e senseless are those who do not know this?

ALCIBIADES: True.

SOCRATES: The latter will say or do what they ought not without their
own knowledge?

ALCIBIADES: Exactly.

SOCRATES: Oedipus, as I was saying, Alcibiades, was a person of
this sort. And even now-a-days you will find many who (have offered
inauspicious prayers), although, unlike him, they were not in anger nor
thought that they were asking evil. He neither sought, nor supposed that
he sought for good, but others have had quite the contrary notion. I
believe that if the God whom you are about to consult should appear to
you, and, in anticipation of your request, enquired whether you would be
contented to become tyrant of Athens, and if this seemed in your eyes a
small and mean thing, should add to it the dominion of all Hellas; and
seeing that even then you would not be satisfied unless you were ruler
of the whole of Europe, should promise, not only that, but, if you so
desired, should proclaim to all mankind in one and the same day that
Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, was tyrant:--in such a case, I imagine, you
would depart full of joy, as one who had obtained the greatest of goods.

ALCIBIADES: And not only I, Socrates, but any one else who should meet
with such luck.

SOCRATES: Yet you would not accept the dominion and lordship of all the
Hellenes and all the barbarians in exchange for your life?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly not: for then what use could I make of them?

SOCRATES: And would you accept them if you were likely to use them to a
bad and mischievous end?

ALCIBIADES: I would not.

SOCRATES: You see that it is not safe for a man either rashly to accept
whatever is offered him, or himself to request a thing, if he is likely
to suffer thereby or immediately to lose his life. And yet we could tell
of many who, having long desired and diligently laboured to obtain
a tyranny, thinking that thus they would procure an advantage, have
nevertheless fallen victims to designing enemies. You must have heard of
what happened only the other day, how Archelaus of Macedonia was slain
by his beloved (compare Aristotle, Pol.), whose love for the tyranny was
not less than that of Archelaus for him. The tyrannicide expected by his
crime to become tyrant and afterwards to have a happy life; but when he
had held the tyranny three or four days, he was in his turn conspired
against and slain. Or look at certain of our own citizens,--and of their
actions we have been