Analogy with various dialogues in the Xenophontic Memorabilia — Purpose of Sokrates to humble presumptuous young men.
If we compare various colloquies of Sokrates in the Xenophontic Memorabilia, we shall find Alkibiadês I. and II. very analogous to them both in purpose and spirit. In Alkibiadês I. the situation conceived is the same as that of Sokrates and Glaukon, in the third book of the Memorabilia. Xenophon recounts how the presumptuous Glaukon, hardly twenty years of age, fancied himself already fit to play a conspicuous part in public affairs, and tried to force himself, in spite of rebuffs and humiliations, upon the notice of the assembly.[46] No remonstrances of friends could deter him, nor could anything, except the ingenious dialectic of Sokrates, convince him of his own impertinent forwardness and exaggerated self-estimation. Probably Plato (Glaukon’s elder brother) had heard of this conversation, but whether the fact be so or not, we see the same situation idealised by him in Alkibiadês I., and worked out in a way of his own. Again, we find in the Xenophontic Memorabilia another colloquy, wherein Sokrates cross-questions, perplexes, and humiliates, the studious youth Euthydemus,[47] whom he regards as over-confident in his persuasions and too well satisfied with himself. It was among the specialties of Sokrates to humiliate confident young men, with a view to their future improvement. He made his conversation “an instrument of chastisement,” in the language of Xenophon: or (to use a phrase of Plato himself in the Lysis) he conceived. “that the proper way of talking to youth whom you love, was, not to exalt and puff them up, but to subdue and humiliate them”.[48]
[46] Xenoph. Memor. iii. 6.
[47] Xenoph. Mem. iv. 2.
[48] Xenoph. Mem. i. 4, 1. σκεψάμενοι μὴ μόνον ἃ ἐκεῖνος (Sokrates) κολαστηρίου ἕνεκα τούς πάντ’ οἰομένους εἰδέναι ἐρωτῶν ἤλεγχεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἃ λέγων συνημέρευε τοῖς συνδιατρίβουσιν, &c. So in the Platonic Lysis, the youthful Lysis says to Sokrates “Talk to Menexenus, ἵν’ αὐτὸν κολάσῃς” (Plat. Lysis, 211 B). And Sokrates himself says, a few lines before (210 E), Οὕτω χρὴ τοῖς παιδικοῖς διαλέγεσθαι, ταπεινοῦντα καὶ συστέλλοντα, καὶ μὴ ὥσπερ σὺ χαυνοῦντα καὶ διαθρύπτοντα.
Fitness of the name and character of Alkibiades for idealising this feature in Sokrates.
If Plato wished to idealise this feature in the character of Sokrates, no name could be more suitable to his purpose than that of Alkibiades: who, having possessed as a youth the greatest personal beauty (to which Sokrates was exquisitely sensible) had become in his mature life distinguished not less for unprincipled ambition and insolence, than for energy and ability. We know the real Alkibiadês both from Thucydides and Xenophon, and we also know that Alkibiades had in his youth so far frequented the society of Sokrates as to catch some of that dialectic ingenuity, which the latter was expected and believed to impart.[49] The contrast, as well as the companionship, between Sokrates and Alkibiades was eminently suggestive to the writers of Sokratic dialogues, and nearly all of them made use of it, composing dialogues in which Alkibiades was the principal name and figure.[50] It would be surprising indeed if Plato had never done the same: which is what we must suppose, if we adopt Schleiermacher’s view, that both Alkibiadês I. and II. are spurious. In the Protagoras as well as in the Symposion, Alkibiades figures; but in neither of them is he the principal person, or titular hero, of the piece. In Alkibiadês I. and II., he is introduced as the solitary respondent to the questions of Sokrates — κολαστηρίου ἕνεκα: to receive from Sokrates a lesson of humiliation such as the Xenophontic Sokrates administers to Glaukon and Euthydemus, taking care to address the latter when alone.[51]
[49] The sensibility of Sokrates to youthful beauty is as strongly declared in the Xenophontic Memorabilia (i. 3, 8-14), as in the Platonic Lysis, Charmidês, or Symposion.
The conversation reported by Xenophon between Alkibiades, when not yet twenty years of age, and his guardian Perikles, the first man in Athens — wherein Alkibiades puzzles Perikles by a Sokratic cross-examination — is likely enough to be real, and was probably the fruit of his sustained society with Sokrates (Xen. Memor. i. 2, 40).
[50] Stallbaum observes (Prolegg. ad Alcib. i. p. 215, 2nd ed.), “Ceterum etiam Æschines, Euclides, Phædon, et Antisthenes, dialogos Alcibiadis nomine inscriptos composuisse narrantur”.