III. In political matters, the Peloponnesian war is a great blot upon the fame of Perikles; for it is said to have been caused by his refusal to yield the least point to the Lacedaemonians. I do not imagine, however, that Fabius Maximus would have yielded anything to the Carthaginians, but would have bravely risked any danger in defence of the Roman Empire. The kind treatment of Minucius by Fabius and his mildness of character contrast very favourably with the bitter party feud of Perikles with Kimon and Thucydides, who were men of good birth, and belonging to the conservative party, and whom Perikles drove into exile by the ostracism. Then, too, the power of Perikles was much greater than that of Fabius. Perikles would not permit the State to suffer disaster because of the bad management of her generals. One of them alone, Tolmides, succeeded in having his own way, against the wishes of Perikles, and perished in an attack on the Boeotians, while all the rest, because of his immense influence and power, submitted themselves to his authority and regulated their proceedings by his ideas. Whereas Fabius, although he could avoid any error in managing his own army, was thwarted by his being powerless to control the movements of other generals.
For the Romans would not have suffered so many defeats if Fabius had enjoyed the same power that Perikles did in Athens. As to their generosity with regard to money, the one was remarkable for never receiving bribes, while the other spent much on ransoming prisoners at his own expense; although this was not much above six talents, while it is hard for any one to tell the amount of money which Perikles might have taken from foreign princes and Greek allied states, all of which he refused and kept his hands clean. As to the great public works, the construction of the temples, and of the public buildings with which Perikles adorned Athens, the whole of the edifices in Rome together, before the time of the emperors, are not worthy to be compared to them, for they far surpassed them both in largeness of scale and in beauty of design.
Life of Alkibiades
I. The pedigree of Alkibiades is said to begin with Eurysakes the son of Ajax, while on the mother's side he descended from Alkmaeon, being the son of Deinomache, the daughter of Megakles. His father Kleinias fought bravely at Artemisium in a trireme fitted out at his own expense, and subsequently fell fighting the Boeotians, in the battle of Koronea. Alkibiades after this was entrusted to Perikles and Ariphron, the two sons of Xanthippus, who acted as his guardians because they were the next of kin. It has been well remarked that the friendship of Sokrates for him did not a little to increase his fame, seeing that Nikias, Demosthenes, Lamakus, Phormio, Thrasybulus, and Theramenes, were all men of mark in his lifetime, and yet we do not know the name of the mother of any one of them, while we know the name even of the nurse of Alkibiades, who was a Laconian, named Amykla, and that of Zopyrus, his paedagogus, one of which pieces of information we owe to Antisthenes, and the other to Plato. As to the beauty of Alkibiades, it is not necessary to say anything except that it was equally fascinating when he was a boy, a youth, and a man. The saying of Euripides, that all beauties have a beautiful autumn of their charms, is not universally true, but it was so in the case of Alkibiades and of a few other persons because of the symmetry and vigour of their frames. Even his lisp is said to have added a charm to his speech, and to have made his talk more persuasive. His lisp is mentioned by Aristophanes in the verses in which he satirises Theorus, in which Alkibiades calls him Theolus, for he pronounced the letter r like l. Archippus also gives a sneering account of the son of Alkibiades, who, he said, swaggered in his walk, trailing his cloak, that he might look as like his father as possible, and
"Bends his affected neck, and lisping speaks."
II. His character, in the course of his varied and brilliant career, developed many strange inconsistencies and contradictions. Emulation and love of distinction were the most prominent of his many violent passions, as is clear from the anecdotes of his childhood. Once when hard pressed in wrestling, rather than fall, he began to bite his opponent's hands. The other let go his hold, and said, "You bite, Alkibiades, like a woman." "No," said he, "like a lion." While yet a child, he was playing at knucklebones with other boys in a narrow street, and when his turn came to throw, a loaded waggon was passing. He at first ordered the driver to stop his team because his throw was to take place directly in the path of the waggon. Then as the boor who was driving would not stop, the other children made way; but Alkibiades flung himself down on his face directly in front of the horses, and bade him drive on at his peril. The man, in alarm, now stopped his horses, and the others were terrified and ran up to him.
In learning he was fairly obedient to all his teachers, except in playing the flute, which he refused to do, declaring that it was unfit for a gentleman. He said that playing on the harp or lyre did not disfigure the face, but that when a man was blowing at a flute, his own friends could scarcely recognise him. Besides, the lyre accompanies the voice of the performer, while the flute takes all the breath of the player and prevents him even from speaking. "Let the children of the Thebans," he used to say, "learn to play the flute, for they know not how to speak; but we Athenians according to tradition have the goddess Athene (Minerva) for our patroness, and Apollo for our tutelary divinity; and of these the first threw away the flute in disgust, and the other actually flayed the flute player Marsyas." With such talk as this, between jest and earnest, Alkibiades gave up flute–playing himself, and induced his friends to do so, for all the youth of Athens soon heard and approved of Alkibiades's derision of the flute and those who learned it. In consequence of this the flute went entirely out of fashion, and was regarded with contempt.
III. In Antiphon's scandalous chronicle, we read that Alkibiades once ran away from home to the house of one of his admirers.
Ariphron, his other guardian, proposed to have him cried; but Perikles forbade it, saying that, if he was dead, he would only be found one day sooner because of it, while if he was safe, he would be disgraced for life. Antiphon also tells us that he killed one of his servants by striking him with a club, at the gymnasium of Sibyrtus. But perhaps we ought not to believe these stories, which were written by an enemy with the avowed purpose of defaming his character.
IV. His youthful beauty soon caused him to be surrounded with noble admirers, but the regard of Sokrates for him is a great proof of his natural goodness of disposition, which that philosopher could discern in him, but which he feared would wither away like a faded flower before the temptations of wealth and position, and the mass of sycophants by whom he was soon beset. For no one ever was so enclosed and enveloped in the good things of this life as Alkibiades, so that no breath of criticism or free speech could ever reach him. Yet, with all these flatterers about him, trying to prevent his ever hearing a word of wholesome advice or reproof, he was led by his own goodness of heart to pay special attention to Sokrates, to whom he attached himself in preference to all his rich and fashionable admirers.