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Section 105

Socrates. Then it must be said. Now it is hard for a lover to approach a man who is not inferior to his lovers; nevertheless I must dare to state my thought. For if I saw you, Alcibiades, content with the things I just went through and thinking that you ought to spend your life in them, I would long ago have been released from my love, at least as I persuade myself. But now I will lay other thoughts of yours as a charge against you yourself, by which you will also know that I have continued all along to keep my mind fixed on you. For I think that if one of the gods were to say to you, "Alcibiades, do you wish to live having what you now have, or to die at once if it will not be possible for you to acquire greater things?" you would choose, I think, to die. But I will tell you now on what hope you are living. You suppose that if you quickly come before the Athenian people, and this will happen within very few days, then, once you have come forward, you will show the Athenians that you deserve to be honored as neither Pericles nor anyone else who has ever lived; and that, having shown this, you will have the greatest power in the city. And if you are greatest here, you will be greatest among the other Greeks too, and not only among Greeks, but also among the barbarians, all who live on the same continent as we do. And if this same god were then to tell you that you must rule here in Europe, but that it would not be possible for you to cross into Asia or to lay your hand on affairs there, I think you would again be unwilling to live on these terms alone, unless you could fill nearly all human beings, one might say, with your name and your power. And I think you believe that no one except Cyrus and Xerxes has ever been worthy of mention. That you have this hope, then, I know well and am not guessing. Perhaps, then, since you know that I am telling the truth, you might say, "What, then, Socrates, does this have to do with the matter? You said you would tell me why you do not leave me." I will indeed tell you, dear son of Clinias and Deinomache. For it is impossible for all these thoughts of yours to reach their fulfillment without me; so great a power do I think I have over your affairs and over you. That is why I think the god has so long prevented me from conversing with you, and I was waiting until he allowed it. For just as you have hopes of showing the city that you are worth everything to it, and once you have shown that, of being able to do almost anything at once, so I too hope to have the greatest power with you, after showing that I am worth everything to you, and that neither guardian nor kinsman nor anyone else is capable of handing over to you the power you desire except me, with the god, however. When you were younger, then, and before you were filled with so great a hope, as it seems to me, the god did not allow me to converse with you, so that I would not converse in vain. But now he has let me; for now you would listen to me.