and Lampito of Sparta.

If someone were to tell Amestris that Alcibiades the son of Deinomache wished to challenge her son Artaxerxes, she would scoff at Deinomache’s paltry wardrobe and Alcibiades’ tiny estates. But, interestingly enough, despite her snobbery, she would not dismiss Alcibiades out of hand, for she knows that other factors may counterbalance wealth and power, namely care /trouble/concern/taking pains [epimelesthai] and wisdom [Sophia] for these are the only things of any account among the Greeks” (123d).

Self-Cultivation & Wisdom

Let’s now turn to the concepts of self-cultivation and wisdom. The word epimelesthai can be translated as care, concern, trouble, or taking pains. It plays an important role in Alcibiades I. Alcibiades uses this word at the beginning when he describes Socrates’ stalking behavior as “always taking such trouble [epimelestata] to show up where I happen to be” (104c). The primary sense of epimelesthai in the dialogue is, however, taking care of oneself (epimelesthai sautou), because Socrates’ goal is to shake Alcibiades from his complacency and accept Socrates as his teacher. Thus his mouthpiece, the Persian queen, fears Greek self-cultivation, for it will even the odds against her son.

Although the queen uses “sophia,” the word for theoretical wisdom, here it is clear that she is thinking about practical wisdom or phronesis.

The Socratic idea of wisdom is the ability to make right use of all things. The goal of life is well-being or happiness (eudaimonia). To achieve happiness we need certain external things and conditions. But mere possession of even the greatest wealth and power is not enough for happiness, because goods must be used. If goods are used rightly, i.e., wisely, they are conducive to happiness. If they are used badly, i.e., foolishly, they are not conducive to happiness. (I say “conducive,” because there are no guarantees in a world where fortune plays a role.)

In fact, great wealth and power without wise use are worse than poverty and powerlessness, for great wealth and power afford enormous opportunities for self-destruction. But the reverse is also true: the poor and powerless can lead happy lives through wise use of whatever modest opportunities fortune dispenses. Wisdom, therefore, is a great equalizer of fortune: the wise but unfortunate can rise; the fortunate but foolish can fall.

Thus Amestris is not immediately dismissive of Alcibiades for his lack of wealth for if, through self-cultivation, he acquires wisdom, he may have the ability to overcome her son’s advantages.

This brings to mind a fragment from another dialogue called Alcibiades, by Aeschines of Sphettus. When Darius of Persia invaded Greece, the Athenians turned to Themistocles to save them. When Themistocles compared the forces of the Persians to those of the Greeks, he found the Greek forces far inferior. “[B]ut he knew that unless that man [the Great King] excelled him in giving advice, all these other things, great as they were in magnitude, would not be of any great help to him. . . .  [W]hichever people had men more worthy and excellent overseeing their affairs, it was their side that was usually victorious.”[1] A great army, foolishly commanded, may be defeated by a smaller army, wisely commanded.

However, if Amestris were to learn that Alcibiades does not see fit to cultivate himself to pursue wisdom, but instead thinks he’s fine as he is, she would conclude that Alcibiades is simply mad to challenge Artaxerxes. Socrates points out that Lampito of Sparta would feel the same way.

Then Socrates draws his conclusion: Isn’t it shameful that mere women, the wives and mothers of their enemies, “should have a better idea of the qualities that we need for an attempt against them than we have ourselves” (124a). Socrates may have chosen to put words in the mouths of enemy queens because he thinks that Alcibiades would be extra ashamed at being bested by women.

Shaming is a way to make people conscious of themselves, specifically of their inadequacies. Hence Socrates bids Alcibiades to “listen to me and the Delphic motto ‘Know thyself’” and take to heart that “only self-care [epimeleia] and art [techne]” will allow Alcibiades to exceed his real rivals and win the renown he seeks (124d–e).

Alcibiades is convinced. He has to raise his sights. He has to cultivate himself and pursue wisdom. So he asks Socrates for advice. But Socrates is not going to give another speech. Socrates says that they will work together to figure out how to be as excellent as possible, for Socrates claims that he too is in the same predicament as Alcibiades, with only one advantage: Socrates’ daimonion is a better guardian to him than Pericles is to Alcibiades.

Here Socrates refers to the daimonion simply as “god” (theos) (124c). Other references to god in the dialogue should also be read this way. The daimonion is Socrates’ personification of his knowledge of “erotic things” (ta erotika). By “erotic things,” Socrates means human nature, particularly the nature of the human soul, which is charged throughout with eros. Recall the ancient subtitle of this dialogue is “On Human Nature.” Socrates says that his daimonion tells him what not to do or say. I gloss this as Socrates’ ability to regulate his actions and speech based on his ability to assess human nature. In Plato’s dialogues, the daimonion manifests itself in the context of philosophical conversations. Thus we can say that the daimonion is Socrates’ philosophical prudence.

Socrates claims that “god” has told him that Alcibiades will attain the renown he seeks “through no other man but me” (124c). Alcibiades brushes this off as a joke, and Socrates allows that “perhaps” he’s right. But then immediately Socrates emphasizes the practical situation that—god or no god—human beings in general need to take care of themselves, especially Socrates and Alcibiades, for the greater our talent and the greater our ambition, the greater our need for wisdom.

Note

[1] Plato and Aeschines of Sphettus, Socrates and Alcibiades: Four Texts, trans. David M. Johnson (Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Publishing, 2003), p. 95..