‘There you might see him,’ said Alcibiades, ‘just as he is in the streets of Athens, stalking like a pelican, and rolling his eyes, calmly contemplating enemies as well as friends, and making very intelligible to anybody even from a distance that whoever attacked him would be likely to meet with a stout resistance; and in this way he and his companions escaped.’
With one more tribute to his master, Alcibiades ended his discourse on love:
‘His absolute unlikeness to any human being that is or ever has been is perfectly astonishing. His are the only words which have a meaning in them, and also the most divine, ... extending to the whole duty of a good and honourable man. This, friends, is my praise of Socrates.’
You will be glad to know that Socrates valued the love of his disciple and returned it.
‘I only love you,’ said the philosopher, ‘whereas other men love what belongs to you; and your beauty, which is not you, is fading away, just as your true self is beginning to bloom. And I will never desert you, if you are not spoiled and deformed by the Athenian people: for the danger which I most fear is that you will become a lover of the people, and will be spoiled by them. Many a noble Athenian has been ruined in this way.’
CHAPTER LXXII
THE IMAGES OF HERMES ARE DESTROYED
In the island of Sicily there were many different states. In some of these dwelt Greeks who owned Corinth as their mother-city. Trade between Sicily and Corinth was good, and because of this Corinth was growing more powerful than Athens liked.
War broke out in 416 B.C. between Segesta and Selinus, two cities in the west of Sicily. When Selinus was joined by another town named Syracuse, the Segestans in dismay sent to the Athenians to ask for their help.
It had long been the ambition of Alcibiades to conquer Sicily. He believed, too, that it would add to the glory of Athens if the island became part of the Athenian empire.