Soc. Well, just such a person, as I was saying, Alcibiades, was Oedipus; and even in our time you will find many who do the same, not in a fit of anger, as he was: they think they pray not for something evil, but for something good. He neither prayed for that, nor thought he did, but there are others who are in the opposite case. For I imagine that if the god to whom you are now going should appear to you and first ask you, before you made any prayer, whether you would be content to become sovereign of the Athenian state and, on your accounting this as something poor and unimportant, should add and of all the Greeks also
; and if he saw you were still unsatisfied unless he promised you besides the mastery of all Europe, and should not merely promise you that, but on the self-same day a recognition by all men, if you so desired, of Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, as their sovereign—I imagine you would actually depart in a transport of delight, as having secured the greatest of goods.
Alc. So would anybody else, I imagine, Socrates, at such a stroke of luck!
Soc. But still you would not wish to sacrifice your life even for the territory and sovereignty of all the Greeks and barbarians together.
Alc. I should think not. How could I, without a prospect of making any use of them?
Soc. And what if you had a prospect of making an evil and injurious use of them? Not in this case either?
Alc. No, indeed.
Soc. So you see it is not safe either to accept casually what one is given, or to pray for one’s own advancement, if one is going to be injured in consequence, or deprived of one’s life altogether. Yet we could tell of many ere now who, having desired sovereignty, and endeavored to secure it, with the idea of working for their good, have lost their lives by plots which their sovereignty has provoked. And I expect you are not unacquainted with certain events of a day or two ago,
Hom. Il. 2.303 when Archelaus, the monarch of Macedonia, was slain Footnote 1This assassination occurred in B.C., the year of Socrates’ death. by his favorite, who was as much in love with the monarchy as Archelaus was with him, and who killed his lover with the expectation of being not only the monarch, but also a happy man: but after holding the monarchy for three or four days he was plotted against by others in his turn, and perished.