Note 44 — Chapter XII · ALKIBIADES I. AND II.

Steinhart, Einleitung, p. 516-519. Stallbaum and Boeckh indeed assign the dialogue to a later period. Heindorf (ad Lysin, p. 211) thinks it the work “antiqui auctoris, sed non Platonis”.

Steinhart and others who disallow the authenticity of the Second Alkibiadês insist much (p. 518) upon the enormity of the chronological blunder, whereby Sokrates and Alkibiadês are introduced as talking about the death of Archelaus king of Macedonia, who was killed in 399 B.C., in the same year as Sokrates, and four years after Alkibiades. Such an anachronism (Steinhart urges) Plato could never allow himself to commit. But when we read the Symposion, we find Aristophanes in a company of which Sokrates, Alkibiades, and Agathon form a part, alluding to the διοίκισις of Mantineia, which took place in 386 B.C. No one has ever made this glaring anachronism a ground for disallowing the Symposion. Steinhart says that the style of the Second Alkibiadês copies Plato too closely (die ängstlich platonisirende Sprache des Dialogs, p. 515), yet he agrees with Stallbaum that in several places it departs too widely from Plato.