At length the saturnalia of crime came to an end. Even the enemies of Athens began to pity her sad state. Those who had been exiled by these new tyrants returned to Attica, and war between them and The Thirty began. In the end Sparta withdrew her support from the tyrants, those of them who had not perished fled, and after nearly a year of terrible anarchy the democracy of Athens was restored, and peace once more spread its wings over that frightfully afflicted city. We may conclude this tale with an episode that took place eleven years after the Long Walls had fallen. As they had gone down to music, they rose to music again. In these eleven years despotic Sparta had lost many of her allies, and the Persians, who had become friends of Athens, now lent a fleet and supplied money to aid in rebuilding the walls. Some even of those who had danced for joy when the walls went down now gave their cheerful aid to raise them up again, so greatly had Spartan tyranny changed the tide of feeling. The completion of the walls was celebrated by a splendid sacrifice and festival banquet, and joy came back to Athens again. A new era had begun for the city, not one of dominion and empire, but one marked by some share of her old dignity and importance in Greece. _SOCRATES AND ALCIBIADES._ During the period of the Peloponnesian war two men became strikingly prominent in Athens, a statesman and a philosopher, as unlike each other in character, appearance, aims, and methods as two persons could well be, yet the most intimate of friends, and long dividing between them the admiration of the Athenians. These were the historically famous Alcibiades and Socrates. Alcibiades was a leader in action, Socrates a leader in thought; thus they controlled the two great dominions of human affairs. Of these two, Socrates was vastly the nobler and higher, Alcibiades much the more specious and popular. Democratic Athens was never long without its aristocratic leader. For many years it had been Pericles. It now became Alcibiades, a man whose career and character were much more like those of Themistocles of old than of the sedate and patriotic Pericles. Alcibiades was the Adonis of Athens, noted for his beauty, the charm of his manner, his winning personality, qualities which made all men his willing captives. He was of high birth, great wealth, and luxurious and pleasure-loving disposition, yet with a remarkable power of accommodating himself to circumstances, and becoming all things to all men. While numbers of high-born Athenians admired him for his extraordinary beauty of person, Socrates saw in him admirable qualities of mind, and loved him with a warm affection, which Alcibiades as warmly returned. The philosopher gained the greatest influence over his youthful friend, taught him to despise affectation and revere virtue, and did much to develop in him noble qualities of thought and aspiration.