Birinci Alkibiades Şerhi: Kendini Bil

And from where else should one properly begin their own purification and perfection than from that place which the god at Delphi commanded? For a proclamation was made known to those attending the rites at Eleusis: not to enter within the inner sanctuaries if they are uninitiated and unperfected. And already, even before the Delphic temple, the phrase "Know Thyself" was inscribed. This signified, I believe, the manner of the ascent to the divine and the road to the purification of nature itself. It is almost as if the god were saying clearly to those able to understand: he who knows himself, "starting from his own hearth," is able to be joined with all the harmonies of the whole truth and with the leadership of the purifying life. But he who is ignorant of who he is, being unperfected and uninitiated, is unfit to participate in the providence of Apollo. Therefore, let this be the beginning of philosophy and of Plato's teaching: self-knowledge. For it is fitting, I believe, for the devotee of Apollo to begin his own perfection from that same starting point.