'Comparing Alcibiades and Plato, one could say that in a sense… Plato is a sort of inverted Alcibiades. Considerably younger than Alcibiades, undoubtedly thirty years his junior, Plato sublimates this passion for power that Alcibiades couldn’t master and that led him to do what he did in the history of Athens; Plato transposes it onto another level, the level of writing, of schooling, of counsel given to the powerful and to tyrants. This is what he did, it seems, in Sicily with Dionysius and then with Dion.’ (Cornelius Castoriadis: On Plato's Statesman).
