cibiades--were both
companions of Socrates--Critias the oligarch, and Alcibiades the
democrat. Where would you find a more arrant thief, savage, and murderer
(5) than the one? where such a portent of insolence, incontinence,
and high-handedness as the other? For my part, in so far as these two
wrought evil to the state, I have no desire to appear as the apologist
of either. I confine myself to explaining what this intimacy of theirs
with Socrates really was.

(4) See "Hell." I. and II. passim.

(5) Reading {kleptistatos te kai biaiotatos kai phonikotatos}, or if
{pleonektistatos te kai biaiotatis}, translate "such a manner of
greed and violence as the one, of insolence, etc., as the other?"
See Grote, "H. G." viii. 337.

Never were two more ambitious citizens seen at Athens. Ambition was in
their blood. If they were to have their will, all power was to be in
their hands; their fame was to eclipse all other. Of Socrates they
knew--first that he lived an absolutely independent life on the
scantiest means; next that he was self-disciplined to the last degree
in respect of pleasures; lastly that he was so formidable in debate that
there was no antagonist he could not twist round his little finger. Such
being their views, and such the character of the pair, which is the more
probable: that they sought the society of Socrates because they felt the
fascination of his life, and were attracted by the bearing of the man?
or because they thought, if only we are leagued with him we shall become
adepts in statecraft and unrivalled in the arts of speech and action?
For my part I believe that if the choice from Heaven had been given them
to live such a life as they saw Socrates living to its close, or to die,
they would both have chosen death.

Their acts are a conclusive witness to their characters. They no sooner
felt themselves to be the masters of those they came in contact with
than they sprang aside from Socrates and plunged into that whirl of
politics but for which they might never have sought his society.

It may be objected: before giving his companions lessons in politics
Socrates had better have taught them sobriety. (6) Without disputing the
principle, I would point out that a teacher cannot fail to discover to
his pupils his method of carrying out his own precepts, and this along
with argumentative encouragement. Now I know that Socrates disclosed
himself to his companions as a beautiful and noble being