Note 45 — Chapter XII · ALKIBIADES I. AND II.

Stallbaum refers the composition of Alkib. i. to a time not long before the accusation of Sokrates, when the enemies of Sokrates were calumniating him in consequence of his past intimacy with Alkibiades (who had before that time been killed in 404 B.C.) and when Plato was anxious to defend his master (Prolegg. p. 186). Socher and Steinhart (p. 210) remark that such writings would do little good to Sokrates under his accusation. They place the composition of the dialogue earlier, in 406 B.C. (Steinhart, p. 151-152), and they consider it the first exercise of Plato in the strict dialectic method. Both Steinhart and Hermann (Gesch. Plat. Phil. p. 440) think that the dialogue has not only a speculative but a political purpose; to warn and amend Alkibiades, and to prevent him from surrendering himself blindly to the democracy.

I cannot admit the hypothesis that the dialogue was written in 406 B.C. (when Plato was twenty-one years of age, at most twenty-two), nor that it had any intended bearing upon the real historical Alkibiades, who left Athens in 415 B.C. at the head of the armament against Syracuse, was banished three months afterwards, and never came back to Athens until May 407 B.C. (Xenoph. Hellen. i. 4, 13; i. 5, 17). He then enjoyed four months of great ascendancy at Athens, left it at the head of the fleet to Asia in Oct. 407 B.C., remained in command of the fleet for about three months or so, then fell into disgrace and retired to Chersonese, never revisiting Athens. In 406 B.C. Alkibiades was again in banishment, out of the reach of all such warnings as Hermann and Steinhart suppose that Plato intended to address to him in Alkib. i.

Steinhart says (p. 152), “In dieser Zeit also, wenige Jahre nach seiner triumphirenden Rückkehr, wo Alkibiades,” &c. Now Alkibiades left the Athenian service, irrevocably, within less than one year after his triumphant return.

Steinhart has not realised in his mind the historical and chronological conditions of the period.