[Footnote 51: Xenoph. Mem. iv. 2, 8.] [Side-note: Plato's manner of replying to the accusers of Sokrates. Magical influence ascribed to the conversation of Sokrates.] I conceive Alkibiadês I. and II. as composed by Plato among his earlier writings (perhaps between 399-390 B.C.)[52] giving an imaginary picture of the way in which "Sokrates handled every respondent just as he chose" (to use the literal phrase of Xenophon[53]): taming even that most overbearing youth, whom Aristophanes characterises as the lion's whelp.[54] In selecting Alkibiades as the sufferer under such a chastising process, Plato rebuts in his own ideal style that charge which Xenophon answers with prosaic directness--the charge made against Sokrates by his enemies, that he taught political craft without teaching ethical sobriety; and that he had encouraged by his training the lawless propensities of Alkibiades.[55] When Schleiermacher, and others who disallow the dialogue, argue that the inordinate insolence ascribed to Alkibiades, and the submissive deference towards Sokrates also ascribed to him, are incongruous and incompatible attributes,--I reply that such a conjunction is very improbable in any real character. But this does not hinder Plato from combining them in one and the same ideal character, as we shall farther see when we come to the manifestation of Alkibiades in the Symposion: in which dialogue we find a combination of the same elements, still more extravagant and high-coloured. Both here and there we are made to see that Sokrates, far from encouraging Alkibiades, is the only person who ever succeeded in humbling him. Plato attributes to the personality and conversation of Sokrates an influence magical and almost superhuman: which Cicero and Plutarch, proceeding probably upon the evidence of the Platonic dialogues, describe as if it were historical fact. They represent Alkibiades as shedding tears of sorrow and shame, and entreating Sokrates to rescue him from a sense of degradation insupportably painful.[56] Now Xenophon mentions Euthydemus and other young men as having really experienced these profound and distressing emotions.[56] But he does not at all certify the same about Alkibiades, whose historical career is altogether adverse to the hypothesis. The Platonic picture is an _idéal_, drawn from what may have been actually true about other interlocutors of Sokrates, and calculated to reply to Melêtus and his allies.