)
SOCRATES:--If, then, you went indoors, and seeing him, did not know him,
but thought that he was some one else, would you venture to slay him?
ALCIBIADES: Most decidedly not (it seems to me). (These words are omitted
in several MSS.)
SOCRATES: For you designed to kill, not the first who offered, but
Pericles himself?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And if you made many attempts, and each time failed to recognize
Pericles, you would never attack him?
ALCIBIADES: Never.
SOCRATES: Well, but if Orestes in like manner had not known his mother, do
you think that he would ever have laid hands upon her?
ALCIBIADES: No.
SOCRATES: He did not intend to slay the first woman he came across, nor
any one else's mother, but only his own?
ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: Ignorance, then, is better for those who are in such a frame of
mind, and have such ideas?
ALCIBIADES: Obviously.
SOCRATES: You acknowledge that for some persons in certain cases the
ignorance of some things is a good and not an evil, as you formerly
supposed?
ALCIBIADES: I do.
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