Symposium.
Alcibiades.
59° The despair of Alcibiades. Syni- poshim. Alcibiades. The won- derful en- durance of Socrates when he and Alcibi- ades served together at Potidaea. And therefore, if you mean to share with me and to exchange beauty for beauty, you will have greatly the advantage of me ; you will gain true beauty in return for appearance — like Dio- 219 mede, gold in exchange for brass. But look again, sweet friend, and see whether you are not deceived in me. The mind begins to grow critical when the bodily eye fails, and it will be a long time before you get old.' Hearing this, I said : ' I have told you my purpose, which is quite serious, and do you consider what you think best for you and me.' 'That is good,' he said; 'at some other time then we will consider and act as seems best about this and about other matters.' Whereupon, I fancied that he was smitten, and that the words which I had uttered like arrows had wounded him, and so without waiting to hear more I got up, and throw- ing my coat about him crept under his threadbare cloak, as the time of year was winter, and there I lay during the whole night having this wonderful monster in my arms. This again, Socrates, will not be denied by you. And yet, notwithstand- ing all, he was so superior to my solicitations, so contemp- tuous and derisive and disdainful of my beauty — which really, as I fancied, had some attractions — hear, O judges ; forjudges you shall be of the haughty virtue of Socrates — nothing more happened, but in the morning when I awoke (let all the gods and goddesses be my witnesses) I arose as from the couch of a father or an elder brother. What do you suppose must have been my feelings, after this rejection, at the thought of my own dishonour ? And yet I could not help wondering at his natural temperance and self-restraint and manliness. 1 never imagined that I could have met with a man such as he is in wisdom and endurance. And therefore I could not be angry with him or renounce his company, any more than I could hope to win him. For I well knew that if Ajax could not be wounded by steel, much less he by money; and my only chance of captivating him by my personal attractions had failed. So I was at my wit's end ; no one was ever more hopelessly enslaved by another. All this happened before he and I went on the expedition to Potidaea ; there we messed together, and I had the oppor- tunity of observing his extraordinary power of sustaining fatigue. His endurance was simply marvellous when, being 219
