ALCIBIADES. Alcibiades while he was a boy, wrestling in a ring, seeing he could not break his adversary’s hold, bit him by the hand; who cried out, You bite like a woman. Not so, said he, but like a lion. He 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 farther with me. Coming into a school, he called for Homer’s Iliads; and when the master told him he had none of Homer’s works, he gave him a box on the ear, and went his way. He came to Pericles’s gate, and being told he was busy a preparing his accounts to be given to the people of Athens, Had he not better, said he, contrive how he might give no account at all? Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, he absconded, saying, that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it. But, said one, will you not trust your country with your cause? No, said he, nor my mother either, lest she mistake and cast a black pebble instead of a white one. When he heard death was decreed to him and his associates, Let us convince them, said he, that we are alive. And passing over to Lacedaemon, he stirred up the Decelean war against the Athenians. LAMACHUS. Lamachus chid a captain for a fault; and when he had said he would do so no more, Sir, said he, in war there is no room for a second miscarriage. IPHICRATES. Iphicrates was despised because he was thought to be a shoemaker’s son. The exploit that first brought him into repute was this: when he was wounded himself, he caught up one of the enemies and carried him alive and in his armor to his own ship. He once pitched his camp in a country belonging to his allies and confederates, and yet he fortified it exactly with a trench and bulwark. Said one to him, What are ye afraid of? Of all speeches, said he, none is so dishonorable for a general, as I should not have thought it. As he marshalled his army to fight with barbarians, I am afraid, said he, they do not know Iphicrates, for his very name used to strike terror into other enemies. Being accused of a capital crime, he said to the informer: O fellow! what art thou doing, who, when war is at hand, dost advise the city to consult concerning me, and not with me? To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled him for his mean birth, My nobility, said he, begins in me, but yours ends in you. A rhetorician asked him in an assembly, who he was that he took so much upon him,—horseman, or footman, or archer, or shield-bearer. Neither of them, said he, but one that understands how to command all those.