ALCIBIADES (I) by Plato - Complete text

Page 13

Soc.: And you would have a proof that they were bad teachers of these matters, if you saw them at variance?

Alc.: I should.

Soc.: Well, but are the many agreed with themselves, or with one another, about the justice or injustice of men and things?

Alc.: Assuredly not, Socrates.

Soc.: There is no subject about which they are more at variance?

Alc.: None.

Soc.: I do not suppose that you ever saw or heard of men quarrelling over the principles of health and disease to such an extent as to go to war and kill one another for the sake of them?

Alc.: No indeed.

Soc.: But of the quarrels about justice and injustice, even if you have never seen them, you have certainly heard from many people, including Homer; for you have heard of the Iliad and Odyssey?

Alc.: To be sure, Socrates.

Soc.: A difference of just and unjust is the argument of those poems?

Alc.: True.

Soc.: Which difference caused all the wars and deaths of Trojans and Achaeans, and the deaths of the suitors of Penelope in their quarrel with Odysseus.

Alc.: Very true.

Soc.: And when the Athenians and Lacedaemonians and Boeotians fell at Tanagra, and afterwards in the battle of Coronea, at which your father Cleinias met his end, the question was one of justice—this was the sole cause of the battles, and of their deaths.

Alc.: Very true.

Soc.: But can they be said to understand that about which they are quarrelling to the death?

Alc.: Clearly not.

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