they fell (Plutarch, Amat.; Athenaeus on the
authority of Theopompus). (5) A small matter: there appears to be a
difference of custom among the Greeks and among ourselves, as between
ourselves and continental nations at the present time, in modes of
salutation. We must not suspect evil in the hearty kiss or embrace of
a male friend 'returning from the army at Potidaea' any more than in
a similar salutation when practised by members of the same family. But
those who make these admissions, and who regard, not without pity, the
victims of such illusions in our own day, whose life has been blasted
by them, may be none the less resolved that the natural and healthy
instincts of mankind shall alone be tolerated (Greek); and that the
lesson of manliness which we have inherited from our fathers shall not
degenerate into sentimentalism or effeminacy. The possibility of an
honourable connexion of this kind seems to have died out with Greek
civilization. Among the Romans, and also among barbarians, such as the
Celts and Persians, there is no trace of such attachments existing in
any noble or virtuous form.

(Compare Hoeck's Creta and the admirable and exhaustive article of Meier
in Ersch and Grueber's Cyclopedia on this subject; Plutarch, Amatores;
Athenaeus; Lysias contra Simonem; Aesch. c. Timarchum.)

The character of Alcibiades in the Symposium is hardly less remarkable
than that of Socrates, and agrees with the picture given of him in the
first of the two Dialogues which are called by his name, and also with
the slight sketch of him in the Protagoras. He is the impersonation of
lawlessness--'the lion's whelp, who ought not to be reared in the
city,' yet not without a certain generosity which gained the hearts of
men,--strangely fascinated by Socrates, and possessed of a genius which
might have been either the destruction or salvation of Athens. The
dramatic interest of the character is heightened by the recollection of
his after history. He seems to have been present to the mind of Plato
in the description of the democratic man of the Republic (compare also
Alcibiades 1).

There is no criterion of the date of the Symposium, except that which
is furnished by the allusion to the division of Arcadia after the
destruction of Mantinea. This took place in the year B.C. 384, which is
the forty-fourth year of Plato's life. The Symposium cannot therefore be
regarded as a youthful work. As Mantinea was restored in the year 369,
the