Ironically
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Alcibiades — δέοιο ἢ τῶν φίλων τῶν ἐμῶν. ἐμοὶ μὲν γὰρ οὐδέν ἐστι πρεσβύτερον τοῦ ὡς ὅτι βέλτιστον ἐμὲ γενέσθαι, τούτου δὲ οἶμαί μοι συλλήπτορα οὐδένα κυριώτερον εἶναι σοῦ. ἐγὼ δὴ τοιούτῳ ἀνδρὶ πολὺ μᾶλλον ἂν μὴ χαριζόμενος αἰσχυνοίμην τοὺς φρονίμους, ἢ χαριζόμενος τούς τε πολλοὺς καὶ ἄφρονας. καὶ οὗτος ἀκούσας μάλα εἰρωνικῶς καὶ σφόδρα ἑαυτοῦ τε καὶ εἰωθότως ἔλεξεν
Socrates — ὦ φίλε Ἀλκιβιάδη, κινδυνεύεις τῷ ὄντι οὐ φαῦλος εἶναι, εἴπερ ἀληθῆ τυγχάνει ὄντα ἃ λέγεις
or you should need it from my friends. Nothing matters more to me than my becoming as good as possible, and for that, I think no one is a more capable ally than you. So I would be far more ashamed before sensible people for not gratifying such a man, than for gratifying the many, foolish ones. And he, hearing this, spoke very ironically and quite himself, as was his habit: My dear Alcibiades, you may really be no ordinary sort, if what you say happens to be true…
Completing the conditional begun in 218c — Alcibiades finishes offering Socrates whatever he might need, from his own wealth or his friends' — he states his real motive: nothing matters to him more than becoming as good as possible, and he judges no one a more capable ally in that than Socrates, so he would be far more ashamed before sensible people for withholding himself than before the foolish many for giving in. Socrates, hearing this, answers — the narrator notes, very ironically and quite in character — with a guarded opening line that trails into 218e.
συλλήπτωρ is a word from the register of alliance and joint effort, the noun for a partner who takes hold of a task alongside you — in oratory and history it names a co-conspirator or a military ally, someone who shares the labor rather than merely wishing you well. Alcibiades reaches for it to describe what he wants from Socrates toward becoming ὡς ὅτι βέλτιστον, “as good as possible” — language that belongs, almost verbatim, to the vocabulary Socrates himself will later give to the philosophic project in the Republic and the Meno. Alcibiades has absorbed the goal without yet grasping the method: he still thinks the alliance can be sealed the way any political friendship is sealed, through an exchange of favors, and so he sets up his shame calculus — worse to refuse a capable man than to indulge a foolish crowd — as if gratification were the currency Socrates trades in.
Socrates' answer, when it comes, inverts the joke before Alcibiades can finish making it. κινδυνεύεις τῷ ὄντι οὐ φαῦλος εἶναι — “you may really be no ordinary sort” — sounds like a compliment and is delivered, Apollodorus is careful to say, μάλα εἰρωνικῶς, “very ironically.” The eirōneia that will define this Socrates for the rest of Western philosophy gets its name here, at almost the exact midpoint of the dialogue: a habit so fixed that Alcibiades, narrating years later, can flag it as characteristic before Socrates has said a full sentence. Socrates does not yet say whether the offer is accepted or refused — only that he doubts, gently, whether it is even what it claims to be.
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