Note 61 — Chapter LV · FROM THE PEACE OF NIKIAS TO THE OLYMPIC FESTIVAL OF OLYMPIAD NINETY.

I follow the criticism which Plutarch cites from Theophrastus, seemingly discriminating and measured: much more trustworthy than the vague eulogy of Nepos, or even of Demosthenês (of course not from his own knowledge), upon the eloquence of Alkibiadês (Plutarch, Alkib. c. 10); Plutarch, Reipubl. Gerend. Præcept. c. 8, p. 804.

Antisthenês, companion and pupil of Sokratês, and originator of what is called the Cynic philosophy, contemporary and personally acquainted with Alkibiadês, was full of admiration for his extreme personal beauty, and pronounced him to be strong, manly, and audacious, but unschooled, ἀπαίδευτον. His scandals about the lawless life of Alkibiadês, however, exceed what we can reasonably admit, even from a contemporary (Antisthenês ap. Athenæum, v, p. 220, xii, p. 534). Antisthenês had composed a dialogue called Alkibiadês (Diog. Laërt. vi, 15).

See the collection of the Fragmenta Antisthenis (by A. G. Winckelmann, Zurich, 1842, pp. 17-19).

The comic writers of the day—Eupolis, Aristophanês, Pherekratês, and others—seem to have been abundant in their jests and libels against the excesses of Alkibiadês, real or supposed. There was a tale, untrue, but current in comic tradition, that Alkibiadês, who was not a man to suffer himself to be insulted with impunity, had drowned Eupolis in the sea, in revenge, for his comedy of the Baptæ. See Meineke, Fragm. Com. Græ. Eupolidis Βάπται and Κόλακες (vol. ii, pp. 447-494), and Aristophanês Τριφαλῆς, p. 1166: also Meineke’s first volume, Historia Critica Comic. Græc. pp. 124-136; and the Dissertat. xix, in Buttmann’s Mythologus, on the Baptæ and the Cotyttia.