me ask you whether better natures are likely to be found
in noble races or not in noble races?

ALCIBIADES: Clearly in noble races.

SOCRATES: Are not those who are well born and well bred most likely to
be perfect in virtue?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then let us compare our antecedents with those of the
Lacedaemonian and Persian kings; are they inferior to us in descent?
Have we not heard that the former are sprung from Heracles, and the
latter from Achaemenes, and that the race of Heracles and the race of
Achaemenes go back to Perseus, son of Zeus?

ALCIBIADES: Why, so does mine go back to Eurysaces, and he to Zeus!

SOCRATES: And mine, noble Alcibiades, to Daedalus, and he to Hephaestus,
son of Zeus. But, for all that, we are far inferior to them. For they
are descended 'from Zeus,' through a line of kings--either kings
of Argos and Lacedaemon, or kings of Persia, a country which the
descendants of Achaemenes have always possessed, besides being at
various times sovereigns of Asia, as they now are; whereas, we and our
fathers were but private persons. How ridiculous would you be thought if
you were to make a display of your ancestors and of Salamis the island
of Eurysaces, or of Aegina, the habitation of the still more ancient
Aeacus, before Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes. You should consider how
inferior we are to them both in the derivation of our birth and in other
particulars. Did you never observe how great is the property of the
Spartan kings? And their wives are under the guardianship of the Ephori,
who are public officers and watch over them, in order to preserve as
far as possible the purity of the Heracleid blood. Still greater is the
difference among the Persians; for no one entertains a suspicion that
the father of a prince of Persia can be any one but the king. Such is
the awe which invests the person of the queen, that any other guard is
needless. And when the heir of the kingdom is born, all the subjects of
the king feast; and the day of his birth is for ever afterwards kept
as a holiday and time of sacrifice by all Asia; whereas, when you and
I were born, Alcibiades, as the comic poet says, the neighbours hardly
knew of the important event. After the birth of the royal child, he is
tended, not by a good-for-nothing woman-nurse, but by the best of the
royal eunuchs, who are charged with the care of him, and especially with
the fashioning and right formation of his limbs, in order that he may