nothing better to which to trust. Truly, thou sophist, thy
conclusion seems to me after all not to differ much from that of
Protagoras."

S. "Ah dear boy! know you not that to those who have been
initiated, and, as they say in the mysteries, twice born, Prometheus
is always unbound, and stands ready to assist them; while to those
who are self-willed and conceited of their own opinions, he is
removed to an inaccessible distance, and chained in icy fetters on
untrodden mountain-peaks, where the vulture ever devours his fair
heart, which sympathises continually with the follies and the
sorrows of mankind? Of what punishment, then, must not those be
worthy, who by their own wilfulness and self-confidence bind again
to Caucasus the fair Titan, the friend of men?"

"By Apollo!" said Alcibiades, "this language is more fit for the
tripod in Delphos, than for the bema in the Pnyx. So fare-thee-
well, thou Pythoness! I must go and con over my oration, at least
if thy prophesying has not altogether addled my thoughts."

But I, as soon as Alcibiades was gone, for I was ashamed to speak
before, turning to Socrates said to him, all but weeping:

"Oh Socrates, what cruel words are these which you have spoken? Are
you not ashamed to talk thus contemptuously to one like me, even
though he be younger and less cunning in argument than yourself;
knowing as you do, how, when I might have grown rich in my native
city of Rhodes, and marrying there, as my father purposed, a wealthy
merchant's heiress, so have passed my life delicately, receiving the
profits of many ships and warehouses, I yet preferred Truth beyond