The Logos Scripture · Gospel of Xenophon

The Treason of Alcibiades

Gospel of Xenophon 4 · First Witness: Justice, the Citizen, and Duty

This book is written as a record. Where there are numbers, dates, and names, they are set down as they were.

4.1Among the disciples was one named Alcibiades. Of the highest birth, the greatest beauty, and the quickest mind.

4.2He could learn in one night what the Teacher had taught over three years, and he could sell it in one night as well.

4.3That the Teacher loved him, all men knew. The Teacher also said openly: I am afraid of this boy.

4.4Someone asked: if you fear him, why do you teach him?

4.5The Teacher said: "If he does not learn, he will hold power all the same. If he learns, perhaps one day he will remember that he learned."

4.6Later Alcibiades led the fleet against Sicily, and was crushed.

4.7Recalled to stand trial, he went over to Sparta, and handed them the harbours of Athens, her grain routes, and her order of battle entire.

4.8The Athenian dead were counted in the tens of thousands. I knew some of them.

4.9The city could not call to account a man who had already fled, so it called to account the man who had taught him.

4.10And men pointed at the Teacher in the marketplace and said: look, there is the one who taught the traitor.

4.11The Teacher offered no defence. He said only one thing:

4.12"I taught him to examine everything. He examined everything, except himself."

4.13That sentence did not save him.

4.14Later disciples often say that the Teacher died of envy.

4.15I do not write it so. The Teacher's death was half envy, and half Alcibiades.

4.16Let whoever teaches men to strike off their chains know this: what they do with them afterward is not yours to decide.