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.

He soon became intimate with Sokrates, and when he discovered that this
man did not wish to caress and admire him, but to expose his ignorance,
search out his faults, and bring down his vain unreasoning conceit, he
then

"Let fall his feathers like a craven cock."

He considered that the conversation of Sokrates was really a divine
instrument for the discipline and education of youth; and thus learning
to despise himself, and to admire his friend, charmed with his good
nature, and full of reverence for his virtues, he became insensibly in
love with him, though not as the world loveth; so that all men were
astonished to see him dining with Sokrates, wrestling with him, and
sharing his tent, while he treated all his other admirers with harshness
and some even with insolence, as in the case of Anytus the son of
Anthemion. This man, who was an admirer of Alkibiades, was entertaining
a party of friends, and asked him to come. Alkibiades refused the
invitatio