Socrates and Alcibiades: Four Texts gathers together translations
our four most important sources for the relationship between
Socrates and the most controversial man of his day, the gifted and
scandalous Alcibiades. In addition to Alcibiades' famous speech
from Plato's Symposium, this text includes two dialogues, the
Alcibiades I and Alcibiades II, attributed to Plato in antiquity
but unjustly neglected today, and the complete fragments of the
dialogue Alcibiades by Plato's contemporary, Aeschines of Sphettus.
These works are essential reading for anyone interested in
Socrates' improbable love affair with Athens' most desirable youth,
his attempt to woo Alcibiades from his ultimately disastrous
worldly ambitions to the philosophical life, and the reasons for
Socrates' failure, which played a large role in his conviction by
an Athenian court on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth.
Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are
non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a
glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the
terms and the concepts as they were understood by Plato's immediate
audience.