Socrates, Are You Asleep?
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Alcibiades — οἱ παῖδες ἔξω ἦσαν, ἔδοξέ μοι χρῆναι μηδὲν ποικίλλειν πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀλλʼ ἐλευθέρως εἰπεῖν ἅ μοι ἐδόκει· καὶ εἶπον κινήσας αὐτόν, Σώκρατες, καθεύδεις;
Socrates — οὐ δῆτα, ἦ δʼ ὅς.
Alcibiades — οἶσθα οὖν ἅ μοι δέδοκται;
Socrates — τί μάλιστα, ἔφη.
Alcibiades — σὺ ἐμοὶ δοκεῖς, ἦν δʼ ἐγώ, ἐμοῦ ἐραστὴς ἄξιος γεγονέναι μόνος, καί μοι φαίνῃ ὀκνεῖν μνησθῆναι πρός με. ἐγὼ δὲ οὑτωσὶ ἔχω· πάνυ ἀνόητον ἡγοῦμαι εἶναι σοὶ μὴ οὐ καὶ τοῦτο χαρίζεσθαι καὶ εἴ τι ἄλλο ἢ τῆς οὐσίας τῆς ἐμῆς
The slaves were outside; it seemed to me I ought to play no games with him, but speak frankly what I really thought. So I said, nudging him, ‘Socrates, are you asleep?’ ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Do you know what I’ve decided?’ ‘What exactly?’ he said. ‘You,’ I said, seem to me to have become the only lover worthy of me, yet you seem hesitant to mention it to me. My feeling is this: I think it very senseless not to gratify you in this, or in anything else needed, whether of my own wealth…
Continuing the sentence begun in 218b — the lamp had gone out and the slaves had left the room — Alcibiades decides to drop all indirection with Socrates. He nudges him awake, and once he confirms Socrates is listening, states his case as plainly as he can: he thinks it senseless not to gratify him in this, or in anything else he might need from Alcibiades' own wealth. The sentence breaks off mid-list and is completed in 218d.
χαρίζεσθαι, ‘to gratify,’ is not a neutral verb in this dialogue — Pausanias had already fixed it, two speeches earlier (182a–185c), as the technical term for what a boy grants a lover who has earned it: not sex given cheaply, but a favor extended only after testing and delay. Alcibiades reaches for that exact word himself, in the dark, unprompted, and calls it ἀνόητον, ‘senseless,’ not to grant it. The etiquette Pausanias spent a whole speech constructing collapses into one sentence, offered before Socrates has said a word in his own defense. The roles have flipped too: Alcibiades, who by every social convention is the one expected to be pursued and to hold out, names Socrates ἐραστὴς ἄξιος μόνος, ‘the only lover worthy of me’ — as if it were his to bestow.
Then he prices the offer. Whatever Socrates might need, he says, can come τῆς οὐσίας τῆς ἐμῆς, ‘from my own wealth’ — the sentence trails off before it can add ‘or of my friends,’ which 218d finishes. It is the same crude exchange Pausanias's speech drew a hard line against: money and connections offered as if they could stand in for what a lover of wisdom is supposed to want. Alcibiades cannot hear the difference yet. He assumes Socrates wants from him what everyone else wants from a rich, good-looking young man, and he names his price generously, sure he is being noble about it.
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