Abstract

The prominent role of women in the Spartan and Persian Speech in Plato's dialogue Alcibiades Major has not been sufficiently appreciated. We remedy this by (1) laying out the context in which the speech is presented; (2) explaining what precisely the women of the speech say about Alcibiades' challenge to their men; (3) surveying and critiquing what commentators have said about the role women play in the speech; and (4) advancing a reading of the speech that unifies the sentiments attributed to each woman as expressed by Socrates