Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
SOCRATES: Alcibiades, are you on your way to pray to the god? ALCIBIADES: I certainly am, Socrates. SOCRATES: You do look rather grim, staring at the ground, as if you're turning something over in your mind. ALCIBIADES: What would anyone have to turn over, Socrates? SOCRATES: The biggest thing there is to turn over, Alcibiades, in my opinion. Look, by Zeus — don't you think that the gods, when it comes to what we pray for, privately and publicly, sometimes grant some of it and not the rest, and grant it to some people and not others? ALCIBIADES: Certainly. SOCRATES: Then don't you think it takes a great deal of foresight, so that a person doesn't unknowingly pray for great evils while believing they're goods, and the gods happen to be in just the disposition to grant whatever someone happens to be praying for? Take Oedipus, for instance — they say he prayed that his sons divide his inheritance by the sword. He could have prayed for some relief from the troubles he already had, but instead he called down still more on top of them. And so that prayer was fulfilled, and out of it came many other terrible things — what need is there to go through them one by one? ALCIBIADES: But Socrates, the man you're describing was insane. Who in his right mind do you think would dare pray for such things? SOCRATES: Does being insane seem to you the opposite of being sane? ALCIBIADES: Certainly. SOCRATES: And do you think some people are senseless and some sensible? ALCIBIADES: I do. SOCRATES: Well then, let's examine who exactly these people are. We've agreed that there are some who are senseless, some sensible, and others who are simply insane. ALCIBIADES: Yes, we've agreed to that. SOCRATES: And further, that some people are healthy? ALCIBIADES: There are. SOCRATES: And others sick?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly. SOCRATES: And they're not the same people? ALCIBIADES: No. SOCRATES: Is there some third group who are neither one nor the other? ALCIBIADES: No, there isn't. SOCRATES: Because a human being must either be sick or not sick. ALCIBIADES: So it seems to me. SOCRATES: Now then — do you hold the same view about sense and senselessness? ALCIBIADES: What do you mean? SOCRATES: Whether you think it's possible to be either sensible or senseless, or whether there's some third condition in between that makes a person neither sensible nor senseless. ALCIBIADES: No, there isn't. SOCRATES: So one or the other must apply to every person. ALCIBIADES: So it seems to me. SOCRATES: And you remember agreeing that madness is the opposite of sense? ALCIBIADES: I do. SOCRATES: And also that there's no third condition in between that makes a person neither sensible nor senseless? ALCIBIADES: Yes, I agreed to that. SOCRATES: And surely two things can't both be opposite to one and the same thing? ALCIBIADES: No, they can't. SOCRATES: So senselessness and madness are likely to be the same thing. ALCIBIADES: So it appears. SOCRATES: Then, Alcibiades, we'd be right to say that all senseless people are mad — including, say, some of your own age-mates who happen to be senseless, as some are, and some of your elders too. Look, by Zeus — don't you think that in the city only a few people are sensible, and the majority senseless — the very people you're calling mad? ALCIBIADES: I do. SOCRATES: Then do you think we'd be happy living as citizens among so many madmen, and not getting beaten and stoned and suffering all the things madmen tend to do — that we wouldn't long ago have paid the price? Look again, my good man — maybe it isn't like that at all. ALCIBIADES: How could it be, then, Socrates? It seems it isn't as I thought. SOCRATES: I don't think so either. We need to look at it from another angle. ALCIBIADES: What angle do you mean? SOCRATES: I'll tell you. We take it that some people are sick — right? ALCIBIADES: Certainly. SOCRATES: Do you think it's necessary that a sick person have gout, or a fever, or an eye disease — or could someone have none of those and still be sick with some other illness? There are plenty of illnesses, after all, not just those. ALCIBIADES: That seems right to me. SOCRATES: So do you think every illness is an eye disease? ALCIBIADES: Yes. SOCRATES: And is every eye disease an illness? ALCIBIADES: No, not at all — though I'm not sure how to put it.
SOCRATES: But if you pay attention along with me, the two of us searching together may well find the answer. ALCIBIADES: I am paying attention, Socrates, as much as I can. SOCRATES: So we agreed that every eye disease is an illness, but not every illness is an eye disease? ALCIBIADES: We agreed to that. SOCRATES: And rightly so, it seems to me. Take fever — everyone with a fever is sick, but not everyone who's sick has a fever, or gout, or an eye disease, I imagine. Rather, illness is the whole broad category, and the people we call doctors say that its particular workings differ. They don't all produce the same effects in the same way, but each according to its own particular power — yet they're all illnesses nonetheless. In the same way, we take it there are various kinds of craftsmen — right? ALCIBIADES: Certainly. SOCRATES: Cobblers, carpenters, sculptors, and countless others — what need is there to list them one by one? They each have their own division of the crafts, and all of them are craftsmen, yet not all craftsmen are carpenters, or cobblers, or sculptors — even though those trades taken together make up 'craftsman.' ALCIBIADES: No, they're not. SOCRATES: Well, senselessness is divided up in just the same way. Those who have the largest share of it we call mad, and those with a somewhat smaller share we call foolish or dimwitted. And people who prefer to use the politest possible words call them 'high-minded,' or 'simple,' or others call them 'innocent,' 'inexperienced,' 'green' — you'll find plenty of other names too if you go looking. All of it is senselessness, but it differs, just as we saw one craft differs from another, and one illness from another. What do you think? ALCIBIADES: I think the same. SOCRATES: Then let's go back to where we started. It was right there at the beginning of our discussion that we needed to examine who exactly the senseless and the sensible are. We'd agreed that there are such people — hadn't we? ALCIBIADES: Yes, we agreed to that. SOCRATES: So do you take the sensible to be those who know what one ought to do and say? ALCIBIADES: I do. SOCRATES: And which are the senseless? Those who know neither? ALCIBIADES: Those. SOCRATES: And those who know neither will end up, without realizing it, both saying and doing things they shouldn't? ALCIBIADES: So it appears.
SOCRATES: It's people like this, Alcibiades, that I meant when I said Oedipus was one of them. You'll find plenty of people today too who aren't driven by anger, as he was, and don't think they're praying for evils, but for goods. He, on the other hand, didn't even mean to pray for what he prayed for, and didn't think he was — while there are others who've had the opposite experience. I think, in fact, that if the god you're on your way to see appeared to you and, before you prayed for anything at all, asked whether it would satisfy you to become tyrant of Athens — and if you thought that too small a thing, not much at all, added the rule of all the Greeks — and if he saw you still thinking you had too little unless you had all of Europe as well, granted you that too, and not only granted it but promised that this very day, the moment you wished it, everyone would know that Alcibiades son of Cleinias is tyrant — I think you'd go away overjoyed, believing you'd won the greatest of goods. ALCIBIADES: I think so too, Socrates — and so would anyone else, if such things happened to him. SOCRATES: And yet you wouldn't want to trade your own life, would you, even for the territory and tyranny of all the Greeks and barbarians together? ALCIBIADES: No, I don't think I would. Why would I, if I weren't going to make any use of it? SOCRATES: And what if you were going to use it badly and harmfully? Not even then? ALCIBIADES: No, not even then. SOCRATES: You see, then, how it isn't safe either to accept whatever's given without discrimination, or to pray to become such a person yourself, if one is likely to be harmed by it, or to lose one's life entirely because of it. We could name many who, having desired tyranny and eagerly pursued it as though winning some great good, were plotted against on account of that very tyranny and stripped of their lives. I imagine you haven't failed to hear of some things that happened only yesterday or the day before — how Archelaus, the tyrant of Macedon, was killed by his own favorite, who was no less in love with the tyranny than he had been with the boy, and murdered his lover expecting to become a happy tyrant himself — only to hold the tyranny three or four days before he too was plotted against by others and met his end.
SOCRATES: And you can see it too among our own citizens — this isn't something we've heard from others, but things we've witnessed ourselves — how many who desired a generalship and won it are, some of them, still exiles from this city today, and others have lost their lives. And those who seem to have fared best, after passing through many dangers and fears — not only during their term as general, but even once they'd come home again — found themselves besieged by their accusers no less than they'd been besieged by the enemy, so that some of them prayed never to have held command at all, rather than to have held it. If the dangers and hardships had actually led somewhere useful, there'd be some sense to it — but as it is, quite the opposite. You'll find the same pattern with children too — people who prayed to have them, and once they came, fell into the greatest misfortunes and griefs. Some, because their children turned out wicked through and through, spent their whole lives in grief; others, whose children turned out well but were then lost through misfortune, ended up no less unlucky than the first group, and would have preferred them never born at all rather than born and lost. And yet, even with these cases and countless others just like them staring us plainly in the face, it's rare to find anyone who'd refuse what's offered, or stop praying once they're on the verge of getting what they prayed for. Most people wouldn't refuse a tyranny if it were offered, or a generalship, or plenty of other things that do more harm than good once you have them — they'd pray to have them if they lacked them. But then, a little while later, they often sing a different tune, unpraying for the very things they first prayed for. So I really do wonder whether people are truly right to blame the gods, saying their troubles come from them, when it's the people themselves who, through their own recklessness — or shall we call it senselessness — bring on pains beyond what's fated for them. At any rate, Alcibiades, that poet seems to have been a wise one who, having some foolish friends, and seeing them doing and praying for things that weren't for the best, though they thought otherwise, composed a single prayer on behalf of all of them together. It goes something like this — 'Zeus our king, grant us what is good, whether we pray for it or not, and turn away what is harmful even if we pray for it.'
SOCRATES: Well, to me the poet seems to speak both well and safely. But if you have something in mind against it, don't keep quiet. ALCIBIADES: It's hard, Socrates, to argue against something so well said. Still, here's what occurs to me: think how much harm ignorance causes people, since it seems we're often unaware, because of it, that we're not only acting badly but even, in the end, praying for the worst things for ourselves. Nobody would think that of himself — everyone believes he's perfectly capable of praying for the best for himself, not the worst. That would be more like a curse than a prayer. SOCRATES: But perhaps, my excellent friend, someone wiser than either of us would say we're not right to blame ignorance so carelessly, unless we add that there's an ignorance of some things, and for some people, that's actually good, just as for others it's bad. ALCIBIADES: What do you mean? Is there really anything, in any condition, that it's better to not know than to know? SOCRATES: It seems so to me. Doesn't it to you? ALCIBIADES: No, by Zeus, it doesn't. SOCRATES: But surely I won't accuse you of this either — of being willing to do to your own mother what they say Orestes did, and Alcmaeon, and anyone else who's done the same sort of thing. ALCIBIADES: Watch your words, Socrates, for god's sake! SOCRATES: It's not the one who says you wouldn't be willing to do that, Alcibiades, whose words need watching — it's much more the one who'd say the opposite, since you think the thing is so terrible it shouldn't even be mentioned so casually. Do you think that if Orestes had actually been sensible and known what was best for him to do, he'd have dared to do any of that? ALCIBIADES: Certainly not. SOCRATES: Nor would anyone else, I think. ALCIBIADES: No, indeed. SOCRATES: So ignorance of what's best, and simply not knowing what's best, is a bad thing, it seems. ALCIBIADES: I think so. SOCRATES: And that holds for him and for everyone else too? ALCIBIADES: I agree.
SOCRATES: Now let's look at this too. Suppose it occurred to you right now, thinking it would be better, to take a dagger and go to the door of Pericles, your guardian and friend, and ask if he's home, wanting to kill him and no one else. And suppose they said he was home — I'm not saying you'd be willing to do any of that, but suppose, as could happen, that it occurred to someone ignorant of what's best that even the worst thing was somehow the best — don't you think that's possible? ALCIBIADES: Certainly. SOCRATES: So if you went inside and saw him, but failed to recognize him and thought he was someone else, would you still dare to kill him? ALCIBIADES: No, by Zeus, I don't think I would. SOCRATES: Because it's surely not just anyone you happened to meet, but that particular man you wanted, isn't that so? ALCIBIADES: Yes. SOCRATES: So even if you tried again and again, but always failed to recognize Pericles whenever you were about to do it, you'd never succeed. ALCIBIADES: No, indeed. SOCRATES: And what about Orestes — do you think he'd ever have attacked his mother if he'd likewise failed to recognize her? ALCIBIADES: I don't think so. SOCRATES: Because he didn't intend to kill just any woman he happened to meet, or anyone's mother, but his own. ALCIBIADES: That's true. SOCRATES: So ignorance of such things is actually better for people in that condition, holding those kinds of beliefs. ALCIBIADES: It appears so. SOCRATES: You see, then, that ignorance of some things, for some people, is somehow a good, not a bad thing, as you thought a moment ago? ALCIBIADES: It seems so. SOCRATES: Now, if you're willing, let's examine what comes next — it might seem strange to you. ALCIBIADES: What in particular, Socrates? SOCRATES: That, so to speak, possessing any of the other sciences, if one possesses it without the knowledge of what's best, is likely to help rarely, but harm the possessor more often. Look at it this way. Doesn't it seem necessary to you that whenever we're about to do or say something, we must first think we know, or actually know, whatever it is we're about to say or do? ALCIBIADES: I think so.
SOCRATES: Now, the public speakers, when they advise us — some on war and peace, others on building walls or constructing harbors — in every case, whatever the city does toward another city or on its own, all of it comes from the advice of speakers, who either actually know how to advise, or think they know. ALCIBIADES: True. SOCRATES: Then look at what follows from this. ALCIBIADES: I'll try. SOCRATES: You call some people sensible, and others senseless? ALCIBIADES: I do. SOCRATES: And the many senseless, the few sensible? ALCIBIADES: Just so. SOCRATES: And you're looking at something in particular when you say this of both? ALCIBIADES: Yes. SOCRATES: Do you call someone sensible who knows how to advise, apart from knowing which course is better and when it's better? ALCIBIADES: No, indeed. SOCRATES: Nor, I think, anyone who knows how to make war itself, apart from knowing when it's better and for how long it's better. Isn't that so? ALCIBIADES: Yes. SOCRATES: Nor even someone who knows how to kill a person, or take away his property, or exile him from his homeland, apart from knowing when that's better, and for whom it's better? ALCIBIADES: No, indeed. SOCRATES: So whoever knows any of these things — if the knowledge of what's best goes along with it (and that, surely, is the same as the knowledge of what's beneficial, isn't it?) — ALCIBIADES: Yes. SOCRATES: — we'll call sensible, and a competent advisor both to the city and to himself; but whoever lacks that, the opposite. Or how does it seem to you? ALCIBIADES: That's how it seems to me. SOCRATES: And what if someone knows how to ride a horse, or shoot a bow, or again box or wrestle, or any other athletic skill, or anything else we know as a craft — what do you call someone who knows what makes for excellence within that particular craft? Don't you call the one skilled in horsemanship a horseman? ALCIBIADES: I do. SOCRATES: And the one skilled in boxing a boxer, I suppose, and the one skilled in flute-playing a flute-player, and so on for the rest by the same reasoning? Or some other way? ALCIBIADES: No, that way. SOCRATES: Does it seem necessary to you, then, that someone knowledgeable in these things must also be a sensible man, or shall we say he falls far short of it? ALCIBIADES: Far short indeed, by Zeus. SOCRATES: Then what sort of government do you suppose it would be, made up of good archers and flute-players, and also athletes and other craftsmen, mixed in among them those we just mentioned who know war itself and killing itself, and besides these men of rhetoric puffed up with political self-importance — all of them lacking the knowledge of what's best, of knowing when it's better to make use of each of these skills and against whom?
ALCIBIADES: A poor sort of thing, I'd say, Socrates. SOCRATES: You'd say so, I think, whenever you saw each one of them competing for honor and claiming the largest share of public affairs for that thing at which he happens to be best — I mean, the thing that's best within his own particular craft — while as for what's best for the city and for himself, they've mostly missed it entirely, having trusted in mere opinion, I think, without understanding. Given this state of affairs, wouldn't we be right to say that such a government is full of great confusion and lawlessness? ALCIBIADES: Right indeed, by Zeus. SOCRATES: Didn't it seem necessary to us that, whenever we're about to do or say something, we must first think we know, or actually know, what we're about to do or say? ALCIBIADES: It did. SOCRATES: And if someone does what he knows, or thinks he knows, and benefit goes along with it, we'll turn out well both for the city and for ourselves? ALCIBIADES: Of course. SOCRATES: But if the opposite happens, neither the city nor ourselves will fare well? ALCIBIADES: No, indeed. SOCRATES: Well then — does it still seem the same way to you now, or differently? ALCIBIADES: No, the same way. SOCRATES: Didn't you say you call the many senseless, and the few sensible? ALCIBIADES: I did. SOCRATES: So we're saying again that the many have missed what's best, having trusted, for the most part, in mere opinion without understanding? ALCIBIADES: Yes, we are. SOCRATES: So it's actually to the advantage of the many neither to know anything nor to think they know anything, if indeed they'll be all the more eager to do whatever they know or think they know, and in doing it, be harmed more often than helped. ALCIBIADES: That's very true. SOCRATES: You see, then, when I said that possessing any of the other sciences is likely, if possessed without the knowledge of what's best, to help rarely and harm the possessor more often — wasn't I really speaking rightly? ALCIBIADES: Even if I didn't think so then, I think so now, Socrates.
SOCRATES: So both a city and a soul that intends to live rightly must hold fast to this knowledge, exactly as a sick man clings to a doctor, or one about to sail safely clings to some pilot. For without it, the more brilliantly fortune favors someone — whether in acquiring wealth, or bodily strength, or anything else of that kind — the greater, it seems, the errors that necessarily follow from it. And the man who has acquired what's called wide learning and many skills, but is orphaned of this knowledge, and is led about by each of the others individually — won't he justly meet with a great deal of stormy weather, sailing, as it were, without a pilot on the open sea, running through a course of life that isn't long? So it seems to me that here too what the poet says applies — accusing someone, I believe — that the man knew many things, but knew all of them badly. ALCIBIADES: And how does the poet's saying apply here, Socrates? To me it doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with the argument. SOCRATES: It has everything to do with it. But he's speaking in riddles, my excellent friend, as this poet and nearly all poets tend to do. For poetry as a whole is by nature riddling, and not something just anyone can understand. And beyond being naturally like that, when it falls into the hands of a man who's envious and unwilling to show us his wisdom, but hides it as much as possible, the thing appears extraordinarily hard to grasp — what each of them really means. For surely you don't think Homer, the most divine and wisest of poets, didn't know it was impossible to know something badly — for he's the one who says Margites knew many things, but knew all of them badly. No, he's speaking in riddles, I think, substituting 'badly' for 'bad' and 'knew' for 'to know.' Put together, it falls outside the meter, but what he means is this: that the man knew many things, but it was bad for him to know all of these things. And clearly, if knowing many things was bad for him, he must have been a worthless sort of person, if indeed we should trust what's been said before. ALCIBIADES: Well, it seems so to me, Socrates. I'd have a hard time trusting any other argument, if not even this one. SOCRATES: And you're right to think so. ALCIBIADES: So it seems to me again.
SOCRATES: Well, look here, for Zeus's sake—you see how great and how strange this perplexity is, and I think you've shared in it too. You keep shifting back and forth without ever stopping; whatever seems best to you at one moment, you slip right out of it and no longer think the same thing. So if the god you happen to be on your way to see appeared to you right now, before you'd prayed for anything at all, and asked whether it would satisfy you to get one of the things mentioned at the start, or whether he'd let you make your own prayer instead—what do you suppose would turn out better for you: taking what he offers, or praying for it yourself and hitting the right moment? ALCIBIADES: By the gods, Socrates, I honestly couldn't tell you which. It strikes me as a reckless thing to do, and truly one needing a great deal of caution, so that a person doesn't unknowingly pray for bad things while thinking they're good—and then, after a little while, as you were saying, sing a recantation, unpraying for whatever he first prayed for. SOCRATES: So doesn't the poet I mentioned at the start of our conversation know something more than we do, when he has people ask the gods, even in their prayers, to ward off foolish things? ALCIBIADES: I think so. SOCRATES: Well then, Alcibiades, the Spartans too, whether in admiration of this poet or having worked it out for themselves independently, pray a similar prayer on every occasion, both privately and publicly: they tell the gods to grant them what is fine along with what is good, and nothing more than that would you ever hear from any of them praying. And so, up to the present time, they are as fortunate as any people alive. And if it has happened that they don't get everything they want, that's certainly not because of their prayer—it's up to the gods, I think, whether to grant what someone happens to be praying for, or the opposite. I want to tell you something else too, which I once heard from some older men: how, when a quarrel broke out between the Athenians and the Spartans, it kept happening that our city, whenever a battle occurred, whether by land or sea, always came off badly and could never win. So the Athenians, angry about this and at a loss for some device to turn away their present troubles, decided in council that the best course was to send men to that famous oracle of Ammon and put a question to him—and, further, to ask this too: for what possible reason the gods were giving victory to the Spartans rather than to themselves, when—so they said—'we perform more sacrifices, and finer ones, than any other Greeks, and we've decked out their temples with offerings as no one else has, and every year we've given the gods the most costly and most solemn processions, and we've spent on this more money than all the rest of the Greeks combined.'
SOCRATES: 'But the Spartans,' he said, 'have never once cared about any of this—they're so casual in their attitude toward the gods that they sacrifice maimed animals every single time, and in everything else they honor them not a little more meagerly than we do, even though they own no less wealth than our own city.' When they had said all this and asked what they should do to find relief from their present troubles, the prophet gave no other answer at all—clearly the god wouldn't allow it—but calling the man forward, he said: 'This is what Ammon says to the Athenians: he would rather have the Spartans' reverent silence than all the sacred offerings of all the Greeks put together.' That was all he said, nothing further. Now it seems to me that by 'reverent silence' the god means nothing other than their prayer—for it really is very different from everyone else's. The rest of the Greeks bring forward oxen with gilded horns, or make gifts of offerings to the gods, and pray for whatever comes to mind, whether good or bad; and the gods, hearing them speak such irreverent nonsense, refuse to accept these costly processions and sacrifices of theirs. It seems to me this calls for a great deal of caution and careful thought about what one should and shouldn't say. You'll find similar things said in Homer too. He tells how the Trojans, making camp, 'offered up perfect hecatombs to the immortals'; and the winds carried the savor sweet from the plain up into the sky; but the blessed gods would have none of it, nor did they wish to, for holy Ilium was hateful to them, and Priam, and the people of Priam of the fine ash spear. And so it did them no good at all to sacrifice and offer gifts, since it was in vain, hated as they were by the gods. For I don't think the gods are the sort to be led astray by gifts, like some crooked moneylender. No, we too are talking nonsense when we suppose the Spartans get the better of us that way. It would be a strange thing indeed if the gods looked to our gifts and sacrifices rather than to the soul, and whether a person happens to be devout and just.
SOCRATES: I think they look to that far more than to these costly processions and sacrifices, which nothing stops a person or a city who has committed many wrongs, both against gods and against men, from performing every single year. But the gods, since they can't be bribed, look down on all of this, as the god and his prophet say. It seems, then, that both among gods and among sensible men, justice and wisdom are held in the highest honor above all else; and the only ones who are wise and just are those who know what must be done and said, both toward the gods and toward men. I'd like to hear from you, too, what you now have in mind about all this. ALCIBIADES: Well, Socrates, it seems no different to me than it does to you and to the god—it wouldn't be right for me to cast a vote against the god. SOCRATES: And don't you remember saying you were in great perplexity over how not to catch yourself praying for bad things while thinking they were good? ALCIBIADES: I do. SOCRATES: So you see how unsafe it is for you to go to the god to pray, in case, hearing you say something irreverent, he refuses to accept this sacrifice of yours at all, even if you happen to pray so—and you might even come away with some further harm besides. So it seems to me best to stay quiet for now. As for the Spartans' prayer—out of sheer greatness of soul, which is the finest name one can give to a kind of folly—I don't imagine you'd be willing to use it. So it's necessary to wait until someone teaches you how you must be disposed toward gods and toward men. ALCIBIADES: And when will that time come, Socrates, and who will be the one to teach me? I'd be delighted to see who this person is. SOCRATES: It's the one who cares about you. But it seems to me that, just as Homer says Athena removed the mist from Diomedes' eyes so that he could clearly tell god from man, so too you need someone to remove first the mist that now happens to be over your soul, and only then bring forward the things by which you'll come to know both bad and good. As it stands now, you don't seem to me capable of it. ALCIBIADES: Let him remove it, whether it's the mist or anything else—I'm prepared to refuse nothing that he commands, whoever this man turns out to be, provided that I'm going to become better.
SOCRATES: Well, he certainly has an astonishing eagerness where you're concerned. ALCIBIADES: In that case, I think it's best to put off the sacrifice until then. SOCRATES: And you're right to think so—it's safer than running such a risk. ALCIBIADES: But how shall I put it, Socrates? Look, since you seem to have advised me well, I'll set this garland here on your head. As for the gods, we'll give them garlands and all the customary things once I see that day arrive. And it won't be long in coming, if they're willing. SOCRATES: Well, I accept this too, and I'd gladly see myself receiving anything else you might give me. Just as Euripides has Creon, on seeing Tiresias wearing garlands and hearing that he'd taken them as first-fruits from the enemy on account of his art, say: 'I take your garlands of splendid victory as an omen, for we are caught in a storm, as you know'—so too I take this opinion of yours as an omen for myself. And I think I'm in no smaller a storm than Creon was, and I'd like to come off a splendid victor over your other lovers.