roll a stone like Sisyphus? Hard exercise, Speusippus!

SPEUSIPPUS. In the name of all the gods--

ALCIBIADES. Or shall you sit starved and thirsty in the midst of fruit
and wine like Tantalus? Poor fellow? I think I see your face as you
are springing up to the branches and missing your aim. Oh Bacchus! Oh
Mercury!

SPEUSIPPUS. Alcibiades!

ALCIBIADES. Or perhaps you will be food for a vulture, like the huge
fellow who was rude to Latona.

SPEUSIPPUS. Alcibiades!

ALCIBIADES. Never fear. Minos will not be so cruel. Your eloquence
will triumph over all accusations. The Furies will skulk away like
disappointed sycophants. Only address the judges of hell in the
speech which you were prevented from speaking last assembly. "When I
consider"--is not that the beginning of it? Come, man, do not be
angry. Why do you pace up and down with such long steps? You are not in
Tartarus yet. You seem to think that you are already stalking like poor
Achilles,

"With stride Majestic through the plain of Asphodel." (See Homer's
Odyssey, xi. 538.)

SPEUSIPPUS. How can you talk so, when you know that I believe all that
foolery as little as you do?

ALCIBIADES. Then march. You shall be the crier. Callicles, you shall
carry the torch. Why do you stare? (The crier and torchbearer were
important functionaries at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries.)

CALLICLES. I do not much like the frolic.

ALCIBIADES. Nay, surely you are not taken with a fit of piety. If all
be true that is told of you, you have as little reason to think the gods
vindictive as any man breathing. If you be not belied, a certain golden
goblet which I have seen at your house was once in the temple of Juno at
Corcyra. And men say that there was a priestess at Tarentum--

CALLICLES. A fig for the gods! I was thinking about the Archons. You
will have an accusation laid against you to-morrow. It is not very
pleasant to be tried before the king. (The name of king was given in
the Athenian democracy to the magistrate who exercised those spiritual
functions which in the monarchical times had belonged to the sovereign.
His court took cognisance of offences against the religion of the
state.)

ALCIBIADES. Never fear: there is not a sycophant in Attica who would
dare to breathe a word against me, for the golden plane-tree of the
great king. (See Herodotus, viii. 28.)

HIPPOMACHUS. That plane-tree--

ALCIBIADES. Never mind the plane-tree. Come, Callicles, you wer