Alcibiades relates Socrates' warning on his proposal for a reciprocal exchange of beauty; he should take a better look (ἄμεινον σκόπει) in case he is mistaken about Socrates' beauty and true worth: ἥ τοι τῆς διανοίας ὄψις ἄρχεται ὀξὺ βλέπειν ὅταν ἡ τῶν ὀμμάτων τῆς ἀκμῆς λήγειν ἐπιχειρῆι· σὺ δὲ τούτων ἔτι πόρρω, ‘the sight of the mind, you know, begins to see sharply when the sight of the eyes attempts (?) to fade from its prime—but you (are) still far from these (developments).’

RenehanFootnote ¹ appears to have been the first to question the veracity of the manuscripts' λήγειν ἐπιχειρῆι. Recalling that the radical sense of ἐπιχειρεῖν is conative, he rejects the older editors' assumption that ἐπιχειρῆι here is the equivalent of ἄρχηται (‘begins to fade’).Footnote ² Rather, he says, λήγειν ἐπιχειρῆι must mean, nonsensically, ‘attempts to fade’, or ‘puts its hand to fading’, and we should therefore emend, either to λήγειν ἄρχηται or, more naturally, to λήγηι alone;Footnote ³ ἐπιχειρῆι should be deleted ‘without hesitation’ as an ‘intruder’, following as it does the two instances of ἐπιχειρεῖς in the preceding six lines of the Oxford text: 218e4, ἐπιχειρεῖς καὶ ἀλλάξασθαι κάλλος (‘you are striving to exchange beauty’); 218e6, ἀλήθειαν καλῶν κτᾶσθαι ἐπιχειρεῖς (‘you are striving to get the truth of beautiful things’). Other proposals may be mentioned. DoverFootnote ⁴ prints † λήγειν ἐπιχειρῆι † and suggests that λήγειν perhaps should be deleted, with ἐπιχειρῆι emended to ἐπιλείπηι (‘fail in’, ‘fall short of’). WaterfieldFootnote ⁵ also would delete λήγειν and also emend ἐπιχειρῆι, to ἀποχωρῆι (‘when your eyesight goes into decline’). RoweFootnote ⁶ obelizes ἐπιχειρῆι, noting Dover's ἐπιλείπηι in his critical apparatus.

Renehan's λήγηι (with ἐπιχειρῆι deleted) is simple and neat but summarily dismissive of the manuscript tradition. What would seem to be needed is a reading which will account for the presence of both verbs, λήγειν and ἐπιχειρῆι, in the received text. In light of the two preceding occurrences of ἐπιχειρεῖς cited above, I would suggest that Socrates may have drawn an emphatic contrast between Alcibiades' persistent ‘blind’ striving and the sharp-sighted mental discernment which comes only with age and the fading of physical sight; Plato then may have written:

Two steps to corruption may be imagined. That σὺ δὲ ἐπιχειρῶν was miscopied as ἐπιχειρῶν σὺ δέ would scarcely surprise, for transpositions such as this are common in the manuscripts; we may compare, for example, the respective readings of B and TW at 183e1, μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐρῶν] μᾶλλον ἐρῶν ἢ τῆς ψυχῆς.Footnote ⁷ With λήγηι and ἐπιχειρῶν now juxtaposed, a syntactical ‘correction’ was obviously needed. Hence λήγειν ἐπιχειρῆι—acceptable syntax, unacceptable sense.

Let me end on a subjective note, on tone. An anonymous referee, whose helpful comments I gratefully acknowledge, wonders if the ‘emphatic contrast’ (between Alcibiades' striving and the attaining of true discernment) which I claim for the emended text is not already present ‘in the structure of the discourse’. It is, probably, yet a culminating ἐπιχειρῶν may hold a hint of impatience in Socrates' warning, ‘you're striving to exchange beauty … you're striving to get the truth … but in all of this striving of yours …’; for such impatience, compare the immediately preceding vocative address, ὦ μακάριε, which is ‘capable of conveying correction, rebuke, or even indignation’.Footnote ⁸