Note 52 — Chapter XII · ALKIBIADES I. AND II.

The date which I here suppose for the composition of Alkib. i. (i.e. after the death of Sokrates, but early in the literary career of Plato), is farther sustained (against those critics who place it in 406 B.C. or 402 B.C. before the death of Sokrates) by the long discourse (p. 121-124) of Sokrates about the Persian and Spartan kings. In reference to the Persian monarchy Sokrates says (p. 123 B), ἐπεί ποτ’ ἐγὼ ἥκουσα ἀνδρὸς ἀξιοπίστου τῶν ἀναβεβηκότων παρὰ βασιλέα, ὃς ἔφη παρελθεῖν χώραν πάνυ πολλὴν καὶ ἀγαθήν — ἣν καλεῖν τοὺς ἐπιχωρίους ζώνην τῆς βασιλέως γυναικός, &c. Olympiodorus and the Scholiast both suppose that Plato here refers to Xenophon and the Anabasis, in which a statement very like this is found (i. 4, 9). It is plain, therefore, that they did not consider the dialogue to have been composed before the death of Sokrates. I think it very probable that Plato had in his mind Xenophon (either his Anabasis, or personal communications with him); but at any rate visits of Greeks to the Persian court became very numerous between 399-390 B.C., whereas Plato can hardly have seen any such visitors at Athens in 406 B.C. (before the close of the war), nor probably in 402 B.C., when Athens, though relieved from the oligarchy, was still in a state of great public prostration. Between 399 B.C. and the peace of Antalkidas (387 B.C.), visitors from Greece to the interior of Persia became more and more frequent, the Persian kings interfering very actively in Grecian politics. Plato may easily have seen during these years intelligent Greeks who had been up to the Persian court on military or political business. Both the Persian kings and the Spartan kings were then in the maximum of power and ascendancy — it is no wonder therefore that Sokrates should here be made to dwell upon their prodigious dignity in his discourse with Alkibiades. Steinhart (Einl. p. 150) feels the difficulty of reconciling this part of the dialogue with his hypothesis that it was composed in 406 B.C.: yet he and Stallbaum both insist that it must have been composed before the death of Sokrates, for which they really produce no grounds at all.