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Socrates and Alcibiades: Four Texts

Socrates and Alcibiades: Four Texts

David M. Johnson

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

2003 • 1-58510-069-2 • paper • 100 pages • 6 x 9 • $10.95

Focus Philosophical Library

This new text includes selections from Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades I, and Alcibiades II, providing a rich discussion of how Athens’ greatest philosopher loved and tried to teach her most ambitious youth – and why Athens turned on both of them. It was for the offense of corrupting the youth, together with impiety, that Socrates was put to death. This text explores the fragmentary historical relationship between these two men.

The complete dialogue of the Symposium is also available from Focus here in a translation by Avi Sharon.

|  About the Author  |  Contents  |

 Description                                             

This new set of translations gathers together our four most important sources for the relationship between Socrates and the most controversial man of his day, the gifted and scandalous Alcibiades.  In addition to Alcibiades’ famous speech from Plato’s Symposium, this text includes two dialogues, the Alcibiades I and Alcibiades II, attributed to Plato in antiquity but unjustly neglected today, and the complete fragments of the dialogue Alcibiades by Plato’s contemporary, Aeschines of Sphettus.  These works are essential reading for anyone interested in Socrates’ improbable love affair with Athens’ most desirable youth, his attempt to woo Alcibiades from his ultimately disastrous worldly ambitions to the philosophical life, and the reasons for Socrates’ failure, which played a large role in his conviction by an Athenian court on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth.

 Author                                                   

David Johnson is Assistant Professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he teaches in the Classics Section of the Foreign Languages Department. He has published articles on Plato’s Alcibiades I and Xenophon’s depiction of Socrates.

 Table of Contents                                     

Introduction
    Enter Alcibiades: Alcibiades in the Symposium
    Alcibiades
    Socrates and Alcibiades
    Alcibiades I
    Alcibiades II
    Aeschines’ Alcibiades
    Translator’s note
Bibliography
Alcibiades I
Alcibiades II
Alcibiades' speech from Plato's Symposium (212c-223b)
Fragments of Aeschines of Sphettus, Alcibiades