ophanes 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