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Soc. Well, just such a person, as I was saying, Alcibiades, was Oedipus; and even in our time you will find many who do the same, not in a fit of anger, as he was: they think they pray not for something evil, but for something good. He neither prayed for that, nor thought he did, but there are others who are in the opposite case. For I imagine that if the god to whom you are now going should appear to you and first ask you, before you made any prayer, whether you would be content to become sovereign of the Athenian state and, on your accounting this as something poor and unimportant, should add and of all the Greeks also; and if he saw you were still unsatisfied unless he promised you besides the mastery of all Europe, and should not merely promise you that, but on the self-same day a recognition by all men, if you so desired, of Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, as their sovereign—I imagine you would actually depart in a transport of delight, as having secured the greatest of goods.
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Alc. So would anybody else, I imagine, Socrates, at such a stroke of luck!
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Soc. But still you would not wish to sacrifice your life even for the territory and sovereignty of all the Greeks and barbarians together.
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Alc. I should think not. How could I, without a prospect of making any use of them?
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Soc. And what if you had a prospect of making an evil and injurious use of them? Not in this case either?
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Alc. No, indeed.
