120a
Alc.
Of whom are you speaking now, Socrates?Soc.
Do you not know that our city makes war occasionally on the Spartans and on the Great King?Alc.
That is true.Alc.
That sounds like the truth.Soc.
No, my good friend; you ought rather to keep your eye on Meidias 120b the quail-filliper 1 and others of his sort—who undertake to manage the city’s affairs, while they still have the slavish hair 2 (as the women would say) showing in their minds through their lack of culture, and have not yet got rid of it; who, moreover, have come with their outlandish speech to flatter the state, not to rule it—to these, I tell you, should your eyes be turned; and then you can disregard yourself, and need neither learn what is to be learnt for the great contest in which you are to be engaged, nor practise 120c what requires practice, and so ensure that you are perfectly prepared before entering upon a political career.Alc.
Why, Socrates, I believe you are right; though I think neither the Spartan generals nor the Persian king are at all different from other people.Soc.
But, my excellent friend, consider what this notion of yours means.Alc.
In regard to what?Soc.
First of all, do you think you would take more pains over yourself 120d if you feared them and thought them terrible, or if you did not?Alc.
Clearly, if I thought them terrible.Soc.
And do you think you will come to any harm by taking pains over yourself?Alc.
By no means; rather that I shall get much benefit.Soc.
And on this single count that notion 3 of yours is so much to the bad.Alc.
True.Soc.
Then, in the second place, observe the probability that it is false.Alc.
How so?Soc.
Is it probable that noble races should produce 120e better natures, or not?Alc.
Clearly, noble races would.Soc.
And will not the well-born, provided they are well brought up, probably be perfected in virtue?Alc.
That must be so.Soc.
Then let us consider, by comparing our lot with theirs, whether the Spartan and Persian kings appear to be of inferior birth. Do we not know that the former are descendants of Hercules and the latter of Achaemenes, and that the line of Hercules and the line of Achaemenes go back to Perseus, son of Zeus?Alcibiades 1. Plato. Walter Rangeley Maitland Lamb (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1927.
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