For the Romans would not have suffered so many defeats if Fabius had enjoyed the same power that Perikles did in Athens.  As to their generosity with regard to money, the one was remarkable for never receiving bribes, while the other spent much on ransoming prisoners at his own expense; although this was not much above six talents, while it is hard for any one to tell the amount of money which Perikles might have taken from foreign princes and Greek allied states, all of which he refused and kept his hands clean.  As to the great public works, the construction of the temples, and of the public buildings with which Perikles adorned Athens, the whole of the edifices in Rome together, before the time of the emperors, are not worthy to be compared to them, for they far surpassed them both in largeness of scale and in beauty of design.

LIFE OF ALKIBIADES.

I. The pedigree of Alkibiades is said to begin with Eurysakes the son of Ajax, while on the mother’s side he descended from Alkmaeon, being the son of Deinomache, the daughter of Megakles.  His father Kleinias fought bravely at Artemisium in a trireme fitted out at his own expense, and subsequently fell fighting the Boeotians, in the battle of Koronea.  Alkibiades after this was entrusted to Perikles and Ariphron, the two sons of Xanthippus, who acted as his guardians because they were the next of kin.  It has been well remarked that the friendship of Sokrates for him did not a little to increase his fame, seeing that Nikias, Demosthenes, Lamakus, Phormio, Thrasybulus, and Theramenes, were all men of mark in his lifetime, and yet we do not know the name of the mother of any one of them, while we know the name even of the nurse of Alkibiades, who was a Laconian, named Amykla, and that of Zopyrus, his paedagogus, one of which pieces of information we owe to Antisthenes, and the other to Plato.  As to the beauty of Alkibiades, it is not necessary to say anything except that it was equally fascinating when he was a boy, a youth, and a man.  The saying of Euripides, that all beauties have a beautiful autumn of their charms, is not universally true, but it was so in the case of Alkibiades and of a few other persons because of the symmetry and vigour of their frames.  Even his lisp is said to have added a charm to his speech, and to have made his talk more persuasive.  His lisp is mentioned by Aristophanes in the verses in which he satirises Theorus, in which Alkibiades calls him Theolus, for he pronounced the letter r like l.  Archippus also gives a sneering account of the son of Alkibiades, who, he said, swaggered in his walk, trailing his cloak, that he might look as like his father as possible, and

    “Bends his affected neck, and lisping speaks.”