proclaim,
And thrice to bear away the olive crown of fame."

XII. His success was rendered all the more conspicuous by the manner in
which the various States vied with one another in showing him honour.
Ephesus pitched a magnificent tent for his accommodation, Chios
furnished his horses with provender, and himself with animals for
sacrifice; and Lesbos supplied him with wine, and every thing else
necessary for giving great entertainments. Yet even at this brilliant
period of his life he incurred discredit, either by his own fault or
through the spite of his enemies. The story is that an Athenian named
Diomedes, a respectable man and a friend of Alkibiades, was desirous of
winning a victory at Olympia. Hearing that there was a chariot and four
which belonged to the city of Argos, and knowing that Alkibiades had
great influence and many friends in that place, he persuaded him to buy
the chariot for him. Alkibiades, however, bought the chariot and entered
it for the race as his own, leaving Diomedes to call upon heaven and
earth to witness his ill-treatment. It appears that a trial took place
about this matter, and Isokrates wrote a speech about this chariot in
defence of the son of Alkibiades, in which Tisias, not Diomedes, is
mentioned as the prosecutor.

XIII. When, as a mere boy, Alkibiades plunged into political life, he at
once surpassed most of the statesmen of the age. His chief rivals were
Phaeax, the son of Erasistratus, and Nikias, the son of Nikeratus, the
latter a man advanced in life, and bearing the reputation of being an
excellent general, while the former, like Alkibiades himself, was a
young man of good family, just rising into notice, but inferior to him
in many respects, particularly in oratory. Though affable and persuasive
in private circles, he could not speak equally well in public, for he
was, as Eupolis says,

"At conversation best of men, at public speaking worst."

In a certain attack on Alkibiades and Phaeax, we find, among other
charges, Alkibiades accused of using the gold and silver plate of the
city of Athens as his own for his daily use.

There was at Athens one Hyperbolus, of the township of Peirithois, whom
Thucydides mentions as a worthless man, and one who was constantly
ridiculed by the comic dramatists. From his utter disregard of what was
said of him, and his carelessness for his honour, which, though it was
mere shameless impudence and apathy, was thought by some to s