Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata
Plutarch
Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. III. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1931 (printing).
Alcibiades, while still a boy, was caught in a fast hold in a wrestling-school, and, not being able to get away, he bit the arm of the boy who had him down. The other boy said, You bite like a woman. No indeed, said Alcibiades, but like a lion. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades chap. i. (192 C). The same story is told of a Spartan in Moralia, 234 E.)
He owned a very beautiful dog, for which he had paid two hundred and seventy-five pounds, and he cut off its tail, so that, as he said, the Athenians may tell this about me, and may not concern themselves too much with anything else. [*](In quite different words in Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades, chap. ix. (195 D).)
Coming upon a schoolroom, he asked for a book of the Iliad, and when the teacher said that
he had nothing of Homer’s, Alcibiades hit him a blow with his fist and passed on. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades, chap. vii. (194 D), and Aelian, Varia Historia, xiii. 38.)He came to Pericles’ door, and upon learning that Pericles was not at liberty, but was considering how to render his accounting to the Athenians, he said, Were it not better that he should consider how not to render it ? [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades, chap. vii. (194 E); Diodorus, xii. 38; Valerius Maximus, iii. 1, ext. 1.)
Summoned from Sicily by the Athenians to be tried for his life, he went into hiding, saying that it is silly for a man under indictment to seek a way to get off when he can get away. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades, chap. xxi. (202 C); Aelian, Varia Historia, xiii. 38.)
When somebody said, Don’t you trust your fatherland to decide about you ?he replied, Not I; nor would I trust even my mother, lest in a moment of thoughtlessness she unwittingly cast a black ballot instead of a white one. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades, chap. xxii. (202 D) and Aelian, xiii. 38.)
Hearing that sentence of death had been passed upon him and his companions, he said, Let us show them, then, that we are alive, and turning to the Spartan side he started the Decelean war against the Athenians. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades, chap. xxii. (202 D) and Aelian, xiii. 38; cf. also Polyaenus, Strategemata, i. 40. 6.)