Opening Alcibiades II — Plato in Plato Scroll…
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Plato · David Horan
Alcibiades, are you on your way to pray to the god? Certainly, Socrates. I must say that you look sullen and downcast as if you were preoccupied with something. And what might preoccupy someone, Socrates? What I regard as the greatest preoccupation, Alcibiades. Come on, by Zeus, don’t you think that the gods to whom we pray, in public and private, sometimes grant our requests and sometimes do not, and favour some people and not others? Entirely so. Don’t you think it requires great foresight to avoid praying unwittingly for great evils, thinking them to be good when the gods happen to be disposed to grant whatever one hap c pens to pray for? Just as Oedipus is said to have prayed impetuously that his sons would divide their inheritance by the sword, and although it was open to him to pray for some means of averting the evils he was facing, he called down further curses in addition. …
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