A Wonder Beyond Comparison
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Alcibiades — φεύγοντας διώκουσιν. πολλὰ μὲν οὖν ἄν τις καὶ ἄλλα ἔχοι Σωκράτη ἐπαινέσαι καὶ θαυμάσια· ἀλλὰ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ἐπιτηδευμάτων τάχʼ ἄν τις καὶ περὶ ἄλλου τοιαῦτα εἴποι, τὸ δὲ μηδενὶ ἀνθρώπων ὅμοιον εἶναι, μήτε τῶν παλαιῶν μήτε τῶν νῦν ὄντων, τοῦτο ἄξιον παντὸς θαύματος. οἷος γὰρ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἐγένετο, ἀπεικάσειεν ἄν τις καὶ Βρασίδαν καὶ ἄλλους, καὶ οἷος αὖ Περικλῆς, καὶ Νέστορα καὶ Ἀντήνορα— εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ ἕτεροι—
They pursue those who flee. Now one could also praise Socrates for many other marvels; but as for his other pursuits, one might perhaps say the same about someone else too — while his being like no other human being, neither the ancients nor the men of today, this is a thing worthy of all wonder. For such as Achilles was, one could liken Brasidas and others too; and such as Pericles, again, Nestor and Antenor — and there are others too —
Continuing straight from 221b's account of the retreat from Delium — where, as Alcibiades has just said, an enemy dares only to chase men who break and run outright — he pivots from these battlefield stories to his larger claim: Socrates resembles no human being, ancient or modern. He runs through the standard method for sizing a man up — match him to a canonical great, Achilles to Brasidas, Pericles to Nestor and Antenor — as the last ordinary tool before it fails him.
Alcibiades reaches for the standard device of Greek praise-speech: to size a man up, match him to one of the canonical greats. Achilles pairs with Brasidas — a comparison an Athenian audience would have felt land on its own, given how close Thucydides' own portrait of Brasidas already runs to the reckless, magnetic courage the Iliad gives Achilles — and Pericles pairs with Nestor and Antenor, the Iliad's elder statesmen, Antenor being the Trojan who argued for returning Helen and ending the war outright. The method assumes every remarkable man has a match somewhere in the canon. Alcibiades runs through it in full only to set up the sentence that breaks it: none of this works for Socrates.
The clause carrying that break — mēdeni anthrōpōn homoion einai, ‘like no human being,’ mēte tōn palaiōn mēte tōn nyn ontōn, ‘neither the ancients nor the men alive now’ — is not filler. Plato repeats almost the same formula in the very next unit, 221d, where Alcibiades names the condition outright: tēn atopian, Socrates' ‘strangeness,’ a placelessness he says belongs to the man and to his talk alike. It is the same word Alcibiades used to warn his audience at the start of the speech, at 215a, before he ever produced the carved Silenus. The failed comparison here is the last ordinary tool in his kit; having used up Achilles, Pericles, Nestor, and Antenor, he has nowhere left to go but back to the statue he opened with.
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