But Antisthenes, in the second of his treatises called Cyrus, abusing Alcibiades, says that he is a breaker of the laws, both with respect to women and with respect to every other part of his conduct in life; for he says that he had intrigued with a mother, and daughter, and sister, after the fashion of the Persians. And his Political Dialogue runs down the whole of the Athenian demagogues: and his Archelaus attacks Gorgias, the rhetorician; and his Aspasia attacks Xanthippus and Paralus, the sons of Pericles. For, as for one of them, he says that he is a companion of Archestratus, who is no better than a frequenter of houses of the worst possible fame; and the other he calls an acquaintance and intimate friend of Euphemus, who abused every one he met with vulgar and ill-mannered abuse. And nicknaming Plato Satho, in a witless and vulgar manner, he published a dialogue against him, to which he gave the same name as its title. For these men believe that there is no such thing as an honest counsellor, or a conscientious general, or a respectable sophist, or a poet worth listening to, or a reasonable people: but Socrates, who spent his time in loose houses with the flute-playing women of Aspasia, and who was always chatting with Piston the armourer, and who gave lessons to Theodote the courtesan, how she ought to make the most of her lovers, as Xenophon tells us in the second book of his Memorabilia, is the only wise man according to them; for they represent him as giving Theodote such rules as neither Nico the Samian, nor Callistrate the Lesbian, nor Philænis the Leucadian, nor even Pythonicus the Athenian, were ever acquainted with as charms to conciliate affection. And yet those people paid much attention to such things. And time would fail me if I were to be inclined to quote the attacks which philosophers [p. 351] have made on people; for, as the same Plato says, a regular crowd of Gorgons and Pegasi, and other monsters, keeps flowing in upon me in immense numbers, and of preposterous appearance, so that I will keep silence.
Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists. Or Banquet Of The Learned Of Athenaeus. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1854.
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