Socrates often said that he was merely a human being with no share in divine wisdom or virtue; but Socrates himself lived a life of superhuman self-control, wisdom, and virtue. There is an ironic contrast between his verbal professions of humility and the commanding power of his own heroic life. For example, despite his avowals of ignorance, Socrates also claimed to receive personal admonitions directly from the gods. My portrait of Socrates is based on the contrast between how he saw himself (in the Apology of Plato) and how he was viewed by his students (in Alcibiades’ memoir in Plato’s Symposium). Socrates presents himself as all-too-human, but his students saw him as quasi-divine. Despite his verbal modesty in the face of divine wisdom, Socrates’s own life and death became the very paradigm of how a human being can become godlike by means of rational discipline.

Chapter 3 takes up the Elenctic section of the dialogue, in which Socrates begins to chisel away at Alcibiades’ hubris in an effort to expose his double ignorance, that is, his ignorance of his ignorance. The young man hastens to the Athenian bema, eager to give a speech about justice, but estranged from justice beyond the level of ethical virtue. Without self-knowledge, he desires nothing other than the accolades of the many and asks not even the simplest question about justice, to say nothing of ascending to contemplate it as intelligible reality. Socrates refutes him in order to remove his arrogant pretension, not only that he knows justice, but that he knows himself. Generally, the Elenctic section removes the obstacles that stand in the way of Alcibiades’ conversion, and the Neoplatonic student learns that he must undergo a similar cleansing to that of Socrates’ interlocutor – Alcibiades’ purification is that of any philosophical initiate.

The first chapter begins the project of weaving together the commentaries of Proclus and Olympiodorus, and argues that both commentators attempt nothing less than a transfiguration of the human soul and its reorientation toward the desiderative longing characteristic of the contemplative life, the consequence of which is their student’s ascent through the hierarchy of virtues that Neoplatonic pedagogy coordinates with the reading of particular Platonic dialogues. The Alcibiades I, with the commentator’s direction, is the doorway through which an initiate must pass, enduring a cleansing that shepherds him toward the sanctum of the real. The Neoplatonic analysis of the dialogue’s thematic structure is also adumbrated: Socrates proposes that Alcibiades change how he lives only to undermine what he wants and finally concludes that Alcibiades is misguided about both because he assumes a mistaken conception of who he is. This progression is itself framed on both sides by eros.

This introduction frames the entire project, the purpose of which is to excavate a sense of erotic striving from the Neoplatonic commentaries on the Platonic Alcibiades I and to argue that its arousal is the beginning of the philosophical life. Proclus and Olympiodorus, inheritors of the commentary tradition that begins with Iamblichus and traces its roots even further back to Plotinus, insisted that their students read the Alcibiades I first of all of Plato’s dialogues because of its emphasis on self-knowledge. They themselves, modelling what they witnessed in Plato, awakened their own students to what it is to be human and directed them accordingly. Self-knowledge, which by the end of the dialogue becomes identification of self with soul, is, in the hands of the commentators, the beginning of psychoerotic metamorphosis, a conversion of initiation that, when properly channelled, seeks wisdom as its sole desideratum.

Chapter 5 concludes the book with an analysis of the Maieutic section of the dialogue. It heralds a new beginning in the conversation, in which Socrates, having received at last Alcibiades’ full allegiance in question and answer, finally reveals to him his own being so as to secure commitment to a love that strives to grasp the totality of all that is, the highest expression of which is none other than the contemplative life. Self-knowing emerges as the zealous pursuit of the ultimate desideratum in the philosophical life, a striving that is akin to self-cultivation. Reason heals the soul, collecting it out of its opinionative and passionate dispersion, only to recognize, in the end, its synthetic activity is done in light of a higher grade of reality that transcends it, a reality in which it finally longs to participate; it yearns to become intellect.

In the second chapter, the role of the dialogue’s Proem is treated in detail. Socrates’ first words are not those of concepts but of courtship, and Alcibiades’ pending metamorphosis is begun by means of love. The Neoplatonic reading of the dialogue’s opening section is not just a reflection on Socrates’ pederastic obsession with a beautiful young man and his attempt to seduce him away from his other lovers; it is a prolonged meditation on the nature of love and its ultimate expression in the philosophical life. Far from being a playful preface without philosophical substance, the Proem is an introduction to this introductory dialogue, an isagogic first step in a lengthy rite of philosophical transformation that begins with erotic initiation. The Neoplatonic student finds that Socrates nurtures the seeds of erotic contemplativity in Alcibiades prior to his formal questions and arguments.

The purpose of the Protreptic section – the subject of this chapter – is to ensure that Alcibiades will not abandon his newly manifest sense of self and its correlative longing sparked in the previous section; it is to continue his transformation so that he might actively seek the desiderata to which he has been awakened. Revealed to himself imbued with a yearning for desiderata he is unable to comprehend much less pursue, the young man remains hesitant. Socrates challenges Alcibiades with the story about the King of Persia and the kings of Sparta in order to argue it is peculiar to Athenians to pursue wisdom. The Neoplatonic student’s interpretation for the entirety of this middle section of the dialogue is framed accordingly: attempting to intensify the young man’s newly awakened eros, Socrates replaces honour with wisdom as the ultimate goal for which philosophical initiates must strive.

Chapter 2 turns to the role of language in the context of strategy, specifically investigating how rhetoric and persuasion can open and close spaces for the airing of opinions freely amongst speakers. It is in creating and expressing opinion (and not truth) in the polis – the space of appearances – that the question of who one is receives its full disclosure. We then turn to the appearance of strategy in ancient Greece, first in the figure of Pericles, then Alcibiades, and in particular the latter’s skilful performances in the polis, and a gifted if contested career blighted, we suggest, by a failure to apprehend the distinction between the polis (rhetoric) and oikos (sophistry and instrumentality). The failure of Alcibiades also hints at some of the difficulties of language as the means of self-disclosure and so also for Arendt’s idealized association of action with talk, for it is in Alcibiades’ struggle as a strategos that opinion becomes twisted into event: Things get done, even if the action is consumed by failure and ruin. The case of Alcibiades takes us from talk to the body, and back to the polis in which the everyday is suspended so that action, freed from instrumentality, can occur and recur, each time alive and enlivening.

Ancient Greece, especially Athens, provides the best documented early example of mass democracy. With the democratic reforms of the fifth century, populism – the direct mobilization of the masses – becomes an effective path to power. This chapter looks at several examples from fifth- and fourth-century Athens, which demonstrate the use of demagoguery as an efficient, if much derided, alternative to patronage-based politics. Ancient Rome provides a somewhat different context. As a republic, Rome gave the masses a more limited and indirect role in politics. Typically, politics was a purely elite affair. Yet for those elites who found the normal insider path blocked to them, direct appeals to the masses could prove effective. However, given the limited formal role for the plebs in Roman politics, this direct mobilization could often lead to violence.

Platonic love has often been attacked – notably by Vlastos – as fundamentally selfish. The basis of this argument rests on the claim that love for Plato is little more than a form of utility in which the beloved is exploited to enable the philosopher’s ascent and is simply the object of love to the extent to which he exhibits desirable qualities and not as an individual. This reading ignores the elements of erotic reciprocity found in both the Symposium and Phaedrus, in which the beloved is not merely a passive object, but rather an active participant with the lover in a mutually beneficial project defined by shared values, with both parties attempting to become as godlike as possible. The erastes is shown to care genuinely for the eromenos in the course of the philosophical pedagogy which Plato advocates. In the Phaedrus, the tripartition of the soul seems to be a further move towards non-individuality and the significance of the beloved’s individuality is regularly downplayed. Yet the abstraction inherent in Platonic love is revealed to be both beneficial as a mechanism for avoiding the negative aspects of interpersonal love, as well as a natural feature of the human condition: the striving after Beauty.

In the parodos of Aristophanes’ Frogs, the entrance of the mystic chorus is preceded by its chant of Ἴακχ’ ὦ Ἴακχε, | Ἴακχ’ ὦ Ἴακχε (316–17), the same cry that was traditionally voiced in the Iacchus procession from Athens to Eleusis during the Great Mysteries. It is the aim of this contribution to peel back the emotional and cognitive layers of what may have been the first audience’s response to this religiously, politically, and historically significant sound. What did the theatrical mimesis of this ritual vocalization, which for several years prior to the play’s production in 405 BCE had been “muted” due to the Spartan occupation of Attica, make the Athenian audience think, feel, and remember? To answer this question, philological and historical methods of inquiry native to classical studies as well as cross-cultural perspectives drawn from sound, religious, and memory studies are employed. A central argument is that Aristophanes’ evocation of the Iacchus cry gives sonic expression to the cultural and political nostalgia and longing that inform Frogs, in particular, nostalgia for the Athenian-led victory over the Persians at Salamis.

Xenophon’s interest in the political role of the elite is especially conspicuous in the Memorabilia, where he portrays Socrates interacting critically with members of the Athenian elite and seeking to motivate and guide them to become worthy of the leadership roles that fall to them under the democracy. Although Xenophon frames the Memorabilia as a defense of Socrates from the charges that led to his execution in 399 BC, within this framework he considers in detail how elite Athenians can thoroughly prepare for and effectively carry out essential civic roles, especially that of orator and of military commander. Xenophon’s Socrates, in his conversations with elite Athenians, exposes how absurd it is for them to believe that they deserve to lead the city merely on the basis of their wealth or lineage and urges them to seek out through education the values, knowledge, and skills that they need to lead well. In so doing, he challenges his elite interlocutors to alter their understanding of what it means to be a gentleman (kalos kagathos) and to reconcile this with being good citizens who contribute to the success of the democratic city, especially by providing good leadership.

The second chapter turns to the specific examples of Plato and of Socratic teaching as a template used for formulating an approach to the study of antiquity. It also introduces the institution of the philological seminar as a space for academic sociability modelled on Platonic precedent. Compared to an earlier interest in mainly Socrates (rather than Plato) as a mostly ambivalent figure, I trace a new understanding of Plato as the ostensibly unified author of systematic works centrally concerned with educational progress. My main example in this chapter is Wolf’s directorship of the philological seminar in Halle, together with his edition of Plato’s Symposium. I also look at the Socratic Memorabilia of J. G. Hamann (1759) and finally at some of the programmatic writings of Fichte and Schleiermacher for a new university in Berlin.

The Introduction lays out the argument about personification as the central strategy of scholarly approaches to antiquity. It argues for the importance of a romantic discourse of love and of Bildung and selfhood that intersects with the professionalization of classical scholarship in Germany, and situates the argument within the study of the history and metaphors of emotions. It introduces the figure of Alcibiades as central. It also provides an outline of the chapters to follow.

This chapter argues that Plato effectively pre-empts the Stoics in defining virtuous action as conformity with cosmic order. Scholarship has been beguiled by Alcibiades’ striking analysis of Socrates in the Symposium as someone ugly to look at but beautiful within, and misled into thinking that Plato defines virtue as ‘inner beauty’, something private which only accidentally manifests itself in public benefit. In fact, as a closer examination of Diotima’s account of the lover’s ascent towards beauty in the same dialogue shows that the distinction that actually interests Plato is that between the body and its activity – not the body and the soul as such. And by referencing this activity to cosmic order (as he does most clearly in Gorgias 507e-508), Plato guarantees essentially that virtue is not only publicly manifest but of essential benefit to others as well as self.