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Section 112

Socrates. What then now? Concerning just and unjust men and affairs, do the many seem to you to agree with themselves or with each other?

Alcibiades. Least of all, by Zeus, Socrates.

Socrates. What then? Do they differ most of all about them?

Alcibiades. Very much so.

Socrates. I suppose you have never seen or heard of men differing so vehemently about healthy and unhealthy things that they fight and kill each other because of them.

Alcibiades. No, indeed.

Socrates. But concerning the just and unjust things, I know well that even if you have not seen it, you have at least heard of it from many others and from Homer; for you have heard both the Odyssey and the Iliad.

Alcibiades. Assuredly, I suppose, Socrates.

Socrates. Are not these poems about a difference concerning just and unjust things?

Alcibiades. Yes.

Socrates. And the battles and the deaths occurred because of this difference both for the Achaeans and the other Trojans, and for the suitors of Penelope and Odysseus.

Alcibiades. You speak the truth.

Socrates. And I think also for those who died at Tanagra, both Athenians and Lacedaemonians and Boeotians, and those later at Coronea, among whom your father Clinias died too, the difference was about nothing else than the just and the unjust that caused the deaths and the battles, was it not?

Alcibiades. You speak the truth.

Socrates. Shall we say then that these people know the things about which they differ so vehemently that in disputing with one another they inflict the ultimate extremes upon themselves?

Alcibiades. It appears not.

Socrates. Do you then refer to such teachers, whom you yourself agree do not know?

Alcibiades. It seems so.

Socrates. How then is it likely that you know the just and the unjust things, about which you wander so much and appear neither to have learned from anyone nor to have discovered yourself?

Alcibiades. From what you say, it is not likely.

Socrates. Do you see again that you did not speak well in this, Alcibiades?

Alcibiades. In what?

Socrates. That you say that I am saying these things.

Alcibiades. What? Are you not saying that I know nothing about the just and the unjust things?

Socrates. Not at all.

Alcibiades. But am I?

Socrates. Yes.

Alcibiades. How so?

Socrates. You will know in this way. If I ask you about one and two, which is more, you will say that the two are?

Alcibiades. I will.

Socrates. By how much?

Alcibiades. By one.

Socrates. Which of us then is the one who says that the two is more than the one by one?

Alcibiades. I am.

Socrates. Was I not asking, and you answering?

Alcibiades. Yes.