Alcibiades Quotes

On the strength of these successes, Alcibiades at last returned to Athens in 408. The Athenian people had short memories:

The mightiest kings have had their minions; Great Alexander loved Hephaestion, The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept; And for Patroclus, stern Achilles drooped. And not kings only, but the wisest men: The Roman Tully loved Octavius, Grave Socrates, wild Alcibiades.

And nevertheless I have loved certain of my masters, and those strangely intimate though elusive relations existing between student and teacher, and the Sirens singing somewhere within the cracked voice of him who is first to reveal a new idea. The greatest seducer was not Alcibiades, afterall, it was Socrates.

I'm the son and heir to the Duke of Sardis. I could walk into that ballroom naked with Alcibiades balanced on my head, and they'd still want to marry me." "Most likely. But if you try it, I'll horsewhip you on the front steps.

As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delights of presence best known by the torments of absence.

Even now I'm well aware that if I allowed myself to listen to him I couldn't resist but would have the same experience again. He makes me admit that, in spite of my great defects, I neglect myself and instead get involved in Athenian politics. So I force myself to block my ears and go away, like someone escaping from the Sirens, to prevent myself sitting there beside him till I grow old.

Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence." He tells how the Persians were felled, how the Romans collapsed because their rulers forgot how their parents gained them an empire. He prattles about Muslim dynasties and European effeminacy and Chinese regionalism and American self-loathing and self-neutering. All the ancient names. "Our Savagery began when our capital, Luna, rebelled against the tyranny of Earth and freed herself from the shackles of Demokracy, from the Noble Lie - the idea that men are brothers and are created equal." Augustus weaves lies of his own with that golden tongue of his. He tells of the Goldens' suffering. The Masses sat on the wagon and expected the great to pull, he reminds. They sat whipping the great until we could no longer take it. I remember a different whipping. "Men are not created equal; we all know this. There are averages. There are outliers. There are the ugly. There are the beautiful. This would not be if we were all equal. A Red can no more command a starship than a Green can serve as a doctor!" There's more laughter across the square as he tells us to look at pathetic Athens, the birthplace of the cancer they call Demokracy. Look how it fell to Sparta. The Noble Lie made Athens weak. It made their citizens turn on their best general, Alcibiades, because of jealousy. "Even the nations of Earth grew jealous of one another. The United States of America exacted this idea of equality through force. And when the nations united, the Americans were surprised to find that they were disliked! The Masses are jealous! How wonderful a dream it would be if all men were created equal! But we are not. It is against the Noble Lie that we fight. But as I said before, as I say to you now, there is another evil against which we war. It is a more pernicious evil. It is a subversive, slow evil. It is not a wildfire. It is a cancer. And that cancer is Decadence. Our society has passed from Savagery to Ascendance. But like our spiritual ancestors, the Romans, we too can fall into Decadence.

Cousin, the days of gods and heroes are over." "Not to me. Not to them.

So long as he was personally present, [Alcibiades] had the perfect mastery of his political adversaries; calumny only succeeded in his absence.

Once being hard pressed in wrestling, and fearing to be thrown, he got the hand of his antagonist to his mouth, and bit it with all his force; and when the other loosed his hold presently, and said, "You bite, Alcibiades, like a woman." "No," replied he, "like a lion." Another

I was the first man to fall in love with you, son of Clinias, and now that the others have stopped pursuing you I suppose you're wondering why I'm the only one who hasn't given up - and also why, when the others pestered you with conversation, I never even spoke to you all these years. Human causes didn't enter into it; I was prevented by some divine being, the effect of which you'll hear later on. But now it no longer prevents me, so here I am. I'm confident it won't prevent me in future either.

better not bring up a lion inside your city, But if you must, then humour all his moods.

The clearest argument against Plato’s authorship is probably that Plato never wrote a work whose interpretation was as simple and straightforward as that of Alcibiades.

It's a curious thing that the mental life seems to flourish with its roots in spite, ineffable and fathomless spite. Always has been so! Look at Socrates, in Plato, and his bunch round him! The sheer spite of it all, just sheer joy in pulling somebody else to bits...Protagoras, or whoever it was! And Alcibiades, and all the other little disciple dogs joining in the fray! I must say it makes one prefer Buddha, quietly sitting under a bo-tree, or Jesus, telling his disciples little Sunday stories, peacefully, and without any mental fireworks. No, there's something wrong with the mental life, radically. It's rooted in spite and envy, envy and spite. Ye shall know the tree by its fruit.

Un buen consejo viene de la ciencia y no de las riquezas.

There was a young man favorably endowed as an Alcibiades. He lost his way in the world. In his need he looked about for a Socrates but found none among his contemporaries. Then he requested the gods to change him into one. But now--he who had been so proud of being an Alcibiades was so humiliated and humbled by the gods' favor that, just when he received what he could be proud of, he felt inferior to all.

For this reason poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history; poetry utters universal truths, history particular statements. The universal truths concern what befits a person of a certain kind to say or do in accordance with probability and necessity—and that is the aim of poetry, even if it makes use of proper names.* A particular statement tells us what (for example) Alcibiades* did or what happened to him. In the case of comedy this is already manifest: the poets make up the story on the basis of probability and then attach names to the characters at random;

Whilst he was very young, he was a soldier in the expedition against Potidaea, where Socrates lodged in the same tent with him, and stood next him in battle. Once there happened a sharp skirmish, in which they both behaved with signal bravery; but Alcibiades receiving a wound, Socrates threw himself before him to defend him, and beyond any question saved him and his arms from the enemy, and so in all justice might have challenged the prize of valor. But

It was about that time [415 BCE] that the poet Diagoras of Melos was proscribed for atheism, he having declared that the non-punishment of a certain act of iniquity proved that there were no gods. It has been surmised, with some reason, that the iniquity in question was the slaughter of the Melians by the Athenians in 416 BCE, and the Athenian resentment in that case was personal and political rather than religious. For some time after 415 the Athenian courts made strenuous efforts to punish every discoverable case of impiety; and parodies of the Eleusinian mysteries were alleged against Alcibiades and others. Diagoras, who was further charged with divulging the Eleusinian and other mysteries, and with making firewood of an image of Herakles, telling the god thus to perform his thirteenth labour by cooking turnips, became thenceforth one of the proverbial atheists of the ancient world, and a reward of a silver talent was offered for killing him, and of two talents for his capture alive; despite which he seems to have escaped.

Men are not born equal in themselves, so I think it beneath a man to postulate that they are. If I thought myself as good as Sokrates I should be a fool; and if, not really believing it, I asked you to make me happy by assuring me of it, you would rightly despise me. So why should I insult my fellow-citizens by treating them as fools and cowards? A man who thinks himself as good as everyone else will be at no pains to grow better. On the other hand, I might think myself as good as Sokrates, and even persuade other fools to agree with me; but under a democracy, Sokrates is there in the Agora to prove me wrong. I want a city where I can find my equals and respect my betters, whoever they are; and where no one can tell me to swallow a lie because it is expedient, or some other man's will.

En esa parte del alma, verdaderamente divina, es donde es preciso mirarse, y contemplar allí todo lo divino, es decir, Dios y la sabiduría, para conocerse a sí mismo perfectamente.

Alcibiades held on to him in the same way he held on to all beautiful things- as though her were somewhat afraid of their beauty.

They've made him into a deity,' I told Alcibiades, my eyes wide with wonder. 'No,' Alcibiades replied. 'They've made him into a god.

This early dialogue features the charismatic young politician Alcibiades in conversation with Socrates.

Alas, said Alcibiades, how I am fooled by this man; he is determined

Los Estados para ser dichosos no tienen necesidad de murallas, ni de buques, ni de arsenales, ni de tropas, ni de gran aparato; la única cosa de que tienen necesidad para su felicidad es la virtud.

Tis my humor as much to regard the form as the substance, and the advocate as much as the cause, as Alcibiades ordered we should: and every day pass away my time in reading authors without any consideration of their learning; their manner is what I look after, not their subject. And just so do I hunt after the conversation of any eminent wit, not that he may teach me, but that I may know him, and that knowing him, if I think him worthy of imitation, I may imitate him.

Alcibiades’ pride in his properties knew no bounds. But, as usual, Socrates tried to bring him down to earth. Carved on a marble slab was displayed a map of the world as it was then known. Socrates took Alcibiades to see it and asked if he could point out Attica. He could. “And your estates and houses?” Alcibiades replied that they were not marked, to which Socrates exclaimed: “Exactly. They don’t add up to even a small portion of the earth—and yet you hold them in such high regard?

In the midst of this display of statesmanship, eloquence, cleverness, and exalted ambition, Alcibiades live d a life full of prodigious luxury, drunkenness, debauchery, and insolence. He was effeminate in his dress and would walk through the market-place trailing his long purple robes, and he spent extravagantly. He had the decks of his trireme scut away to allow him to sleep more comfortably, and his bedding was slung on cords, rather than spread on the hard planks. He had a golden shield made for him, which was emblazoned not with any ancestral device, but with the figure of Eros armed with a thunderbolt. The leading men of Athens watched all this with disgust and indignation and they were deeply disturbed by his contemptuous and lawless behavior, which seemed to them monstrous and suggested the habits of the tyrant. The people's feelings towards him have been very aptly expressed by Aristophanes in the line: "They long for him, they hate him, they cannot do without him..." The fact was that his voluntary donations, the public shows he supported, his unrivaled munificence to the state, the fame of his ancestry, the power of his oratory and his physical strength and beauty... all combined to make the Athenians forgive him everything else, and they were constantly finding euphemisms for his lapses and putting them down to youthful high spirits and honorable ambition.

what sets him apart and causes him still to fascinate today are not only his responses to the setbacks that he experienced at almost every step of the way, but how many of the Athenian voting public continued to believe in him despite suffering the consequence of his betrayals, how, knowing that he was the architect of their defeat, they still yearned to have him lead them, and, in the end, how his life both shaped and mirrored the fortunes of his city.

Many a present-day Alcibiades, who laves all the week in the muddy waters of life, comes on Sundays to cleanse himself in the pure stream of Tolstovian ideas. Book-keeping is satisfied with this modest success, and assumes that if it commands universal attention one day in the week, then obviously it is the sum and essence of life, beyond which man needs nothing. On the same grounds the keepers of public baths could argue that, since so many people come to them on Saturdays, therefore cleanliness is the highest ambition of man, and during the week no one should stir at all, lest he sweat or soil himself.

Antipater, in a letter written upon the death of Aristotle, the philosopher, observes, "Amongst his other gifts he had that of persuasiveness"; and the absence of this in the character of Marcius made all his great actions and noble qualities unacceptable to those whom they benifited: pride, and self-will, the consort, as Plato calls it, of solitude, made him insufferable. With the skill which Alcibiades, on the contrary, possessed to treat every one in the way most agreeable to him, we cannot wonder that all his successes were attended with the most exuberant favour and honour; his very errors, at time, being accompanied by something of grace and felicity. And so in spite of great and frequent hurt that he had done the city, he was repeatedly appointed to office and command; while Coriolanus stood in vain for a place which his great services had made his due. The one, in spite of the harm he occasioned, could not make himself hated, nor the other, with all the admiration he attracted, succeed in being beloved by his countrymen.

Commend me to them, And tell them that, to ease them of their griefs, Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses, Their pangs of love, with other incident throes That nature's fragile vessel doth sustain In life's uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them: I'll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades' wrath. First Senator I like this well; he will return again. TIMON I have a tree, which grows here in my close, That mine own use invites me to cut down, And shortly must I fell it: tell my friends, Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree From high to low throughout, that whoso please To stop affliction, let him take his haste, Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe, And hang himself. I pray you, do my greeting.

Socrates : So you see that ignorance of certain things is for certain persons in certain states a good, not an evil, as you supposed just now. Alcibiades : It seems to be. Socrates : Then if you care to consider the sequel of this, I daresay it will surprise you. Alcibiades :What may that be, Socrates? Socrates : I mean that, generally speaking, it rather looks as though the possession of the sciences as a whole, if it does not include possession of the science of the best, will in a few instances help, but in most will harm, the owner. Consider it this way: must it not be the case, in your opinion, that when we are about to do or say anything, we first suppose that we know, or do really know, the thing we so confidently intend to say or do? [144d]

Our way would seem quite familiar to the Romans, more by far than the Greek way. Socrates in the Symposium, when Alcibiades challenged him to drink two quarts of wine, could have done so or not as he chose, but the diners-out of Horace's day had no such freedom. He speaks often of the master of the drinking, who was always appointed to dictate how much each man was to drink. Very many unseemly dinner parties must have paved the way for that regulation. A Roman in his cups would've been hard to handle, surly, quarrelsome, dangerous. No doubt there had been banquets without number which had ended in fights, broken furniture, injuries, deaths. Pass a law then, the invariable Roman remedy, to keep drunkenness within bounds. Of course it worked both ways: everybody was obliged to empty the same number of glasses and the temperate man had to drink a great deal more than he wanted, but whenever laws are brought in to regulate the majority who have not abused their liberty for the sake of the minority who have, just such results come to pass. Indeed, any attempt to establish a uniform average in that stubbornly individual phenomenon, human nature, will have only one result that can be foretold with certainty: it will press hardest on the best.

SOCRATES: For if a man, my dear Alcibiades, has the power to do what he likes, but has no understanding, what is likely to be the result, either to him as an individual or to the state—for example, if he be sick and is able to do what he likes, not having the mind of a physician—having moreover tyrannical power, and no one daring to reprove him, what will happen to him? Will he not be likely to have his constitution ruined?

Socrates: Do you think that, if someone asked you whether you had two eyes or three, or two hands or four, or something else like this, you would give one answer at one time and another at another, or always the same? [117A] Alcibiades: By this point I’m afraid about myself, but I think it would be the same. Socrates: Is it because you know? Is this the cause? Alcibiades: I think so, for my part. Socrates: So when you unwillingly give opposite answers about things, it’s clear you don’t know about them? Alcibiades: That’s likely.

There was one more trend that Thucydides noted. In every free and prosperous country he found a parade of monsters: human beings with oversized egos, with ambitions out of proportion to their ability, whose ideas rather belied their understanding than affirmed it. Whereas, there was one Alcibiades in his own day, there were now hundreds of the like: self-serving, cunning and profane; only they did not possess the skills, or the mental acuity, or beauty of Alcibiades. Instead of being exiled, they pushed men of good sense from the center of affairs. Instead of being right about strategy and tactics, they were always wrong. And they were weak, he thought, because they had learned to be bad by the example of others. There was nothing novel about them, although they believed themselves to be original in all things. J.R.Nyquist

The intelligent man may have the same violent and unsocial impulses as the ignorant man, but surely he will control them better, and slip less often into imitation of the beast. And in an intelligently administered society—one that returned to the individual, in widened powers, more than it took from him in restricted liberty—the advantage of every man would lie in social and loyal conduct, and only clear sight would be needed to ensure peace and order and good will. But if the government itself is a chaos and an absurdity, if it rules without helping, and commands without leading, how can we persuade the individual, in such a state, to obey the laws and confine his self-seeking within the circle of the total good? No wonder an Alcibiades turns against a state that distrusts ability, and reverences number more than knowledge. No wonder there is chaos where there is no thought, and the crowd decides in haste and ignorance, to repent at leisure and in desolation.

The single book that has influenced me most is probably the last book in the world that anybody is gonna want to read: Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. This book is dense, difficult, long, full of blood and guts. It wasn’t written, as Thucydides himself attests at the start, to be easy or fun. But it is loaded with hardcore, timeless truths and the story it tells ought to be required reading for every citizen in a democracy. Thucydides was an Athenian general who was beaten and disgraced in a battle early in the 27-year conflagration that came to be called the Peloponnesian War. He decided to drop out of the fighting and dedicate himself to recording, in all the detail he could manage, this conflict, which, he felt certain, would turn out to be the greatest and most significant war ever fought up to that time. He did just that. Have you heard of Pericles’ Funeral Oration? Thucydides was there for it. He transcribed it. He was there for the debates in the Athenian assembly over the treatment of the island of Melos, the famous Melian Dialogue. If he wasn’t there for the defeat of the Athenian fleet at Syracuse or the betrayal of Athens by Alcibiades, he knew people who were there and he went to extremes to record what they told him.Thucydides, like all the Greeks of his era, was unencumbered by Christian theology, or Marxist dogma, or Freudian psychology, or any of the other “isms” that attempt to convince us that man is basically good, or perhaps perfectible. He saw things as they were, in my opinion. It’s a dark vision but tremendously bracing and empowering because it’s true. On the island of Corcyra, a great naval power in its day, one faction of citizens trapped their neighbors and fellow Corcyreans in a temple. They slaughtered the prisoners’ children outside before their eyes and when the captives gave themselves up based on pledges of clemency and oaths sworn before the gods, the captors massacred them as well. This was not a war of nation versus nation, this was brother against brother in the most civilized cities on earth. To read Thucydides is to see our own world in microcosm. It’s the study of how democracies destroy themselves by breaking down into warring factions, the Few versus the Many. Hoi polloi in Greek means “the many.” Oligoi means “the few.” I can’t recommend Thucydides for fun, but if you want to expose yourself to a towering intellect writing on the deepest stuff imaginable, give it a try.

In this way we give our lack, we give what we do not have, Aristophanes’ claim that such a thing is impossible notwithstanding. Men in Western culture generally seem to have a harder time than women do admitting to lack, a harder time verbally admitting that they are missing something, incomplete in some respect, limited in some way – in a word, castrated. (The reader will, I hope, allow me to momentarily associate men with obsession here, and women with hysteria, in a way that vastly overgeneralizes things, in order to highlight something schematically at first.) I do not mean simply admitting that they do not actually know how to drive somewhere in particular or that they do not know some specific fact about something that has come up in a conversation – I mean a lack that is more far-reaching than that! To love is to admit to lack (Soler, 2003, p. 243), and Lacan even goes so far at one point – and here I am jumping ahead some 15 years in his work – to suggest that when a man loves, it is insofar as he is a woman (Lacan, 1973–4, class given on February 12, 1974). Insofar as he is a man, he can admit to desiring the so-called partial objects he sees in his partner, but he generally feels that perfectly good partial objects of much the same kind can be found in many different partners. Insofar as he is a man, he contents himself with the enjoyment he derives from the partial objects he finds in a whole series of interchangeable partners, and avoids like the plague showing that he lacks.But unlike desire, “Love demands love,” as Lacan (1998a, p. 4) puts it in Seminar XX; love insistently requests love in return. When one is fascinated by or lusts after a sexual partner, one’s desire does not necessarily wither or disappear if one does not feel desired in return. Even if “desire is the Other’s desire” (a claim often repeated by Lacan; see, for example, Lacan, 2015, p. 178), in the sense that we wish to be desired in return by the object of our desire, desire can do just fine without being requited. But “to love is to want to be loved” (Lacan, 2006a, p. 853): to love – at least in our times – is to implicitly ask the beloved for love that can make good or somehow compensate one for one’s own lack, the hollow or emptiness one feels inside. In this sense, all love seems to constitute a request for love in return. (In Alcibiades’ case, this takes the form of a pressing demand for Socrates to prove that he returns Alcibiades’ passion for Socrates.) Since to love is to show and declare one’s lack, love is feminine, as Colette Soler (2003, p. 97) says, following Lacan’s statements to their logical conclusion.

Socrates: For, I think, advice about each thing is a matter for the one who knows, and not for one who’s wealthy. Alcibiades: Why, of course.

Socrates: Then alas, Alcibiades, what a condition you suffer from! I hesitate to name it, but, since we two are alone, it must be said. You are wedded to stupidity, best of men, of the most extreme sort, as the argument accuses you and you accuse yourself. So this is why you are leaping into the affairs of the city before you have been educated. You are not the only one to suffer from this; most of those who manage the affairs of the city are the same way, except [C] a few—perhaps including your guardian, Pericles.

And it was you who created us. The notion of male homosexuality didn’t exist in ancient Greece. Socrates could bugger Alcibiades without being seen as a pederast. The Greeks had a more elevated notion of the corruption of youth …

There is one variety of this type, however, that is more dangerous and toxic, because of the levels of power he or she can attain—namely the narcissistic leader. (This type has been around for a long time. In the Bible, Absalom was perhaps the first recorded example, but we find frequent references in ancient literature to others—Alcibiades, Cicero, and Emperor Nero, to name a few.) Almost all dictator types and tyrannical CEOs fall into this category. They generally have more ambition than the average deep narcissist and for a while can funnel this energy into work. Full of narcissistic self-confidence, they attract attention and followers. They say and do things that other people don’t dare say or do, which seems admirable and authentic. They might have a vision for some innovative product, and because they radiate such confidence, they can find others to help them realize their vision. They are experts at using people.

Alcibiades asked him how he stood the nagging.

There was one more trend that Thucydides noted. In every free and prosperous country he found a parade of monsters: human beings with oversized egos, with ambitions out of proportion to their ability, whose ideas rather belied their understanding than affirmed it. Whereas, there was one Alcibiades in his own day, there were now hundreds of the like: self-serving, cunning and profane; only they did not possess the skills, or the mental acuity, or beauty of Alcibiades. Instead of being exiled, they pushed men of good sense from the center of affairs. Instead of being right about strategy and tactics, they were always wrong.

but don’t forget what hero really means. Thucydides says the men of that time enjoyed piracy, and saw nothing wrong with it, and this is true. And what is the pirate but the original form of the free man and of all ascending life! How pathetic, when you are told now about “living life,” or “having a life”—these people know nothing about what true life means. Compare the intensity of Alcibiades, that super-pirate, or of what I am about to describe here, to the “life” you’re encouraged to “have” today. How worthless the vaunting of these anxious creatures who live on pharmaceuticals, cheap wine, the rancid fart-fumes of status and approval they beg from each other.

For the Stoics, what distinguishes our species is the ability to reason and our high degree of sociality, from which it follows that we should spend our existence intent in using our mind to improve social living.

When Aristotle said that poetry is superior to history because history only tells us “what Alcibiades did or had done to him,” he had in mind history as the mere compilation of facts. To matter, history has to do more. It has to reconnect people, in time, to what Aristotle called the “timeless forms” of nature.

There was no longer the harmony between the leaders’ private ambitions and the public good that had been characteristic of Athens under Pericles. [...] Now one might say, in Alcibiades’ defense, that his private ambition for honor and wealth from the Sicilian expedition was in full harmony with the wishes of the Athenian assembly. But one must add that the people’s wishes, as expressed in the assembly, were no true measure of the city’s interests, and not merely because of their ignorance of those interests.

To treat these speeches at this point, before considering 'I'hucydides, might seem contrary to natural chronology. Yet the History as we have it, including the important analysis of Alcibiades at 6. 15, must have achieved its final form after the end of the war-perhaps at around the time Lys. 14 and Isoc. 16 were composed. In any case, as I will argue in Chapter 3, the polarized debate of accusation and defence exemplified in these speeches is essential background to the presentation of Alcibiades in the Histor - v. Moreover, the discussion of the speeches will maintain the focus on Alcibiades' civic image which dominated the previous chapter. For these reasons, it is convenient to discuss the rhetorical material first.

Indeed, what `display' speeches seek to display is partly expertise at appealing to a (notional) demos audience. It is in this area where ideology meets rhetoric that the discussion of this chapter will be located.

Of the rhetorical works composed in the classical period on the subject of Alcibiades, four survive: Isocrates, 16; Lysias, 14 and 15; and [Andocides] 4. [And.] 4,

The trials also raised questions of pressing general interest: the role of the great individual in shaping the fortunes of the city, and the reasons for the failure in the Peloponnesian War and the loss of the empire. "' See further Ch. 4 below. In a late anecdote (Plut. _`lie. 4. 5-6 and with variation Ath. 12. 534ef) someone called Anytus features as Alcibiades' shamefully treated lover. This has led some to suggest that one of the motives of Anytus in his prosecution of Socrates was to rid himself of the stigma of an association with Socrates. But the historical credentials of the store are pitiful. " Dem. i9. i f i . az Cf. Osborne (1985: esp. 52-3); Ober (ig8q: 148); both comparing courtroom to theatre. 2.

L’éducation et la liberté de ces dernières les distinguent des femmes honnêtes qui les méprisent et les jalousent, elles sont indépendantes, peuvent gérer elles-mêmes leurs affaires. La plupart d’entre elles sont étrangères à la cité, comme Nééra, la maîtresse de l’orateur Lysias, native de Corinthe. On les connaît parfois grâce à leurs liaisons les plus célèbres. Théodote fut la compagne d’Alcibiade, Léontion, la compagne du philosophe Épicure, Thaïs, la maîtresse d’Alexandre… La plupart des grandes hétaïres sont richissimes, telles Théodote ou Rhodopis dont une inscription à Delphes atteste de la fortune. Phryné préfère la compagnie des artistes.

ولا بد قبل كل شيء من أن نشير إلى المذهب الأفلاطوني في كتابه الفلسفة ودرسها . وهذا المذهب في نفسه هو مذهب سقراط ، أي أنه يعتمد قبل كل شيء على الحوار ، وإذن فهو في نفسه غير جديد . ولكن لا تنس أن سقراط كان يحاور محاورة لسانية ، أي إنه كان يناقش أصحابه وتلاميذه بالفعل . أما أفلاطون فلم يكن يحاور حوارًا لسانيًّا ، وإنما كان يكتب . والفرق عظيم بين رجل يلقاك فيحاورك ، وبين رجل لا يلقاك ولا يحاورك بالفعل ، وإنما يستوحي قلمه حوارًا بديعًا : تخيل أشخاصه ، واخترع موضوعه اختراعًا . كان سقراط متحدثًا ، أما أفلاطون فمؤلف منشئ . ومن هنا كان من الحق الاعتراف لأفلاطون بفضيلة هذا الفن الفلسفي الأدبي ، الذي لم يسبق إليه ولم يلحق فيه ، وهو فن الحوار . نعم ! إن أفلاطون لم يخترع الحوار اختراعًا ، وإنما تأثر بمؤثرين مختلفين ، نذكرهما لنلفتك إلى الصلة بين الفلسفة والأدب . الأول : فن التمثيل الذي بلغ أقصى ما كان ينتظر له من الرقي في القرن الخامس ، وأثر في حياة الأثينيين خاصةً واليونان عامةً ، تأثيرًا لا حد له . هذا الفن يعتمد على الحوار ، سواء في ذلك قصصه المحزنة والمضحكة . وهو بهذا الأسلوب ، أسلوب الحوار ، قد استطاع أن يؤثر في الجمهور ويبلغ من نفسه ما كان يريد . فليس عجيبًا أن يفتن الناس بالحوار ويتخذوه أسلوبًا من أساليبهم الأدبية . ونستطيع أن نقول : إن كتب أفلاطون كلها أو أكثرها قصص تمثيلية فلسفية . فكتب أفلاطون كلها أو أكثرها عبارة عن مجلس من المجالس ، يجتمع فيه الناس حول سقراط فيتحدثون ، وينتهي بهم الحديث إلى موضوع من الموضوعات ذات الخطر ، فيتحاورون فيه ، ويشرف سقراط على هذا الحوار وما يزال بأصحابه وتلاميذه ينقلهم من موضوع إلى موضوع ومن مسألة إلى مسألة ، ومن صعوبة إلى صعوبة ، حتى ينتهي بهم إلى النتيجة الفلسفية التي كان يريد إثباتها . وكل هذه الكتب أو أكثرها لا تتخذ أسماءها من الموضوعات التي تدرس فيها ، وإنما تسمى بأسماء الأشخاص الذين لهم في الحوار منزلة خاصة ، فهناك « فيدون » (Phédon) ، و « برتاجوراس » (Protagoras) ، و « جرجياس » (Gorgias) ، و « ألسبياد » (Alcibiade) ، وغيرها من الكتب التي تسمى بأسماء الأشخاص ؛ وقليلة جدًّا تلك الكتب التي تسمى بأسماء الموضوعات ، كالجمهورية والقوانين وغيرهما. المؤثر الثاني : الشعر ، وأريد الشعر الغنائي الذي تعمق في البحث عن العواطف الإنسانية ، حتى اهتدى إلى دقائقها ، وارتقى في تشخيص هذه العواطف وتمثيلها ، حتى بلغ من العظمة حدًّا ربما لم يبلغه الشعر الحديث . وقد يكون من الحق ألا ننسى الشعر القصصي ، الذي اعتمد عليه أفلاطون في هذه الأساطير المنبثة في كتبه ، والتي يستعين بها على تفسير النظريات الفلسفية وتقريبها . فأنت ترى أن أفلاطون لم يخترع فنه الأدبي اختراعًا ، وإنما تأثر فيه بألوان الشعر الثلاثة ، كما أنه لم يخترع فلسفته اختراعًا وإنما تأثر فيها بالمذاهب الفلسفية المختلفة التي سبقته وعاصرته . ولكن تأثره بالشعر والفلسفة لم يضطره إلى التقاليد ولم يضعف من شخصيته ، وإنما قوَّى هذه الشخصية تقوية عظيمة . وأين هو هذا النابغة الذي يخترع شيئًا من لا شيء ويحدث أحداثًا لا تتصل بما قبلها ، ولا تتأثر بما حولها ؟ وسنرى أن أفلاطون نفسه لم يستطع أن يتصور إلهًا يوجد شيئًا من لا شيء.

If the analysand becomes a lover, it is because he comes to believe that something in us corresponds to the lack in him. And like Alcibiades, he may even come to see still more in us, what Lacan calls object a, just as Alcibiades sees what he calls the precious, shiny agálmata in Socrates. Indeed, it is precisely these agálmata that first allow Lacan to formulate the notion of object a as we find it in all of his later work, the object that makes one person incommensurate with all others, nonfungible, irreplaceable. Alcibiades says, “I had a glimpse of the figures (agálmata) Socrates keeps hidden within: they were so godlike – so bright and beautiful, so utterly amazing – that I no longer had a choice – I just had to do whatever he told me” (216e). We analysts, however, realize that it is love for object a that we have managed to incite, not love for ourselves as living, breathing human beings with our own personalities. We do not seek to be loved “for ourselves” in analysis: we seek to set the analysand ablaze so that he will do the difficult work of analysis.

Both Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae and Tides of War: A Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War are well-told accounts of crucial events in Greek history.

Myrtle can’t grow in the shade. It would wither and die. Someone has made it grow in the dark.” “How?” “Magic. How else?” Alcibiades shrugged, and Socrates said, “How else? That’s a serious question. If you don’t believe in magic, how did this sprig grow here? Perhaps the gods wanted it to. If so, they may have left it for us as a sign.” “What kind of sign?” “An omen.