[148]
Soc.
But come now, in Heaven’s name—for I suppose you see how great and strange is our perplexity, in which you, as it seems to me, have your share; for you change about from this side to that without settling down for a moment, but as soon as you are firmly convinced of a thing you seem to slip out of it again and 148a cease to hold the same view—well, if the god to whom you are going should even now appear to you and ask before you uttered any prayer, whether you would be content to obtain one of those things which were mentioned at the beginning, or whether he should leave you to pray as you were, how do you suppose you would make the best of your chance—by accepting his offer, or by praying for something on your own account?Alc.
Well, by the gods, I could not answer your question, Socrates, offhand. Why, I take it to be a fatuous request, 1 148b when it is really a case for great caution lest one pray unawares for what is evil while thinking it to be one’s good, and then after a little while, as you were saying, 2 one change one’s tune and retract all one’s former prayers.Soc.
And did not the poet whom I quoted at the beginning of our discussion 3 know more than we, when he bade us pray for the averting of what is grievous, even though we pray for it?Alc.
I think so.Soc.
Then it is their admiration of this poet, Alcibiades, 148c or perhaps the result of their own study, that causes the Spartans to offer a similar prayer whether the occasion be private or public—that the gods will give them for their own benefit the beautiful as well as the good: more than this no one can ever hear them pray for. The consequence is that to the present time 4 they have been just as fortunate as any other people; and if it has befallen them to be not invariably fortunate, it was anyhow not owing to their prayer. 148d It rests with the gods, I conceive, to give us either what we may pray for or the reverse. And I would like to give you an account of something else, which I once heard from some of my seniors. A quarrel having arisen between the Athenians and the Spartans, it befell our city to be always unsuccessful in every battle by land and sea, and she could never win a victory. So the Athenians, in their annoyance at this result, and at a loss for some means of finding a deliverance from the trouble they were in, 148e took counsel together and decided that the best thing they could do was to send and inquire of Ammon 5 ; and moreover, to ask also for what reason the gods granted victory to the Spartans rather than to themselves: for we—such was the message— offer up to them more and finer sacrifices than any of the Greeks, and have adorned their temples with votive emblems as no other people have done, and presented to the gods the costliest and stateliest processions year by year, and spent more money thus than 149a all the rest of the Greeks together.Alcibiades 2. Plato. Walter Rangeley Maitland Lamb (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1927.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.