Alcibiades Symposium Quotes

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.

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

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: 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.

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.