Alcibiades I
Plato
Read Alcibiades I by Plato in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/1676-alcibiades-i.txt.
Description
Plato's dialogue, translated by Benjamin Jowett, shows Socrates meeting the young Alcibiades just as the brilliant youth prepares to enter Athenian politics. The prefatory appendix warns that the dialogue may be spurious, a doubt scholars still discuss. Socrates asks a simple question: what will Alcibiades advise the city about, and what does he actually know?
The talk turns to justice, advantage, and the need to know oneself before ruling others. Alcibiades, spoiled by praise, finds his confidence quietly taken apart. The dialogue reads as a warning portrait of talent without wisdom, made sharper by what Athens later suffered from Alcibiades himself. Jowett's notes place the work among Plato's disputed writings.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Plato |
|---|---|
| COLLECTION | BOOKS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 122 KB |
| LICENSE | PUBLIC_DOMAIN |
| RIGHTS | PUBLIC DOMAIN |
| SOURCE | Project Gutenberg |