ok
refuge, as it were, at a mightier altar, freeing himself from arms and
soldiers, and laughing to scorn the cruelty of Antipater.

ALCIBAIDES

Alcibiades, it is supposed, was descended from Ajax, by his father's
side; and by his mother's side from Alcmaeon. Dinomache, his mother,
was the daughter of Megacles. His father (Clinias) having fitted out
a galley at his own expense, gained great honor in the seafight at
Artemisium, and was afterwards slain in the battle of Coronea, fighting
against the Boeotians. The friendship which Socrates felt for him has
much contributed to his fame; and though we have no account from any
writer concerning the mother of Nicias or Demosthenes, of Lamachus or
Phormion, of Thrasybulus or Theramenes, notwithstanding these were
all illustrious men of the same period, yet we know even the nurse of
Alcibiades, that her country was Lacedaemon, and her name Amycla; and
that Zopyrus was his teacher and attendant; the one being recorded by
Antisthenes, and the other by Plato.

It is not, perhaps, material to say anything of the beauty of
Alcibiades, only that it bloomed with him in all the ages of his life,
in his infancy, in his youth, and in his manhood; and, in the peculiar
character becoming to each of these periods, gave him, in every one of
them a grace and a charm. What Euripides says, that "Of all fair things
the autumn, too, is fair," is by no means universally true. But it
happened so with Alcibiades, amongst few others, by reason of his happy
constitution and natural vigor of body. It is said that his lisping,
when he spoke, became him well, and gave a grace and persuasiveness to
his rapid speech. Aristophanes takes notice of it in the verses in which
he jests at Theorus: "How like a colax he is," says Alcibiades, meaning
a corax*; on which it is remarked,

"How very happily he lisped the truth,"

(*This fashionable Attic lisp, or careless articulation,
turned the sound r into l. Colax, a flatterer; corax, a
crow.)

His conduct displayed many inconsistencies, not unnaturally, in
accordance with the many wonderful vicissitudes of his fortunes; but,
among the many strong passions of his real character, the most powerful
of all was his ambition for superiority, which appears in several
anecdotes told of him while he was a child. Once being hard pressed in
wrestling, and fearing to be thrown, he got the hand of his antagonist
to his mouth, and bit it with a