You are about to enter on public life (says Sokrates to Alkibiades) with the most inordinate aspirations for glory and aggrandisement. You not only thirst for the acquisition of ascendancy such as Perikles possesses at Athens, but your ambition will not be satisfied unless you fill Asia with your renown, and put yourself upon a level with Cyrus and Xerxes. Now such aspirations cannot be gratified except through my assistance. I do not deal in long discourses such as you have been accustomed to hear from others: I shall put to you only some short interrogatories, requiring nothing more than answers to my questions.[2] [Footnote 2: Plato, Alkib. i. 106 B. [Greek: A)=ra e)rôtta=|s ei)/ tina e)/chô ei)pei=n lo/gon makro/n, oi(/ous dê\ a)kou/ein ei)/thisai? ou) ga/r e)sti toiou=ton to\ e)mo/n.] I give here, as elsewhere, not an exact translation, but an abstract.] [Side-note: Questions put by Sokrates, in reference to Alkibiades in his intended function as adviser of the Athenians. What does he intend to advise them upon? What has he learnt, and what does he know?] _Sokr._--You are about to step forward as adviser of the public assembly. Upon what points do you intend to advise them? Upon points which you know better than they? _Alk._--Of course. _Sokr._--All that you know, has been either learnt from others or found out by yourself. _Alk._--Certainly. _Sokr._--But you would neither have learnt any thing, nor found out any thing, without the desire to learn or find out: and you would have felt no such desire, in respect to that which you believed yourself to know already. That which you now know, therefore, there was a time when you believed yourself not to know? _Alk._--Necessarily so. _Sokr._--Now all that you have learnt, as I am well aware, consists of three things--letters, the harp, gymnastics. Do you intend to advise the Athenians when they are debating about letters, or about harp-playing, or about gymnastics? _Alk._--Neither of the three. _Sokr._--Upon what occasions, then, do you propose to give advice? Surely, not when the Athenians are debating about architecture, or prophetic warnings, or the public health: for to deliver opinions on each of these matters, belongs not to you but to professional men--architects, prophets, physicians; whether they be poor or rich, high-born or low-born? If not _then_, upon what other occasions will you tender your counsel? _Alk._--When they are debating about affairs of their own. [Side-note: Alkibiades intends to advise the Athenians on questions of war and peace. Questions of Sokrates thereupon. We must fight those whom it is better to fight--to what standard does better refer? To just and unjust.]