Book 2

Here too is something Socrates said to Alcibiades. The young man was in great anxiety and dread of coming forward before the people. Heartening and rousing him, Socrates said, "Do you not despise that cobbler?" naming him. When Alcibiades agreed, Socrates went on, "And what of that man who cries his wares in the markets, or that tent-maker?" When the young man assented, Socrates said, "Well then, the people of the Athenians is gathered together out of such men; and if you despise them one by one, you must despise them when assembled as well." So nobly did the son of Sophroniscus and Phaenarete instruct the son of Cleinias and Deinomache.

Once, when Megabyzus was praising poor and unskilful paintings and finding fault with others laboriously and well executed, the boys of Zeuxis who were grinding the ochre laughed at him. Zeuxis therefore said: "While you keep silent, Megabyzus, these boys admire you, for they see your clothing and the attendants about you; but whenever you wish to say something about art, they despise you. Guard yourself, then, among those who are praised, by keeping a hold on your tongue and not playing the connoisseur about matters that are none of your concern."

Alexander, when he beheld the portrait of himself at Ephesus painted by Apelles, did not praise it as the work deserved. But when the horse was led in and neighed at the horse in the picture as though at a real and living one, Apelles said: "O king, the horse seems to be a far better judge of painting than you."

I wish to tell you of a deed of Phalaris not at all in keeping with his usual character; for the deed proclaims an irresistible humanity, and on that account seems foreign to him. Chariton was a man of Acragas, a lover of beauty and passionately devoted to the bloom of youth; and he loved with the fiercest ardour Melanippus, a man of Acragas, excellent in soul and outstanding in beauty. This Melanippus was wronged in something by Phalaris; for when he was at law with one of the tyrant's own friends, Phalaris ordered him to drop the suit. When he would not obey, the tyrant threatened to do the worst to him if he did not yield. So the friend, by the necessity Phalaris imposed, won the case against justice, and the magistrates destroyed the record of the trial. The young man bore this grievously, saying he had been outraged, and confessed his anger to his lover, and begged him to share in the attack upon the tyrant; and he was eager to take in others among the young men whom he knew to be hottest for such an undertaking. Chariton, seeing him in a frenzy and inflamed with anger, and knowing that none of the citizens would join them for fear of the tyrant, said that he too had long desired this and was zealous by every means to deliver his country from the slavery that had overtaken it; but that it was not safe to make such matters known to many. He asked Melanippus, then, to let him consider these things more carefully, and to allow him to watch for the right moment for the deed. The youth agreed. So Chariton, taking the whole hazard upon himself, and unwilling to take his beloved as a partner — so that, if he were caught, he alone might suffer the penalty and not drag the other into the same — when it seemed to him the time was right, took a dagger and set out against the tyrant. He did not, however, escape notice, for the bodyguards kept watch over such things very strictly. Thrown into prison by Phalaris and racked to make him name his accomplices, he endured it and bore up under the tortures. But when this dragged on, Melanippus came to Phalaris and confessed that he was not only an accomplice of Chariton, but had himself begun the plot. When Phalaris asked the reason, he told the whole story from the beginning and the suppression of the record, and confessed that he had been deeply aggrieved by it. Phalaris, then, marvelling at them both, released them from punishment, ordering them to leave that very day not only the city of Acragas but Sicily itself; yet he allowed them to enjoy their own rightful property. These men the Pythia afterward celebrated, and their love, in these verses: "Guides divine of love to mortal men, blessed were Chariton and Melanippus born" — the god calling their love a divine friendship.

The Lacedaemonians practised a remarkable economy of time, husbanding it from every quarter for pressing needs, and allowing none of the citizens either to take their ease or be idle with it, lest, being spent on things outside virtue, it should be wasted to no purpose. A proof of this, among others, is the following. When the ephors of the Lacedaemonians heard that those who had seized Decelea were taking an afternoon walk, they sent word to them: "Do not take walks" — implying that they were living softly rather than training the body. For the Lacedaemonians must procure their health not through walking but through the exercises of the gymnasium.

They say that Hippomachus the trainer, when the athlete he was training had managed a certain wrestling-throw, and the whole crowd standing round shouted out, struck him with his rod and said: "But you did badly, and not as you ought, what should have been done better; for these men would not have praised you had you done something skilful" — hinting that those who do each thing well and finely ought to please not the many, but those who have an understanding eye for what is done. Socrates too seems to have made light of the judgement of the many in his conversation with Crito, when Crito came to the prison and tried to persuade him to run away and so frustrate the Athenians' verdict against him.

This is a Theban law, rightly and humanely laid down above most: that it is not permitted to a Theban to expose a child or to cast it out into a wilderness, condemning it to death; but if the child's father is poor in the extreme, whether the child be male or female, he is to bring it, fresh from its mother's pains and still in its swaddling-clothes, to the magistrates; and they, receiving the infant, hand it over to whoever offers the smallest price. There is an agreement and a contract with him, that in return he shall rear the child, and when it is grown have it as his slave, male or female, taking its service as the recompense for its upbringing.

In the ninety-first Olympiad, in which Exaenetus of Acragas won the foot-race, Xenocles and Euripides competed against each other. And first was Xenocles — whoever he may be — with his Oedipus, Lycaon, Bacchae, and the satyr-play Athamas. Second to him was Euripides with his Alexander, Palamedes, Trojan Women, and the satyr-play Sisyphus. It is absurd — is it not? — that Xenocles should win and Euripides be beaten, and that with such dramas. One of two things, then: either the judges who held the vote were senseless and ignorant and far from a right judgement, or they were bribed. Either is monstrous, and least of all worthy of the Athenians.

Consider what the Athenians decreed, and that under a democracy: of the Aeginetans, to cut off the great thumb of the right hand of each, that they might not be able to wield a spear but might pull an oar; of the Mytilenaeans, to slaughter all of military age — this too they decreed, on the proposal of Cleon, son of Cleaenetus. As for the captives taken of the Samians, they were to be branded on the face, and the brand was to be an owl — and this too was an Attic decree. I would not have wished these things either to have been ratified at Athens or to be told of the Athenians — O Athena of the City, and Zeus the Deliverer, and all the gods of the Greeks.

I hear of Timotheus, son of Conon, the general of the Athenians, that when he was at the height of his good fortune and was taking the cities with the greatest ease, and the Athenians did not know where to place him out of their wonder at the man — that he, meeting Plato, son of Ariston, walking outside the walls with some of his acquaintances, and seeing him grand to look upon in his breadth, gracious in countenance, and discoursing not about the levying of money nor about triremes, nor about naval needs nor about crews, nor about the necessity of sending help nor about the tribute of the allies, nor about the islanders or any other such trifle, but about those matters of which Plato spoke and was wont to take seriously — the son of Conon, standing still, said: "What a life, and what true happiness!" From this it is plain that Timotheus did not declare himself to be very happy at all, since his happiness lay not in these things, but in his reputation and honour among the Athenians.

Socrates, seeing at the beginning of the Thirty the men of distinction put to death and the very wealthy plotted against by the tyrants, is said to have met Antisthenes and said: "Have you any regret that we became nothing great or august in our lives, and not such as we see the monarchs in tragedy — those Atreuses and Thyesteses and Agamemnons and Aegisthuses? For these are exposed to view, slaughtered and made the stuff of tragedy and eating their wicked feasts every time; but no poet of tragedy was ever so bold or shameless as to bring a slaughtered chorus onto the stage in a drama."

As for Themistocles, son of Neocles, I do not know whether one should praise this. When Themistocles had ceased from his prodigality — having been disowned by his father — and began to live soberly, and had given up his courtesans, and was seized with another love, the love of the public life of the Athenians, and set himself most ardently to office and was eager to be first, he said, they tell us, to his acquaintances: "What would you give for a man like me, who am not yet envied?" Now one who longs to be envied is striving for that which Euripides calls "being stared at." But that this is empty, the same Euripides declares.

Anytus and his party set upon Socrates and plotted against him, for what reasons and on what grounds has been told long ago. But, suspicious of the Athenians and afraid how they would stand toward the accusation of the man — for great was the name of Socrates, both for other reasons and because he refuted the sophists as men with nothing sound about them, who neither knew nor said anything worth the trouble — on these grounds, then, they wished to make trial regarding the slander against him. For they did not think it advisable to bring an indictment against him outright at once, for the reasons I have stated, and for these as well: lest the friends of Socrates, growing savage, should set the judges against them, and they themselves should suffer some incurable harm, as men who falsely accused one who was not only the cause of no evil to the city, but on the contrary an ornament to Athens. What, then, do they devise? They persuade Aristophanes, the comic poet — a buffoon, a man absurd and eager to be so — to make a comedy of Socrates, doubtless the things that go about: that he was a babbler, and that he made the weaker argument appear the stronger, and brought in strange divinities, and neither revered nor honoured the gods, and taught these same things to those who came to him and persuaded them to hold them. Aristophanes, taking a thoroughly bold subject, and sowing in laughter and the charm of his verses, and taking the best of the Greeks for his subject — for the drama was not against Cleon, nor was he making comedy of the Lacedaemonians or Thebans or Pericles himself, but of a man dear to the other gods and especially to Apollo — since, then, it was an unaccustomed thing and a paradoxical spectacle on the stage and in comedy, Socrates, the comedy first of all astonished the Athenians by its unexpectedness; and then, being by nature envious and disposed to begrudge the best — not only those in public life and office, but still more those who were well thought of for fine speech or for the dignity of their lives — they reckoned these Clouds a most delightful entertainment, and applauded the poet as never before, and shouted that he had won, and bade the judges write down Aristophanes above and no other. So much for the drama. As for Socrates, he rarely frequented the theatres; but if ever Euripides, the poet of tragedy, was competing with new tragedies, then he would come. And when Euripides was competing at the Piraeus, Socrates went down there too; for he delighted in the man, both for his wisdom and for his excellence in verse. And once, when Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, and Critias, son of Callaeschrus, were teasing him and forced him to go into the theatre to hear the comedy, he was not pleased with them, but utterly despised — being a man temperate and just and good, and besides wise — men who were mockers and insolent and said nothing sound; which grieved them terribly. So these too were the seeds of the comedy against him, and not only those that are admitted to have come from Anytus and Meletus. It is likely too that Aristophanes was paid for these things. For since they wished — or rather were eager by every means to slander Socrates — and since he himself was poor and accursed, what was strange in his taking money for no good end? But of these things he himself knows; at any rate his drama was well thought of. And indeed it happened then, if ever, as Cratinus says, that the theatre was sick in its wits. And since it was the festival of Dionysus, a very great multitude of the Greeks came in their eagerness for the spectacle. So, when Socrates was being paraded on the stage and named many times — and I would not wonder if he was even seen among the actors, for plainly the mask-makers fashioned him as like as could be — the strangers, who did not know who was being made fun of, raised a murmur and kept asking who this Socrates might be. Perceiving this — for he was present, not idly nor by chance, but knowing they were making a comedy of him, and indeed he sat in a conspicuous place in the theatre — in order to resolve the strangers' perplexity, he stood up and remained standing throughout the whole drama while the actors performed, and so was seen. So far did Socrates carry his disdain of comedy and of the Athenians.

That Xerxes was a laughable man, if indeed he despised the sea and the land, the work of Zeus, and made for himself new roads and an unwonted voyage, yet was a slave to a plane-tree and admired the tree. In Lydia, at any rate, they say that, seeing a fine large plane-tree, he stayed there that day with no need to, and used the desert about the tree for his halting-place. Moreover he hung costly ornament upon it, honouring its branches with collars and bracelets, and left a keeper for it, as a guard and warden over a beloved. And from this what good came to the tree? The borrowed adornment, which in no way belonged to it, hung there idly and added nothing to its beauty; since the beauty of a tree is this — noble branches, abundant foliage, a firm trunk, deep roots, winds that toss it, far-spreading shade from it, the seasons turning, and water, some nourishing it through channels, some watering it from heaven; but Xerxes' robes and the barbarian's gold and the rest of the gifts were worthy neither of the plane-tree nor of any other noble tree.

Some men of Clazomenae, coming to Sparta and behaving with insolence and arrogance, smeared with soot the thrones of the ephors, where they are accustomed to sit and conduct business and arrange each of the city's affairs. When the ephors learned of it, they were not angry, but, summoning the public herald, ordered him to proclaim publicly this admired pronouncement: "Let it be permitted to the Clazomenians to behave indecently."

This too of Phocion, son of Phocus, I know to be a fine thing. Coming forward before the Athenians at an assembly, when he had some reproach to make against them for their folly, he said, very wisely and tellingly: "I had rather suffer some harm at your hands than myself do you any harm."

The wisdom of the Magi among the Persians knows, among the other things it is permitted them to know, also how to prophesy. These men foretold the savagery and bloodthirstiness of Ochus toward his subjects, having discerned it through certain secret signs. For when, upon the death of his father Artaxerxes, Ochus came to the kingship of the Persians, the Magi ordered one of the eunuchs standing near to watch which of the dishes set before him Ochus would attack first, when the table was laid. And while the eunuch stood watching this, Ochus stretched out his hands, took with his right one of the knives lying by, and with the other drew toward him the largest of the loaves, and laying meat upon it, then cut and ate without stint. Hearing this, the Magi prophesied these two things: abundance from the seasons and good harvests during the time of his reign, and many murders. And they were not deceived.

Timotheus, son of Conon, the general of the Athenians, once, having withdrawn from those costly dinners and those generals' banquets, was taken by Plato to the symposium in the Academy and entertained simply and after the manner of the Muses; and returning home he said to his household that those who dine with Plato are well even on the morrow. From this Timotheus disparaged costly and vulgar dinners as not pleasing at all on the day after. There is another story, brother to the one just told and meaning the same thing, though not telling it in the same words, that goes about: that on the next day Timotheus, meeting Plato, said: "You, Plato, dine better for the morrow than for the present day."

Alexander, when he had conquered Darius and gained the empire of the Persians, thinking great things of himself and made a god by the good fortune that had then encompassed him, sent word to the Greeks to vote him a god. Absurdly. For what nature had not given him, this he gained nothing by demanding from men. So various peoples voted various things, but the Lacedaemonians voted this: "Since Alexander wishes to be a god, let him be a god" — thus in their laconic and native fashion the Lacedaemonians convicting Alexander of folly.

They say that King Antigonus was of the people and gentle. Whoever has leisure to know the particulars about him and to examine each detail of the man will learn them elsewhere; but I will tell what I am about to say, which is very gentle and unassuming of him. This Antigonus, seeing his son treat his subjects too violently and too boldly, said: "Do you not know, my son, that our kingship is a glorious slavery?" Now Antigonus's words to his son are very mild and humane; but if anyone thinks otherwise, then that man, it seems to me, does not know a kingly or statesmanlike person, but is rather suited to living with a tyrant.

Pausanias of the deme Ceramus loved the poet Agathon. This is much talked of; but what has not gone out to all, I will tell. They once came to the court of Archelaus, this lover and his beloved. Now Archelaus was no less amorous than fond of the Muses. Since, then, he often saw Pausanias and Agathon quarrelling with each other, thinking that the lover was being slighted by his favourite, Archelaus asked Agathon what he meant by so frequently falling out with the man who loved him above all. And Agathon said: "I will tell you, king. For I am neither quarrelsome toward him, nor do I do this out of boorishness; but if I too understand anything of human character, both otherwise and from poetry, I find it most pleasant for lovers to be reconciled with their beloveds after a quarrel, and I am convinced that nothing so delightful befalls them. So I often give him a share of this pleasure by quarrelling with him repeatedly; for he rejoices whenever I am continually ending my quarrel with him, whereas if I approached him evenly and as a matter of habit he would not know the difference." Archelaus, the story goes, praised this. They say too that the poet Euripides also loved this same Agathon, and that he composed his drama Chrysippus as a favour to him. Whether this is certain I cannot declare; but I know that it is said by most.

I hear that the Mantineans too were among the best-governed peoples, no less than the Locrians or the Cretans or the Lacedaemonians themselves or the Athenians; for a grand thing too was the work of Solon, even if afterward the Athenians little by little corrupted some of the laws he had written for them.

Nicodorus the boxer, having been among the most renowned of the Mantineans, late in his life and after his athletic career became their lawgiver, and so governed his country far better than by his proclamations in the stadiums. They say that Diagoras of Melos, who was his lover, composed the laws for him. I had something further to say about Nicodorus; but lest I should seem to be also taking up the praise of Diagoras, let my account go only so far. For Diagoras was hateful to the gods, and it is no pleasure to me to make much mention of him.

Some have already cast down the famous strength of Milo of Croton, telling such things about him. The pomegranate of this Milo, which he held in his hand, none of his opponents could pull out; but his beloved drew it out very easily, contending with him often. From this one may understand that Milo was strong in body, but not brave in soul.

They say that the sixth of the month Thargelion was the cause of many good things, not only to the Athenians but to many others as well. For instance, Socrates was born on this day; and the Persians were defeated on this day; and the Athenians sacrifice to Artemis Agrotera the three hundred she-goats, doing this in accordance with the vow of Miltiades. On the sixth of the same month they say too that the battle of Plataea took place and that the Greeks were victorious; for their earlier defeat, which I mentioned, occurred at Artemisium. And the victory of the Greeks at Mycale is agreed to have been the gift of no other day than this, since on the same day they were victorious both at Plataea and at Mycale. And Alexander the Macedonian, the son of Philip, they say destroyed the many myriads of the barbarians on the sixth too, when Alexander overthrew Darius. And all agree it was in the same month. And Alexander himself is believed both to have been born and to have departed from life on the same day.

Aristotle says that by the Crotoniates Pythagoras was called Hyperborean Apollo. And the son of Nicomachus adds this too, that once on the same day and at the same hour he was seen by many both at Metapontum and at Croton, rising up at the games, where Pythagoras also revealed that one of his thighs was of gold. The same writer says too that as he was crossing the river Cosas he was addressed by it; and he says that many heard this address.

Anniceris of Cyrene prided himself greatly on horsemanship and the driving of chariots. And so once he wished to display his skill to Plato. Yoking his chariot, he drove many courses round the Academy, keeping so exactly to the line of the course that he did not stray beyond the wheel-tracks, but always went along them. Now all the rest, as was natural, were astonished; but Plato found fault with his excessive zeal, saying: "It is impossible for one who lays out so much care upon things so small and worthless to be in earnest about anything great; for, all his thought being given over to those things, he must necessarily neglect what truly deserves to be admired."

After the victory over the Persians the Athenians established a law that cocks should fight publicly in the theatre one day of the year. Whence this law took its beginning I will tell. When Themistocles was leading out the citizen force against the barbarians, he saw cocks fighting; and he did not look on idly, but halted the army and said to them: "These birds suffer hardship neither for their country nor for their fathers' gods nor for the tombs of their ancestors, nor for glory nor for freedom nor for their young, but only that neither may be beaten and neither yield to the other." Having said this, he strengthened the Athenians. So the watchword that then arose for them he wished to preserve as an incitement to valour and a reminder for like deeds.

Pittacus at Mytilene set up in the temples ladders fit for no use, but to be dedications for this very purpose, hinting at the shifting of fortune up and down — how, in a manner, the fortunate go up and the unfortunate come down.

Plato, son of Ariston, at first set out for poetry, and wrote heroic verses; then he burned them, despising them, when, comparing them with Homer's, he saw them far inferior. So he turned to tragedy, and indeed composed a tetralogy, and was about to compete, having already given the poems to the actors. But before the festival of Dionysus he came and heard Socrates, and once caught by that man's Siren, he not only withdrew then from the contest, but utterly cast away the writing of tragedy, and stripped himself for philosophy.

And who would not praise the wisdom of the barbarians? Seeing that none of them fell into atheism, nor do they doubt about the gods whether they exist or not, or whether they care for us or not. None of them, at any rate, conceived such a notion as Euhemerus of Messene, or Diogenes the Phrygian, or Hippon, or Diagoras, or Sosias, or Epicurus — no Indian or Celt or Egyptian. Rather, the aforesaid barbarians say both that there are gods and that they have forethought for us and signify beforehand things to come, through birds and through omens and through entrails and through certain other lessons and teachings — which are instructive to men, coming from the gods' forethought toward them. And they say too that many things are foreshown through dreams and through the stars themselves. And, having a strong belief about these matters, they sacrifice in purity and keep themselves holy and pure, and perform rites and observe the law of the mysteries, and do the other things from which it is agreed that they strongly revere and honour the gods.

Certain Pythian accounts say that Heracles, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, was from birth called Alcaeus, but that later, coming to Delphi for some reason to seek an oracle, he not only did not fail of the things for which he had come, but heard besides, privately from the god, these words: "Phoebus names you Heracles for your surname; for, bringing glory to men, you shall have undying fame."

We see the nature of rivers and their streams; yet those who honour them and make their images, some set them up in human form, while others gave them the shape of bulls. To bulls, then, the Stymphalians liken the Erasinus and the Metope, the Lacedaemonians the Eurotas, the Sicyonians and Phliasians the Asopus, the Argives the Cephisus; in the form of men, the Psophidians honour the Erymanthus, the Heraeans the Alpheus, and the Chersonesians from Cnidus likewise honour the same river in the same way. The Athenians represent the Cephisus as a man in profile, with horns just showing. And in Sicily the Syracusans likened the Anapus to a man, but honoured the spring Cyane with the image of a woman; the Egestaeans honour the Porpax and the Crimisus and the Telmessus in the form of men. The people of Acragas, likening the river that gives its name to the city to a youth in his bloom, sacrifice to it. These same people also dedicated at Delphi a statue carved of ivory, and inscribed on it the name of the river. And the statue is of a boy.

They say that Epicharmus, being very old indeed, sitting with some men of his own age in a club-room, when each of those present said — one, "Five years is enough for me to live," another, "Three for me," and a third said, "Four for me" — Epicharmus broke in and said: "My good friends, why do you wrangle and dispute over a few days? For all of us who are gathered here are, by some chance, at our setting; so it is time for all of us to be off as quickly as possible, before any of us comes to suffer some evil of old age."

Gorgias of Leontini, being at the end of his life and very aged, was seized by some weakness, and lay slipping little by little into sleep. When one of his friends came to look in on him and asked how he did, Gorgias answered: "Now sleep is beginning to hand me over to his brother."

Socrates too, being very far advanced in age and then falling sick, when someone asked him how he was, said: "Well, as regards either outcome; for if I live, I shall have the more to envy me, and if I die, the more to praise me."

Of Zaleucus the Locrian there are many other laws too, laid down most finely and as need required, and this not least. If any of the Epizephyrian Locrians, being ill, drank unmixed wine without the physician's prescribing it, even if he recovered, death was his penalty, because he drank what had not been prescribed to him.

This too is a Massiliot law: that women should have nothing to do with wine, but that women of every age should drink water. Theophrastus says that this law is in force among the Milesians too, and that the women of Miletus obey it. And why should I not tell the Roman law too? And how should I not justly be charged with unreason, if I have set down in memory the laws of the Locrians and the Massiliots and the Milesians, but leave aside those of my own country? Among the Romans, then, this law was in force above all others. Neither a free woman nor a serving-woman would drink wine, nor would those of good birth who were in their youth, up to thirty-five years of age.

The Cretans bade their freeborn children learn the laws to a kind of melody, that they might be charmed by the music and take them more easily into memory, and that, if they should do anything forbidden, they might not have the excuse of having acted in ignorance. As a second lesson they appointed them to learn the hymns of the gods; as a third, the encomia of good men.

Everything irrational is by nature ill-disposed toward wine, and especially those animals which become drunk when overfilled with husks or grape-stones. Ravens too, when they eat the herb called oenutta, and dogs themselves as well, become frenzied. And if an ape and an elephant drink wine, the elephant forgets its strength, the ape its cunning; and they are very easily caught.

Lovers of drink are said to have been Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily, and Nysaeus, who was also a tyrant, and Apollocrates the son of Dionysius the tyrant, and Hipparinus, son of Dionysius, and Timolaus the Theban, and Charidemus of Oreus, and Arcadion, and Erasixenus, and Alcetas the Macedonian, and Diotimus the Athenian. This last was even nicknamed "the Funnel"; for, putting a funnel into his mouth, he would let the wine poured in pass down without ceasing. Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian they say was not only a great drinker, but they ascribe to him besides that Scythian vice, that he became a drinker of unmixed wine. And Ion of Chios, the poet, they say was himself intemperate about wine. And Alexander the Macedonian, in honour of Calanus the Brahman, the Indian sage, when that man burned himself, held a contest of music and horsemen and athletes. And, gratifying the Indians, he reckoned in among the prizes mentioned a contest native to them, in honour of Calanus. He set up a contest of wine-drinking, and the prize for the one who came first was a talent, for the second thirty minae, and for the third ten. The one who bound on the crown of victory among them was Promachus. And under Dionysius, at the festival of the Pitchers, a golden crown was set as a prize for whoever drank most. And Xenocrates of Chalcedon won, and taking the crown, when he was returning after the dinner, he set it upon the Hermes standing before the doors, according to the custom of the days before; for he laid up and left there the garlands of flowers and of myrtle and of ivy and of bay as well. And Anacharsis too, they say, drank a great deal at Periander's, bringing this provision with him from home; for it is characteristic of the Scythians to drink unmixed wine. And Lacydes and Timon the philosophers, these too they say drank a great deal. And Mycerinus the Egyptian, when the oracle from Buto came to him foretelling the shortness of his life, then wished to outwit the prophecy, doubling the time and adding the nights to the days, and continued himself sleepless and drinking at once. Set down with these also Amasis the Egyptian, if Herodotus is sufficient to bear witness for anyone. And Nicoteles the Corinthian must not be left out of these, nor Scopas, son of Creon. And King Antiochus they say was a lover of wine; for which reason Aristus and Themison the Cyprians governed the kingdom for him, while he, through his hard drinking, held the rule only in name. And Antiochus surnamed Epiphanes, who was given to the Romans as a hostage, he too thirsted intemperately to drink wine. And his namesake Antiochus, who in Media made war on Arsaces, he too was a slave to drink. And Antiochus called the Great, let him too be ranked with these. And Agron, king of the Illyrians, the unjust craving for wine killed, and worked pleurisy in him. And another king of the Illyrians, Gentius, he too was used to drink intemperately. As for Orophernes, king of the Cappadocians, shall we leave him out, who also became a terrible drinker? And if one must mention women too — a woman fond of drink is monstrous, and one given to much drinking still more so, but let it be said of these too. Cleo, they say, entering into contest not with women only but with the men who were her fellow-drinkers, was most formidable at drinking, and overcame them all, carrying off, in my judgement, a most shameful prize of victory.

The reputation of Plato and the report of the virtue that was his reached even the Arcadians and the Thebans, and so they entreated him, sending ambassadors with the utmost earnestness, that the man should come to them — not merely for the oversight of their young men, nor that he might join them in philosophical discussion, but, what is still greater than these, they called him to be their lawgiver. They were not, then, likely to fail of the man; for the son of Ariston was pleased at the invitation, and was indeed going to comply. He asked, however, of those who had come, how they stood toward all having an equal share. But when he learned from them that they were quite ill-disposed to it, and that he would not persuade them to honour equality before the law, he refused to visit them.

The poorest of men were the best of the Greeks: Aristides, son of Lysimachus, and Phocion, son of Phocus, and Epaminondas, son of Polymnis, and Pelopidas the Theban, and Lamachus the Athenian, and Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, and Ephialtes, son of Sophonides, he too.

Of Theon the painter many other works besides attest that his craftsmanship was good, and so too does this picture. There is a hoplite rushing to the rescue, the enemy having suddenly burst in and at once laying waste and ravaging the land; vividly and most ardently the young man seems like one hurrying into battle, and you would say he was inspired, as though driven mad by Ares. His eyes look fierce, and snatching up his arms he seems to dart against the enemy as fast as his feet can carry him. From here he already thrusts forward his shield, and brandishes his bared sword, looking like one bent on bloodshed and gazing on slaughter, and threatening through his whole bearing that he will spare none. And Theon laboured at nothing more — no file-leader, no captain, no centurion, no horseman, no archer — but this single hoplite was enough for him to fulfil the demand of the picture. The artist, however, did not uncover the painting nor show it to those gathered for the viewing before he set a trumpeter beside it and ordered him to blow the rousing strain, piercing and as loud as could be, and such as wakens men to battle. So at the same moment the strain was heard, harsh and fearful, such as trumpets sound for the sally of hoplites swiftly rushing to the rescue, and the painting was uncovered, and the soldier was seen, the strain making the image of the man rushing to the rescue still more vivid to the mind.