assist them; while to those
who are self-willed and conceited of their own opinions, he is
removed to an inaccessible distance, and chained in icy fetters on
untrodden mountain-peaks, where the vulture ever devours his fair
heart, which sympathises continually with the follies and the
sorrows of mankind? Of what punishment, then, must not those be
worthy, who by their own wilfulness and self-confidence bind again
to Caucasus the fair Titan, the friend of men?"

"By Apollo!" said Alcibiades, "this language is more fit for the
tripod in Delphos, than for the bema in the Pnyx. So fare-thee-
well, thou Pythoness! I must go and con over my oration, at least
if thy prophesying has not altogether addled my thoughts."

But I, as soon as Alcibiades was gone, for I was ashamed to speak
before, turning to Socrates said to him, all but weeping:

"Oh Socrates, what cruel words are these which you have spoken? Are
you not ashamed to talk thus contemptuously to one like me, even
though he be younger and less cunning in argument than yourself;
knowing as you do, how, when I might have grown rich in my native
city of Rhodes, and marrying there, as my father purposed, a wealthy
merchant's heiress, so have passed my life delicately, receiving the
profits of many ships and warehouses, I yet preferred Truth beyond
riches; and leaving my father's house, came to Athens in search of
wisdom, dissipating my patrimony upon one sophist after another,
listening greedily to Hippias, and Polus, and Gorgias, and
Protagoras, and last of all to you, hard-hearted man that you are?
For from my youth I loved and longed after nothing so much as Truth,
whatsoever it may be; thinking nothing so noble as to know that
which is Right, and knowing it, to do it. And that longing, or love
of mine, which is what I suppose Protagoras meant by the spirit of
truth, I cherished as the fairest and most divine possession, and
that for which alone it was worth while to live. For it seemed to
me, that even if in my search I never attained to truth, still it
were better to die seeking, than not to seek; and that even if
acting by what I considered to be the spirit of truth, and doing
honestly in every case that which seemed right, I should often,
acting on a false conviction, offend in ignorance against the
absolute righteousness of the gods, yet that such an offence was
deserving, if not of praise for its sincerity, yet at least of pity
and forgiveness; but by no