We have examined an excellent survey of the forms of republics put forth in the cause of designing the perfect republic. This “aristocracy” rule by the best, is claimed to be the form that the other four devolved from, in contradiction to Socrates naming the four ages: Gold, Silver, Brass and Iron of mortal decline from the godlike state. His republic of the mind has no real place in the cycle but is intended to replace the cycle.

The Tyrant is examined in Book 9 and found to be the most miserable person, a slave to his slaves. This is easy to understand for the slave owning members of the discussion group.

In this chapter the three aspects of the soul Lust [money], Competition [combat] and Wisdom, [thinking] are shown as being reflected in types of people, merchant, warrior, scholar, with the scholar—since these men are all scholars—superior. Math is used to show that three steps removal results in huge gaps in rightness and goodness.

Book 9 is chock for of wisdom. Book 10 then circles back around to an attack on tradition in order to pave the way for perfection of form:

“To sell what is divine in us to what is godless and brutal,” is the base life of the lustful.

“The servant of the best… ruled by the divine whisper within them,” is the steward of the republic.

Citizens are like, “Children,” rulers like parents, “not allowing them to be free until they have cultivated what is best in them so that they may form a republic—then we can let them go.”

Let’s keep in mind that as a student of Aristotle Alexander was familiar with these arguments and was able, even as a boy, to parse them. He was more of a traditionalist than his traditionalist parents. In Book 10 Socrates breaks out the lie as his primary tool.

One will notice this if he goes back and reads Chapter 3. In that chapter the architects of the perfect society decide that the poets must be made to rewrite passages on Eternity, depicting “the world below” Hades, as a happy place, so that soldiers will be willing to die for their rulers, “so that they fear slavery more than death.”

This is in the same book in which the men agree with his assertion that there must be a single creator God, as with the Amen-Ra cult in Egypt. In Book 9 he will even swear, “By the Dog of Egypt, Glaukon.”

Also, the old sage puts forth an axiom, an absolute to the gathered architects of Aristocracy, that “lying is strictly forbidden… That only the rulers of our republic have the right to lie!”

Sounds like the same old rigormarole.

The genius then does the parlor trick of the table, describing how the idea of the table is godly, the building of it by a carpenter is mere imitation, and the drawing of it is an imitation of a mere imitation. This is used to resume the attack on tradition, in the form of poets, by stating that poets may only know how to spin words. This relies on the earlier false premise established as reality that any person can only be excellent at one thing. These men knew pankratiasts that were excellent at wrestling and boxing, and also warfare and diplomacy, who also managed estates. Xenophon was such a man. Such arguments only work with armchair theorists. Alexander, was excellent at music, sports, hunting, diplomacy, healing, horsemanship… he must have laughed.

Now, let us recall that these men wanted the poets to lie about what they had been taught by those who had returned from the dead or were prophets of God about the afterlife, in order to increase morale for combat. Socrates fought as a spear man in one losing battle. Alexander commanded and one a battle at 16, and declared the Iliad to contain all the war wisdom one needed. In his opinion Homer knew war. Socrates says that Homer cannot know war because he is a poet and can only know poetry? One could imagine Alexander scoffing at this, having been tutored by the best military mind in all of human history, Phillip, his father, a front line fighter and a major general.

The subtle reader does not have to refer to Socrates’ stated monopoly on the Holy Lie and his desire to lie about Heaven and Hell, when he states that Homer can know nothing of war and Hesiod nothing of works and days and holy song, because their plight was “… to beg their way as rapsodists.”

This was true of these and many other poets, Archilochos, Tyreus, Theognis, Solon for a time, also being refugees from war, civil war and economic collapse. This made them great at one thing beyond word spinning, depicting feeling, in particular tragedy, sorrow. I have suspected these poets were mostly refugees. Socrates confirms it, while claiming to love Homer, yet secretly hating him with a bald-faced lie.

What can we tell of Homer from his work? We must abandon the falsehood of forms and embrace life experience.

That he knew of war, political schemes, religious observances, wandering, home sickness, loss, betrayal, greed, honor, rage, the unwanted home coming by a refugee. This was his life, not a skill, but the many subjects of his skill, being poetry.

The speakers all agree that all sorrow, or bad behavior on the part of heroes and gods, should be redacted! Devils and demons may no longer rage, but must be good. Angels may no longer be wrathful—God almighty must stop with the thunderbolts and be a kindly old guru. Thus they would have us redact half of Exodus and all of Job, and especially Christ moaning on the cross, because He must be a British Empire stoic with a stiff upper lip and all of that guff.

They laugh that Homer’s famous companion was known as “Meat-tribe.” Sounds like the refugee poet lucked out, and perhaps wrote the Good Cowherd and Good Swineherd into the Odyssey from experience.

Then these men, who will not, “...deny the existence of such a maker,” as an as-yet-unknown master God, [0] decide that Hesiod, since he was a pauper, could know nothing of economics; that since he lost his farm to his scheming wastrel brother and local crime bosses, he could know nothing of farming; that since he went mad and danced on Mount Helicon and learned lyric poetry from the Muses directly and was redeemed by winning sacred contests, that he could know nothing of the sacred, despite being of extreme piety, like Alexander.

Socrates claims that poets were fakes who knew nothing but word spinning, because there was no slavish cult using The Iliad as scripture. Where known philosophical cults, like his or that of Pythogaras, were established to worship the ideas for a better life put forth by the guru, The Odyssey had no temple or cult liturgy. What he was saying, was that a story depicting a war, a quest,a home coming, has ZERO value unless it has been crafted to offer the ideal motivational form. Socrates would have been at home on the set of a black hat/white hat, Hollywood western, and be among the many producers who have declined to make Blood Meridian, a true western based on a confession, into a movie. The greatest mind in Western thought is exposed in his own words as a grifter of the worst kind.

Why did Alexander simply abolished corrupt governments and let the locals “return to their traditional forms of government” so long as they did not murder their neighbors in the process? Perhaps because this teaching on Aristocracy, of experimental governance, was a bold-faced farce he was well-equipped to see through even as a boy involved in governance as young as age 8.

Socrates, who advocated for the abolition of the family, to have all “women and children held in common,” as government subjects, to have women put into combat, so that he might be lauded as a creator god of Aristocracy, was a genius, an evil genius, all the worse because he thought himself pure and good.

Alexander went the other way, turned his back on ideology and embraced the theology of his ancestors in a bid to preserve the patrimony of his lineage, which he believed, with evidence recognized even by Socrates [1], was as true as the sword in his hand.

Alexander was born to a butchered world, riven by corruption, many tiny nations bought and sold into bitter political bondage and externally manipulated feuds. His race, the Hellenes, were at each others’ throats, the Thebans, Spartans and Athenian all in the pocket of Persia. His own land was surrounded by barbarians in the pocket of bankers and slave traders. His world was a post apocalyptic residue of competing ideologies. His grandfather, uncle, father, were all murdered in the nation they “ruled.” He left civics at home and took the true stage of war and reverence. He would not be forgiven. Neither would he be forgotten.

That said, rotten as Socrates was, Alexander would not have demanded his suicide, but simply asked the Athenians to banish him. In Alexander’s view, it was obvious that one must maintain Timocracy [Honor-government] through the use of a monarchy to protect individual republics from each other and from empire. The fault of the honor state was poverty. He and his father before him fixed that by winning battles and giving away the booty to gods and men. It was a simple formula that required fanatical levels of physical courage from the King.

Imagine such a man insisting that family be abolished, that lying was good if you were the boss, that his sister armor up for combat against some highlander with an ax?

Notes

0.) Plato’s “Cause Uncaused,” or “Unmoved Mover.”

1.) When Achilles is cited as being fathered by Peleus who was of heavenly descent, as was his mother, the Nymph.

2.) Socrates’ axiom that Greeks should not be enslaved must have sorrowed Alexander, since most Greeks were such greedy traitors that only slavery or slaying could keep them from working on behalf of the Asiatic cartels.

3.) we do not know how much of Socrates words were inserted by Plato. We do know that both political consultant careers were unsuccessful. The fact that Xenophon, who was part of the study group and was dressed down by Socrates for impiety to Apollo, writes nothing against Plato, suggests that these were the words of their teacher.