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Alcibiades

noun
1.
Ancient Athenian statesman and general in the Peloponnesian War (circa 450-404 BC).






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"Alcibiades" Quotes from Famous Books



... danced! When other women thought even a waltz immoral and shocking; perfectly stiff, her curls exactly in place, Agatha could be seen, and frequently was seen, waltzing on the front porch in the arms of, and to a tune whistled by young Adam, whose full name was Adam Alcibiades Bates. In his younger days, when discipline had been required, Kate once had heard her say to the little fellow: "Adam Alcibiades ascend these steps and proceed immediately to your ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... descended upon the Senator and the Congressman, and upon the President whom they had jointly harassed. Incidentally, the fact that the protecting war-vessel would not have been a formidable foe to any antagonists of much more modern construction than the galleys of Alcibiades seemed to ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... large and has so many figures that it would not be easy to reproduce it here, and give a good idea of its various parts; so a portion only is shown, depicting what is commonly known as the group of Socrates and Alcibiades. Socrates can surely be distinguished, for he had a singular face and head. Some have thought the companion ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... George Villiers: the Alcibiades of that age. Let us trace one of the most romantic, and brilliant, and unsatisfactory lives that has ever ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... the great men of Greece and Rome. He is an intellectual aristocrat. His ideal policy is the policy of the Spartans—"almost miraculous in its perfection." His ideal man is the pagan hero—the superman of antiquity—Alcibiades, ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... a moderate apostrophe for him. 'The Swiss', Zwingli writes in 1516, 'account it a great glory to have seen Erasmus.' 'I know and I teach nothing but Erasmus now,' writes Wolfgang Capito. Ulrich von Hutten and Henry Glareanus both imagine themselves placed beside Erasmus, as Alcibiades stood beside Socrates. And Beatus Rhenanus devotes to him a life of earnest admiration and helpfulness that was to prove of much more value than these exuberant panegyrics. There is an element of national exaltation in this German ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... add names nearer home, of raging riders, who drive their steeds so hard, in the violence of living to forget its illusion: they would know the worst, and tread the floors of hell. The heroes of ancient and modern fame, Cimon, Themistocles, Alcibiades, Alexander, Caesar, have treated life and fortune as a game to be well and skilfully played, but the stake not to be so valued but that any time it could be held as a trifle light as air, and thrown up. Caesar, just before ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... that which is so attractive to all men,—the literature of aristocracy shall I call it?— the picture of the best persons, sentiments, and manners, by the first master, in the best times,—portraits of Pericles, Alcibiades, Crito, Prodicus, Protagoras, Anaxagoras, and Socrates, with the lovely background of the Athenian and suburban landscape. Or who can overestimate the images with which he has enriched the minds of men, and which pass like bullion in the currency of all nations? Read the "Phaedo," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... second Thomas Davis' passing by, and even remember a conspiracy, by some three or four, to make him 'the leader of the Irish race at home & abroad,' and all because he had regular features; and when all is said, Alexander the Great & Alcibiades were personable men, and the Founder of the Christian religion was the only man who was neither a little too tall nor a little too short but exactly six feet high. We in Ireland thought as do the plays and ballads, not understanding that, from the first moment wherein nature ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats

... release of debts, so frequent in ancient revolutionary times, reminds us, in many ways, of the crises precipitated in modern times by paper money and produced by the state. The ancestors of Alcibiades and Hipponikos laid the foundation of an immense fortune, in Solon's time, by purchasing land in large quantities with money borrowed from several citizens, a short time before the abolition of debts. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... descriptions, such as the account of the siege of Plataea, the plague at Athens, the last fight in the harbor of Syracuse, making a summary in their own language of the most essential or effective details. Lastly they would discuss such figures as Pericles, Nicias and Alcibiades, Archidamus, Brasidas and Hermocrates, their characters, principles, and motives. In dealing with Plato they would study the character of Socrates and those ideas contained in the Platonic dialogues which can be most readily ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... a beast (in deede) he was: for he could not abide any other man, beinge not able to suffer the company of him, which was of like nature. And if by chaunce hee happened to goe to Athenes, it was onelye to speake with Alcibiades, who then was an excellente Captaine there, wherat many did marueile: and therefore Apemantus demaunded of him, why he spake to no man, but to Alcibiades. "I speake to him sometimes, said Timon, because I know that by his occasion, the Atheniens shall receiue great ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... prompt its exercise. This genius divorced from wisdom, scornful of moral obligations, and ravenous for notoriety, is especially marked by wilfulness, presumptuous self-assertion, the curse and plague-spot of the perverted soul. Alcibiades in politics and Byron in literature are among its most conspicuous examples. Their defiance of rule was not the confident daring which comes from the vision of genius, but the disdainful audacity which springs from its wilfulness. Alcibiades, a name closely connected ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... the war the plague had entered the city. More than half of the people and Pericles, the great leader, had been killed. The plague was followed by a period of bad and untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young fellow by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor of the popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him was a bungler. First ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... universe in which, as I have already observed, wholes precede parts, and universals particulars. Hence I have placed those dialogues first which rank as wholes, or have the relation of a system, and afterwards those in which these systems are branch out into particulars. Thus, after the First Alcibiades, which may be called, and appears to have been generally considered by the ancients an introduction to the whole of Plato's philosophy, I have placed the Republic and the Laws, which may be said to comprehend systematically the morals and politics ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor

... and you thrice precious pockified blades (for to you, and none else, do I dedicate my writings), Alcibiades, in that dialogue of Plato's, which is entitled The Banquet, whilst he was setting forth the praises of his schoolmaster Socrates (without all question the prince of philosophers), amongst other discourses to that purpose, said that he resembled the Silenes. Silenes of old were ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... replied the other; "I do not indeed expect it. I should have seen the world to very little purpose truly, if I am to argue with one of your years. I have taken this trouble, in order to instruct you. The antient philosophers, such as Socrates, Alcibiades, and others, did not use to argue with their scholars. You are to consider me, child, as Socrates, not asking your opinion, but only informing you of mine." From which last words the reader may possibly imagine, that this lady had read no more of the philosophy of Socrates, than she had ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... sophists, too, have their own way. And the point often lies in what is unexpressed. Thus, "barbarous nations make, the civilised write history," means that civilised nations do not make history, which none is so brazen as openly to assert. Or, again, "Alcibiades is dead, but X is still with us"; the whole meaning of this 'exponible' is that X would be the lesser loss to society. Even an epithet or a suffix may imply a proposition: This personage may mean ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... most powerful of these thirty tyrants, had formerly, as well as Alcibiades, been a disciple of Socrates. But both of them being weary of a philosophy the maxims of which would not yield to their ambition and intemperance, they, at length, totally abandoned it. Critias, though ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... from Dryden's connection with it, but still more so—considering how slight that connection was, his only contribution to it being the Life of Plutarch—from the fact, that the translations of some of the Lives were made by famous men, as that of Alcibiades by Lord Chancellor Somers, and that of Alexander by the excellent John Evelyn; while others were made by men who, if not famous, are at least well remembered by the lovers of the literature of the time,—as that of Numa by Sir Paul Rycaut, the Turkey merchant, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... they sent some troops to Satnos, and plundered that island: and in later times, they used such efforts to equip vessels, in order to gain the mastery of the seas, that, according to Xenophon, they entirely neglected their cavalry. They were stimulated to this line of conduct by Alcibiades, who advised the kings, ephori, and the nation at large, to augment their marine, to compel the ships of all other nations to lower their flag to theirs, and to proclaim themselves exclusive masters of the Grecian seas. Isocrates informs us, that, before Alcibiades came to Lacedaemon, the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... Cruchots than it had been the night before at the sale of his vintage, though that constituted a crime of high-treason against the whole wine-growing community. If the politic old miser had given his dinner from the same idea that cost the dog of Alcibiades his tail, he might perhaps have been called a great man; but the fact is, considering himself superior to a community which he could trick on all occasions, he paid very little heed to ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... himself against that awe which all, at their first appearance on the stage of life, must feel from the spectators, will, at the hour of need, be mocked by his resolution; and I doubt whether the preservatives which Plato relates Alcibiades to have received from Socrates, when he was about to speak in publick, proved sufficient to secure him ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... do not know that I praised Xenophon's imagination in recording such things as Alcibiades at Lampsacus; {240} all I meant to say was that the history was not dull which does record such facts, if it be for the imagination of others to quicken them. . . . As to Sophocles, I will not give up my old Titan. Is there not an infusion of Xenophon ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... will furnish you. Tuc. And the less art the better: besides, when it shall be in the power of thy chevril conscience, to do right or wrong at thy pleasure, my pretty Alcibiades. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... Alcibiades and I walked into the Pnyx early the other morning, before the people assembled. There we saw Socrates standing, having his face turned toward the rising sun. Approaching him, we perceived that he was praying; and that so ardently, that we touched him on the shoulder ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley

... twenty-eight years), power, as was to be expected, slipped into the hands of vile and violent demagogues, of men who by rhetoric and intrigue induced the people more than once to reject on fair occasions reasonable terms, who in 420, guided by Alcibiades, contrived by an infamous stratagem to upset the Peace of Nicias, and by a combination of evil motives—private interest, public vanity, vindictiveness, greed, and sentimentality—prolonged the war until it ended in the ruin of the city and the irreparable debasement ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... eloquence of verbal instruction, vital influence, and lustrous example, aided even by all the inspirations of the most majestic and moving presence, have failed utterly to shape the character of disciples? Did Alcibiades profit greatly by the conversation of Socrates? Was Judas extremely ennobled by the companionship of Jesus? Was it to any considerable purpose that the pure-minded, earnest, affluent Cicero strewed the seeds of Stoic culture upon the wayside ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... at this famous antique marble dog of Mr. Jennings, valued at a thousand guineas, said to be Alcibiades's dog.' JOHNSON. 'His tail then must be docked. That was the mark of Alcibiades's dog[652].' E. 'A thousand guineas! The representation of no animal whatever is worth so much, at this rate a dead dog would indeed be better than ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... Greekish image recognized in the woman a creature of the early days when cunning fingers fashioned him. For, indeed, Vittoria was not modern in the sense that we Florentines are modern. She derived from a world long dead and buried. Heavens, how Messer Alcibiades ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... an elaborate description of that huge iconoclasm attributed to Alcibiades, and considered by some philosophic students of history the chief cause of the ruin of Athens. In order to reflect all possible light on this curious occurrence, she had most assiduously gleaned the pages of history, and massed the grains of truth; had studied maps of the city and descriptions of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... Scythians. Our own Middle Ages seemed to me devoid of elegance and style, disfigured by misplaced pride and pedantry, Charlemagne was nothing more than an awkward German stableman; our chevaliers louts at whom Themistocles and Alcibiades would have laughed. But here you had a whole people of aristocrats, a general public composed entirely of connoisseurs, a democracy which was capable of distinguishing shades of art so delicate that ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... this heap, which in digging he had discovered, might arise some mischief to plague mankind. And some soldiers passing through the woods near to his cave at that instant, which proved to be a part of the troops of the Athenian captain Alcibiades, who, upon some disgust taken against the senators of Athens (the Athenians were ever noted to be a thankless and ungrateful people, giving disgust to their generals and best friends), was marching at the head of the same triumphant army which he had formerly ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... another Spartan met my view, Who, cheerly, call'd his self-devoted crew To banquet with the ghostly train below, And with unfading laurels deck'd the brow; Though from a bounded stage a softer strain Was his, who next appear'd to cross the plain: Famed Alcibiades, whose siren spell Could raise the tide of passion, or repel With more than magic sounds, when Athens stood By his superior eloquence subdued. The Marathonian chief, with conquest crown'd, With Cimon came, for filial love renown'd; Who ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... Nicias, Socrates, and a few of the wiser heads at Athens, the counsels of Alcibiades prevailed, and, after three months of great preparation, an expedition sailed from Athens for Sicily, under the plea of delivering the town of Eges'ta from the tyranny of Syracuse (415 B.C.). The armament fitted out on this occasion, the most powerful that had ever left a Grecian port, was ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... man is not to become spiritually bankrupt, he must be confronted with unfavorable conditions that keep him vigilant and alert. Nietsche has no imagination for resistance, struggle, and victory, except as these arise in the war of man against man. His heroes are Alcibiades, Caesar, and Frederick II, "men {31} predestined for conquering and circumventing others." But it is not easy for us of this day to forget the others; it is the cost to them that galls our conscience. We ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... the unprepared and perverted mind. If this man, indeed, could have looked at it on the other side, he was the last that would have been willing to have been taken himself for the home and protection he could give, but would have been much more likely to repeat the tale of Alcibiades with his phials. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... should have the lineaments of our most famous soldier. Barlow, who was present, pooh-poohed the whole idea, especially the suggestion that his face should appear, but someone present having suggested Alcibiades, probably not seriously as a proper type, that seemed to strike Barlow's sense of humour. That reckless classic scapegrace to his cynical fancy perhaps might pass, he might be Alcibiades, but who should be the dog? Alcibiades had a dog whose misfortune in losing his tail has been ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... CAesar, who scratched his head with due care of his scanty curls, and even in dying thought of the folds in his toga; Walter Raleigh, who could not walk twenty yards because of the gems in his shoes; Alcibiades, who lounged into the Agora with doves in his bosom, and an apple in his hand; Murat, bedizened in gold lace and furs; and Demetrius, the City-Taker, who made himself up like a French marquise, were all pretty good fellows at fighting. A ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Since Alcibiades cut the ears and the tail of his dog, in order to do a service to Pericles, who had on his hands a sort of Spanish war, as well as an Ouvrard contract affair, such as was then attracting the notice of the Athenians, there is not a single minister who has not endeavored ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... 'I made out a list the other day of all the persons and things I have been compared to. It begins well, with Alcibiades, but it ends with the Swiss giantess or the Polish dwarf, I forget which. Here is your book. You see it has been well thumbed. In fact, to tell the truth, it was my cribbing book, and I always kept it by me when I was writing ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... don't wonder such a handsome, bright, graceful; accomplished young man, who lives in fine style, drives pretty horses, and knows every body, should be a great favorite with the girls and their mothers. Don't you see, Abel Newt is a sort of Alcibiades?" ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... pupil, speaks of 'the incredible and singular gratitude he owed him on account of the services he had done him,' and calls God to witness that he reverenced him as his father. In a Latin elegy, after implying that Young was dearer to him than Socrates to Alcibiades, or than the great Stagyrite to his generous pupil, Alexander, he goes on to say: 'First, under his guidance, I explored the recesses of the Muses, and beheld the sacred green spots of the cleft summit of Parnassus and quaffed the Pierian cups, and, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... secrets and mysteries of this feast. Upon this account Diagoras the Melian was proscribed, and had a reward set upon his head. It very nearly cost the poet AEschylus his life, for speaking too freely of it in some of his tragedies. The disgrace of Alcibiades proceeded from the same cause. Whoever had violated this secresy, was avoided as a wretch accursed and excommunicated.(73) Pausanias, in several passages, wherein he mentions the temple of Eleusis, and the ceremonies practised there, stops short, and declares he ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... "Alcibiades never turned a prettier compliment," she remarked. They went in together at this, and Theron made a note of ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... in 1882. At that period our Navy consisted of a collection of antiquated wooden ships, already almost as out of place against modern war vessels as the galleys of Alcibiades and Hamilcar—certainly as the ships of Tromp and Blake. Nor at that time did we have men fit to handle a modern man-of-war. Under the wise legislation of the Congress and the successful administration of a succession of patriotic Secretaries of the Navy, belonging to both political parties, ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt

... son, his manly comeliness and noble stature will attract you at the first glance; and if he do but say two words, your ears will be taken captive by the charm that sits upon his tongue. When he speaks in public, the city listens like one man, open- mouthed; 'tis Athens listening to Alcibiades; yet the Athenians presently repented of their infatuation for the son of Clinias, but here love grows to reverence; the welfare of this city, the happiness of her citizens, are all bound up in one man. Once let ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... the exhibition. Sometimes there were no less than forty chariots on the ground. The rarity of horses, and the expense of their training, confined, without any law to that effect, the chariot-race to the highborn and the wealthy. It was consistent with the vain Alcibiades to decline the gymnastic contests in which his physical endowments might have ensured him success, because his competitors were not the equals to the long-descended heir of the Alcmaeonidae. In the equestrian ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... since at the Vaudeville Theatre in the Place de la Bourse, is one we can scarcely imagine successful in another city, at least to such a degree. It was Les Filles de Marbre; and this is the plot. The opening scene is at Athens, in the studio of Phidias. It is the day after that on which Alcibiades cut off his dog's tail; and, exulting in the effect produced by that exploit, he enters with the rich Gorgias, who has ordered and paid Phidias in advance for statues of his three friends, Lais, Phryne, and Aspasia. He finds Phidias unwilling to part with the statues, on which he has worked ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... with kathekaston, the particular; now saith he, the universal weighs what is fit to be said or done, either in likelihood or necessity (which the poesy considereth in his imposed names), and the particular only marks, whether Alcibiades did, or suffered, this or that. Thus far Aristotle: which reason of his (as all his) is most full of reason. For indeed, if the question were whether it were better to have a particular act truly or falsely set down, there ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... turning over several leaves of his notebook, he rattled out the following names: "Alcibiades, kind of statesman; Beau Brummel, fop; Cagliostro, conjurer; Robespierre, politician; Charles Stuart, Pretender; Warwick, King-maker; Borgia, A., Pope; Ditto, C., toxicologist; Wallenstein, mercenary; Bacon, Roger, man of science; Ditto, F., dishonest official; Tell, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... presume, gentlemen of the jury, that you need to hear no reason from those who wish to prosecute Alcibiades, for from the start he so conducted himself in the public that it is every one's duty, even if he happen not to be privately injured by him, to consider him an enemy from his other actions. 2. For his sins were not trivial, nor do they deserve ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias

... remedies the defect of our too great nearness to ourselves. This throws our actions into perspective; and as crabs, goats, scorpions, the balance and the waterpot lose their meanness when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can see my own vices without heat in the distant persons of Solomon, Alcibiades, and Catiline. ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Epipolis, sunk the vessel of Hermocrates, or made an end of the execrable Gylippus, who stopped up all the avenues with his walls and ditches; to have thrown the Syracusans on the Lautumiae, and have let the Athenians go round Sicily and Italy, according to the early hopes of Alcibiades: but what is past and done Clotho cannot weave again, nor ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian

... by Zeuxis and his contemporaries can hardly have had any other destination than the private houses of wealthy connoisseurs. Moreover, we hear first in this period of mural painting as applied to domestic interiors. Alcibiades is said to have imprisoned a reluctant painter, Agatharchus (cf. page 278), in his house and to have forced him to decorate the walls. The result of this sort of private demand was what we have seen ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... Lassalle possessed an extraordinary attraction for me, being one of the most brilliant and most agreeable men I have ever met, and ambitious in the biggest sense of the term." The eminent classical historian, Boeckh, who knew Lassalle well, compared him to Alcibiades. Heine, in a letter introducing Lassalle to a friend, wrote: "I present to you a new Mirabeau." There is much that is striking in either of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... we have seen, was probably not designed by Shakespeare, but even Timon is no exception to the rule. The sub-plot is concerned with Alcibiades and his army, and Timon himself is treated by the Senate as a man of great importance. Arden of Feversham and A Yorkshire Tragedy would certainly be exceptions to the rule; but I assume that neither of them is Shakespeare's; and if either is, it belongs to a different ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... his philosophical views, his preferences, his admiration for the great men of antiquity and of modern times; tells us why his favorite philosophers are Plato and Epicurus, his favorite characters in antiquity Alexander and Alcibiades, both young and handsome conquerors; in modern times, Milton and Sir Philip Sydney, Bayle and Montaigne; what his opinions respecting Shakspeare and Pope, what Cadurcis, and what Herbert thinks of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... whom Steele has described so charmingly, of whom Codrington said that his character was "all beauty", and whom Pope himself called the best of Christians without knowing it; Arbuthnot,(135) one of the wisest, wittiest, most accomplished, gentlest of mankind; Bolingbroke, the Alcibiades of his age; the generous Oxford; the magnificent, the witty, the famous, and chivalrous Peterborough: these were the fast and faithful friends of Pope, the most brilliant company of friends, let us repeat, that the world has ever seen. The favourite ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Fleury; to the Kaiser all things. It is surmised, the French had their eye on Lorraine, not on Stanislaus, from the first. For many centuries, especially for these last two,—ever since that Siege of Metz, which we once saw, under Kaiser Karl V. and Albert Alcibiades,—France has been wrenching and screwing at this Lorraine, wriggling it off bit by bit; till now, as we perceived on Lyttelton junior of Hagley's visit, Lorraine seems all lying unscrewed; and France, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... that of Critias, has no relation to the actual circumstances of his life. Plato is silent about his treachery to the ten thousand Greeks, which Xenophon has recorded, as he is also silent about the crimes of Critias. He is a Thessalian Alcibiades, rich and luxurious—a spoilt child of fortune, and is described as the hereditary friend of the great king. Like Alcibiades he is inspired with an ardent desire of knowledge, and is equally willing to learn of Socrates and of the Sophists. He may be regarded as standing in the ...
— Meno • Plato

... mysteries of Eleusis lasted nine days. The ceremonies were very imposing, and the company of the highest. Plutarch informs us that Alcibiades was sentenced to death and his property confiscated, because he had dared to turn the mysteries into ridicule in his house. He was even sentenced to be cursed by the priests and priestesses, but the curse was not pronounced because one of the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... men may, have borne what men must." This is the very burden of life, and the last word of tragedy. For now all is vain: courage, wisdom, piety, the bravery of Lamachus, the goodness of Nicias, the brilliance of Alcibiades, all are expended, all wasted, nothing of that brave venture abides, except torture, defeat, and death. No play not poem of individual fortunes is so moving as this ruin of a people; no modern story can stir us, with all its eloquence, like the brief gravity ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... a person to speak or act in such or such circumstances according to likelihood or necessity: and it is at this that Poetry aims in giving characters names of its own: whereas the Particular narrates what Alcibiades did or what happened ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... like and not keen like when he could recite Shakespeare and practice law fine. So pa said that once when Henry first began to practice law again after comin' out of the fever, he had a little office in the court house and Alcibiades Watkins came in to see him about a boundary fence, and sat down and told Henry about it, takin' about an hour. When Alcibiades finished, Henry says, "Tell it to me over; it's a long story and important ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters

... thought. "The misnamed gladiator of Agasias," seems forced into this treatise, for the sole purpose of showing Mr Fuseli's reading, and after all, he leaves the figure as uncertain as he finds it. He once thought it might have been an Alcibiades rushing from the flames, when his house was fired; but is more satisfied that "it might form an admirable Ulysses bestriding the deck of his ship to defend his companions from the descending fangs of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... had a hearth-fire in the middle of it, much like that in the children's own home. Soon a door in the back of the house opened, and Telesippe, the wife of Pericles, appeared. She was a large coarse-looking woman, and with her were three boys, her own two and Alcibiades, a handsome lad, who was a ward of Pericles and ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins

... zeal with which he improved his "shining hours," and laid up honey against the winter, which many hoped would be long in coming. All manner of aids were provided for sprouting souls and bodies, diversions innumerable, and society, some members of which might have polished off Alcibiades a la Socrates, or entertained Plato with "sthetic tea." But, sad to relate, in spite of all these blessings, the students who resorted to this academy possessed an Adam-and-Eve-like proclivity for exactly what ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott

... furnished with none of that Spartan ruggedness which so well became George Warrington, of Pump Court, but in the willow-pattern and peacock-feather style of art; the dingy old walls glorified by fine photographs of Gerome's Roman Gladiators, Phryne before her judges, Socrates searching for Alcibiades at the house of Aspasia, and enlarged carbonized portraits of the reigning beauties in London society. But these chambers, though supposed to be devoted to days of patient work and much consumption of midnight oil, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... Timon of Athens, a wealthy, over-generous man, gives to his friends so lavishly that he ruins himself. He finds none grateful for his bounty. In his ruin all his friends desert him. None of them will lend to him or help him. He falls into a loathing of the world and retires to die alone. Alcibiades of Athens, finding a like ingratitude in the State, openly makes war upon it, reduces it to his own terms, and rules ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... transferred to the still and solemn scene in which John baptizes the Saviour. No one can look at this figure without suspecting the plagiarism. Similar instances may be found in his other works; as in the Plague of the Philistines, where the Alcibiades of Raffaelle is coolly sauntering among the dead and dying, and with as little relation to the infected multitude as if he were still with Socrates in the School of Athens. In the same picture may be found also one of the Apostles from the Cartoon of the Draught of Fishes: and we may ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... well-defined theological system.... By the Alexandrian period, books attributed to Zoroaster, Hostanes, and Hystaspes were translated into Greek.' Cumont, Les Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain, p. 227. Cp. Pliny, N.H. xxx. 7. Plato, Alcibiades i. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... scenes; the background painted by Agatharchus was the wooden front of the stage building, and it was painted, not with reference to any particular play, but as a permanent decorative background, representing no doubt a palace or temple. Agatharchus is said to have been seized by Alcibiades and compelled by him to paint the interior of his house, which shows that at the time (about 435 B.C.) decorative painting of rooms was the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of the states were constantly changing, while Athens and Sparta remained generally on terms of friendliness, the two prominent figures at Athens being the conservative Nicias and the restless and ambitious young intriguer Alcibiades. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... facts only as an orator, I thought it would be best to observe his method, and make an extract from six harangues of his against Verres, only still preserving the form of an oration. I remember a younger brother of mine, who deceased about two months ago, presented the world with a speech of Alcibiades against an Athenian brewer:[11] Now, I am told for certain, that in those days there was no ale in Athens; and therefore that speech, or at least a great part of it, must needs be spurious. The difference between me and my brother ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... and under his pontificate Christianity assumed a pagan character, which, passing from art into manners, gives to this epoch a strange complexion. Crimes for the moment disappeared, to give place to vices; but to charming vices, vices in good taste, such as those indulged in by Alcibiades and sung by Catullus. Leo X died after having assembled under his reign, which lasted eight years, eight months, and nineteen days, Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Titian, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolommeo, Giulio Romano, Ariosto, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... mentally invested the wearer with top-boots, pistachio-colored kerseymere small clothes adorned with a knot of ribbon; and beheld themselves in the costumes of their youth. Elderly ladies thought of former conquests; but the younger men were asking each other why the aged Alcibiades had cut off the skirts of his overcoat. The rest of the costume was so much in keeping with the spencer, that you would not have hesitated to call the wearer "an Empire man," just as you call a certain kind of furniture "Empire furniture;" yet the newcomer only symbolized ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... age of these books, however, and the period at which Zoroaster lived, there is the greatest difference of opinion. He is mentioned by Plato (Alcibiades, I. 37), who speaks of "the magic (or religious doctrines) of Zoroaster the Ormazdian" (magedan Zoroastran ton Oromazon[120]). As Plato speaks of his religion as something established in the form of Magism, or the system ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... hourly risk of breaking our legs and necks among the classic ruins of Athenian genius, where Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Sophocles, Euripides, Pericles, Alcibiades, Demosthenes, Zeno, Solon, Themestocles, Leonidas, Philip and Alexander had lived and loved in their ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... point Bonifacius Ritter, whom fortune had favoured in America beyond his most extravagant expectations, now entered, young, brisk, handsome, amiable as Alcibiades. Frederick was instantly carried away by his manner, radiating bonhomie, naivete, joy in life, and simple heartiness. The atmosphere of the New World had imparted ease and fire to the flabby ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... soul of Diogenes appears to have been seated on the lips of Apemantus. The churlish profession of misanthropy in the cynic is contrasted with the profound feeling of it in Timon, and also with the soldierlike and determined resentment of Alcibiades against his countrymen, who have banished him, though this forms only an incidental episode in ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... shabbiest coat, and driving the poorest horse, and living in the most dilapidated shanty of anyone in town. These persons take as much pride in their mode of life as the devotee of fashion does in hers. One of these Cynics went to the baths with Alcibiades, the gayest of Athenian youths. When they came out Alcibiades put on the Cynic's rags, leaving his own gay and costly apparel for the Cynic. The Cynic was in a great rage, and protested that he would not be seen wearing ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... liberal and genuine and generous, even if he was mean before, his littleness and miserliness melting away like iron in the fire, so that they rejoice to give to their loves more than they do to receive themselves from others. You know of course that Anytus, the son of Anthemion, was in love with Alcibiades, and was on one occasion sumptuously entertaining several of his friends, when Alcibiades broke in and took from the table half the cups and went away again; and when some of the guests were indignant and said, 'The stripling has used you most insolently and contemptuously,' ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... and the unscrupulous conduct of the Alcibiades of the 17th century have been deservedly censured. But even his critics agree that he was good-humoured, good-natured, generous, an unsurpassed mimic and the leader of fashion; and with his good looks, in spite of his moral faults and even crimes, he was irresistible ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... decree ordered the denunciation of all who should deny their existence. * * * The practice was in unison with the severity of the law. The proceedings commenced against Protagoras; a price set upon the head of Diagoras; the danger of Alcibiades; Aristotle obliged to fly; Stilpo banished; Anaxagoras hardly escaping death; Pericles himself, after all his services to his country, and all the glory he had acquired, compelled to appear before the tribunals and make ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... been translated in the first Appendix, and which appear to have the next claim to genuineness among the Platonic writings, are the Lesser Hippias, the Menexenus or Funeral Oration, the First Alcibiades. Of these, the Lesser Hippias and the Funeral Oration are cited by Aristotle; the first in the Metaphysics, the latter in the Rhetoric. Neither of them are expressly attributed to Plato, but in his citation of both of them he seems to be referring to passages ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato

... rather than vices, that he attacked; and this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible fascination, so that though he was poor and barefooted, a Silenus in appearance, with thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy belly, he was sought by Alcibiades and admired by Aspasia. Even Xanthippe, a beautiful young woman, very much younger than he, a woman fond of the comforts and pleasures of life, was willing to marry him, although it is said that she turned ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... Alcibiades had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas; and he cut off his tail, "that," said he, "the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... it was somebody else, in order to give some poor fellow who is lying in wait for the periodicals a chance to correct me. That will make him happy for a month, and besides, he will not want to pick a quarrel about anything else if he has that splendid triumph. You remember Alcibiades and his dog's tail. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... pertimuerunt ne Alcibiades ab ipsis descisceret et cum suis in gratiam rediret, the Persians feared that Alcibiades would break with them and become ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett

... ask as Lord of Misrule, and Dr. Johnson as the Abbot of Unreason. I would suggest to Major Dobbin to accompany Mrs. Fry; Alcibiades would bring Homer and Plato in his purple-sailed galley; and I would have Aspasia, Ninon de l'Enclos, and Mrs. Battle, to make up a table of whist with Queen Elizabeth. I shall order a seat placed in the oratory for Lady ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... George, henceforth practical sovereign of Culmbach, as his Brother had been, was appointed Guardian. This youth, very full of fire, wildfire too much of it, exploded dreadfully on Germany by and by (Albert ALCIBIADES the name they gave him); nay, towards the end of his nonage, he had been rather sputtery upon his Uncle, the excellent Guardian ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... Pray entertaine them, giue them guide to vs. You must needs dine with me: go not you hence Till I haue thankt you: when dinners done Shew me this peece, I am ioyfull of your sights. Enter Alcibiades ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... acknowledge, when you hear what I read and tell you. I served under him, cruising in the Channel; and I flatter myself that it was entirely through my writings that he got his promotion. He is now Captain Alcibiades Ajax Boggs, and all through me. We were cruising off the coast of France, close in to Ushant, where we perceived a fleet of small vessels, called chasse-marees (coasting luggers), laden with wine, coming round; and as we did not know of any batteries thereabouts, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... some other desirable work; but Professor Moulton quotes this paragraph from a popular life of Fitzgerald, published in Dublin: "Not Greece of old in her palmiest days—the Greece of Homer and Demosthenes, of Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, of Pericles, Leonidas, and Alcibiades, of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, of Solon and Lycurgus, of Apelles and Praxiteles—not even this Greece, prolific as she was in sages and heroes, can boast such a lengthy bead-roll as Ireland can of names immortal in history!" But "this was for Irish consumption." ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... which in digging he had discovered, might arise some mischief to plague mankind. And some soldiers passing through the woods near to his cave at that instant, which proved to be a part of the troops of the Athenian captain Alcibiades, who upon some disgust taken against the senators of Athens (the Athenians were ever noted to be a thankless and ungrateful people, giving disgust to their generals and best friends), was marching at the head of the same triumphant army which he had formerly headed in their defence, to war against ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of rhetoric, now and then a dicing room, a playhouse, or a stage. For do not you observe some making fine orations and putting cases at a supper, others declaiming or reading some of their own compositions, and others proposing prizes to dancers and mimics? Alcibiades and Theodorus turned Polition's banquet into a temple of initiation, representing there the sacred procession and mysteries of Ceres; now such things as these, in my opinion, ought not to be suffered by a steward, but he must permit such discourse only, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... I suppose. Even she always stopped soon, if she undertook to interfere with Malbone. This charming Alcibiades always convinced them, after the wrestling was over, that he had ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... put forth all the majesty of his indignation, I had only to whisper the cabalistic words, "Phonetic spelling!" Yet Landor was not very exacting. In the "Last Fruit off an Old Tree," he says, through his medium, Pericles, who is giving advice to Alcibiades: "Every time we pronounce a word different from another, we show our disapprobation of his manner, and accuse him of rusticity. In all common things we must do as others do. It is more barbarous to undermine the stability of a language than of an edifice that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... live gazette, had scatter'd to disfigure, She had heard; but women hear with more good humour Such aberrations than we men of rigour: Besides, his conduct, since in England, grew more Strict, and his mind assumed a manlier vigour; Because he had, like Alcibiades, The art of living ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... a man's life, or a word, that does not seem to be of any importance, is itself a whole discourse." He even condescends to inform us of such homely particulars as that Alexander carried his head affectedly on one side; that Alcibiades was a dandy, and had a lisp, which became him, giving a grace and persuasive turn to his discourse; that Cato had red hair and gray eyes, and was a usurer and a screw, selling off his old slaves when they became ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... had replied like Alcibiades, "By the gods, Socrates, I cannot tell," his grandfather would not have been surprised, but when, after standing a moment on one leg, like a meditative young stork, he answered, in a tone of calm ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... was cultivated in Greece at this early period, little can with certainty be affirmed. One beautiful piece of sculpture has been preserved, and is now in the possession of Lord Feversham at Duncombe Hall. It is said to represent the favourite dog of Alcibiades, and to have been the production of Myson, one of the most skillful artists of ancient times. It differs but little from the Newfoundland dog of the present day. He is represented as sitting on his haunches, and earnestly looking at his master. Any ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... Palazzo Riario took place in the portico that opened upon the gardens in those days; for the whole palace was afterwards rebuilt by the Corsini, and many parts of it were changed. Christina had been in Paris and had seen Louis Fourteenth dance as Alcibiades in Benserade's ballet, a sight to rejoice the gods of Olympus, who must certainly have laughed even louder at the bewigged King's mincing steps than they did at Vulcan's limp; for with many gifts, the Sun-King possessed no more sense of humour than Don Quixote, who stood on his ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... suppose I must not ask you all (Providence and Destiny and you) why honest Phocion died in utter poverty and destitution, like Aristides before him, while those two unwhipped puppies, Callias and Alcibiades, and the ruffian Midias, and that Aeginetan libertine Charops, who starved his own mother to death, were all rolling in money? nor again why Socrates was handed over to the Eleven instead of Meletus? nor yet why the effeminate Sardanapalus was a king, and one high-minded Persian after another ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... answered her: 'The light of his age. The embodied protest against our social prejudice. Combine—say, Mirabeau and Alcibiades, and the result is the Lymport Tailor:—he measures your husband in the morning: in the evening he makes love to you, through a series of pantomimic transformations. He was a colossal Adonis, and I'm sorry ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... strongly confirm the impression we get from Plato of the manner of Socrates and his method of argument, and that helps to reassure us as to the essentially historical character of the Platonic Socrates. The fragments of Aeschines also corroborate Plato by showing that the conversion of Alcibiades (whose life he had saved when a young man) was one of the things ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... reader to find out and study the Latin passages which he does not quote. So arbitrary is taste in these matters that Mr. Collins, like Mr. Grant White, but independently, finds Shakespeare putting a thought from the Alcibiades I of Plato into the mouth of Achilles in Troilus and Cressida, while Mr. J. M. Robertson suggests that the borrowing is from Seneca—where Mr. Collins does not find "the smallest parallel." Mr. Collins is ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang



Words linked to "Alcibiades" :   Athenian, full general, statesman, solon, general, national leader



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