des, whom the Lacedaemonians did not so much wish to adopt into
their service, as to use, and then abandon. Driven about from house to
house in the city, and from general to general in the camp, the latter
had no resort but to place himself in the hands of Tissaphernes; unless
we are to suppose that his object in courting favor with him was to
avert the entire destruction of his native city, whither he wished
himself to return.

As regards money, Alcibiades, we are told, was often guilty of procuring
it by accepting bribes, and spent it in luxury and dissipation.
Coriolanus declined to receive it, even when pressed upon him by his
commanders as an honor; and one great reason for the odium he incurred
with the populace in the discussions about their debts was, that he
trampled upon the poor, not for money's sake, but out of pride and
insolence.

Antipater, in a letter written upon the death of Aristotle the
philosopher, observes, "Amongst his other gifts he had that of
persuasiveness," and the absence of this in the character of Marcius
made all his great actions and noble qualities unacceptable to those
whom they benefited: pride, and self-will, the consort, as Plato calls
it, of solitude, made him insufferable. With the skill which Alcibiades,
on the contrary, professed to treat every one in the way most agreeable
to him, we cannot wonder that all his successes were attended with
the most exuberant favor and honor; his very errors, at times, being
accompanied by something of grace and felicity. And so, in spite of
great and frequent hurt that he had done the city, he was repeatedly
appointed to office and command; while Coriolanus stood in vain for a
place which his great services had made his due.

Alcibiades never professed to deny that it was pleasant to him to be
honored and distasteful to him to be overlooked; and, accordingly, he
always tried to place himself upon good terms with all that he met;
Coriolanus' pride forbade him to pay attentions to those who could have
promoted his advancement, and yet his love of distinction made him feel
hurt and angry when he was disregarded. Such are the faulty parts of
his character, which in all other respects was a noble one. For his
temperance, continence, and probity, he might claim to be compared
with the best and purest of the Greeks; not in any sort of kind with
Alcibiades, the least scrupulous and most entirely careless of human
beings in all these points.