He soon became the inseparable companion of the satrap, for there was a joyaunce in his whole demeanour, something peculiar and loveable about him, a gaiety and sprightliness in all he said and did, that relieved the monotony of life, and shed a lustre round it day by day; a spaciousness and beauty in his graver thoughts, a brightness even in the small, familiar opinions he expressed, on men and manners, that made all listen to him when he spoke; while there was a grace and beauty in his countenance which brightened and adorned everything about him. He who lately had made the Spartans wonder at the hardness and simplicity of his life now astonished the effeminate Persians by the softness, gentleness, even the effeminacy, of his ways. He adopted all their habits, and amongst those luxurious Easterns none was more splendidly luxurious than he, or a more joyous companion in the pleasures and the pastimes of the satrap’s court. But when the viceregal hunt took place in the vast Magnesian “paradise,” the supple Greek threw off, for the time, his newly-assumed soft, dallying ways, and showed how his horse was fleetest in pursuit of deer, his spear of surest aim when the wild boar came across his path. And when high matters of state had to be considered, there was no counsellor so wise, none whose judgment was so luminous, or on whose sage diplomacy his friend and host could so implicitly rely. In a short time he gained a complete ascendancy in the councils of the Persian, who entered on no course of action save by the guidance of his constant companion and incomparable friend. Alkibiades began by suggesting that perhaps it was not wise to let the Lakedaimonians become too strong. Athens, he said, was well-nigh crushed in Greece. Sparta had Athens in her power by land; if she was aided further by the Persian fleet and Persian money, she would gain complete mastery by sea, become too strong, be puffed up with pride and insolence, and kick against the terms of her treaty with the Persian king. The Spartans were a people of proverbially bad faith. It was better that these two powers should balance one another than that either should preponderate. It was the best course to let them go on destroying one another. Then Persia would gain an ascendancy in Ionia and in the Aigaian Sea. On the other hand, if it should happen that Athens ever did become a tributary state to Sparta, which now seemed not impossible, the Persians would have at great expense and loss to combat the successful state, in order to keep it within reasonable limits. These arguments had no little weight with Tissaphernes. ‘What, then, do you advise?’ he asked. ‘Keep back your fleet indefinitely. Reduce your payments to the Spartans. Pay them no more than three obols a day, and do not pay that too regularly.’ ‘But if the Spartans threaten to break off the alliance before Athens is sufficiently weakened?’ objected Tissaphernes.