Alcibiades

Moreover, the lyre blended its tones with the voice or song of its master; whereas the flute closed and barricaded the mouth, robbing its master both of voice and speech. Flutes, then, said he, for the sons of Thebes; they know not how to converse. But we Athenians, as our fathers say, have Athena for foundress and Apollo for patron, one of whom cast the flute away in disgust, and the other flayed the presumptuous flute-player. [*](Athena threw away the flute because she saw her puffed and swollen cheeks reflected in the water of a spring. Marsyas the satyr was vanquished by Apollo in a musical contest, and was flayed alive.)

Thus, half in jest and half in earnest, Alcibiades emancipated himself from this discipline, and the rest of the boys as well. For word soon made its way to them that Alcibiades loathed the art of flute-playing and scoffed at its disciples, and rightly, too. Wherefore the flute was dropped entirely from the programme of a liberal education and was altogether despised.

Among the calumnies which Antiphon[*](An abusive oration of Antiphon the Rhamnusian against Alcibiades, cited in Athenaeus, p. 525b, was probably a fabrication and falsely attributed to him. It is not extant.) heaps upon him it is recorded that, when he was a boy, he ran away from home to Democrates, one of his lovers, and that Ariphron was all for having him proclaimed by town crier as a castaway. But Pericles would not suffer it. If he is dead, said he, we shall know it only a day the sooner for the proclamation; whereas, if he is alive, he will, in consequence of it, be as good as dead for the rest of his life. Antiphon says also that with a blow of his stick he slew one of his attendants in the palaestra of Sibyrtius. But these things are perhaps unworthy of belief, coming as they do from one who admits that he hated Alcibiades, and abused him accordingly.

It was not long before many men of high birth clustered about him and paid him their attentions. Most of them were plainly smitten with his brilliant youthful beauty and fondly courted him. But it was the love which Socrates had for him that bore strong testimony to the boy’s native excellence and good parts. These Socrates saw radiantly manifest in his outward person, and, fearful of the influence upon him of wealth and rank and the throng of citizens, foreigners and allies who sought to preempt his affections by flattery and favour, he was fain to protect him, and not suffer such a fair flowering plant to cast its native fruit to perdition.