Soc. "In truth he has a wonderful affection for you.” ALC. "And so it seems best that I defer till then my sacrifice." Soc. "You are right. It is better than to run so great a risk.” ALC. "Good, Socrates. But this chaplet which I have brought as a part of the religious ceremony, I will place on your head, as an acknowledgment of the good counsel that you have given me. To the gods I will give chaplets and all other religious honours, when I see that day approaching. And with their blessing it will approach ere long.” Soc. "I accept this, and any other mark of your good will, gladly. And as Creon in Euripides, when he sees Tiresias crowned with a chapÎet, and hears that it has been given him by the soldiers in respect for his insight into the future, says, I take this triumphal crown as an augury of victory ; For we are labouring in a stormy struggle, as you know : so I too take your good opinion as a good augury : and I need it, for I, not less than Creon, am engaged in a stormy struggle, and wish to get the better of your other admirers." REMARKS ON THE SECOND ALCIBIADES. In this Dialogue there are several passages which are like passages in the other Platonic Dialogues. The description of Alcibiades' ambition closely resembles that in the First Alcibiades. The argument that no special knowledge is of any value without a knowledge of what is really good; the disparagement of secondrate knowledge in many things; as well as the value ascribed to Socrates' teaching, are of frequent occurrence in Plato. We know from Xenophon that Socrates did speak of prayer very much to the effect of what is here said. In the Memorabilia (1. 3. 2) "He prayed the gods simply to give him what was good, deeming that they best knew what is good. Those that prayed for gold or silver or power, or any other such things, he thought they were just as if they prayed for a cast of a die, or a battle, or anything of which the issue is most uncertain." But the way in which these Platonic features are combined, appears to be unlike Plato. The entirely passive part which Alcibiades plays in the Dialogue, and his feeble resistance to Socrates' arguments, exhibit a great want of the usual Platonic drama. The way in which, at the end, Alcibiades gives his chaplet to Socrates is more dramatic; but this trait seems to be borrowed from another Dialogue, the Banquet, where Alcibiades does the same thing. The manner in which, in this conclusion, Socrates is, by a sort of mysterious implication, half identified with a divine teacher, goes far beyond anything in Plato; and the way in which the Socratic arguments about knowledge are worked seems to me feeble and incoherent. Also the notion of the Deity, as being sometimes in the humour to grant man's requests, appears to be, as Socher remarks, quite unworthy of Plato and of Socrates. To these arguments against the genuineness of this Dialogue as a work of Plato are added others borrowed from chronology and history. Here, while Pericles is still alive, Archelaos is already dead, and we are told the manner of his death, though he died thirty years after Pericles; after Alcibiades, and perhaps after Socrates. We are told of a war between the Lacedæmonians and Athenians, in which the latter were defeated in every battle, by sea as well as by land: history knows of no such war. The sending of an embassy of inquiry by the Athenians to Jupiter Ammon is more like a poetical fiction than an historical fact. * Athenæus says that the Second Alcibiades was said to be by Xenophon: but the above arguments, and the style, are against Xenophon's authorship. Probably the assertion was a conjecture, and natural one, because Xenophon was addicted to prayers and offerings to the gods. Apparently the writer of the Dialogue was a later imitator of Plato. The mention of persons who had eagerly desired military com PLAT. *Deipnos. XI. 114. M mand, and had found it lead to exile or to death, appears to refer to the case of the ten Athenian generals who were condemned for their conduct at and after the battle of Arginusæ; an occasion on which Socrates incurred great peril by refusing to act in oppo. sition to the law. The general train of thought falls in with the reflexions on the Folly of Human Prayers and the Vanity of Human Wisdom which have formed the substance of poems in ancient and modern times, as the second Satire of Persius, the tenth Satire of Juvenal, and the poem of Johnson written in imitation of the latter. The theme is, no doubt, much like what occurs in this Dialogue : How wavering man betrayed by venturous pride... How nations sink, by darling schemes opprest, When vengeance listens to the fool's request. But it is not likely that in any of these cases there was a conscious reference to the Dialogue now before us. |