his threadbare cloak is thrown aside, his beard is shorn off like a fruitless crop, he goes in for wine-coolers and tankards, and laughs loudly in the streets, and jeers at philosophers. As they say happened at Syracuse, when Plato went there, and Dionysius was seized with a furious passion for philosophy, and so great was the concourse of geometricians that they raised up quite a cloud of dust in the palace, but when Plato fell out of favour, and Dionysius gave up philosophy, and went back again headlong to wine and women and trifles and debauchery, then all the court was metamorphosed, as if they all had drunk of Circe's cup, for ignorance and oblivion and silliness reigned rampant. I am borne out in what I say by the behaviour of great flatterers and demagogues,[373] the greatest of whom Alcibiades, a jeerer and horse-rearer at Athens, and living a gay and merry life, wore his hair closely shaven at Lacedaemon, and washed in cold water, and attired himself in a threadbare cloak; while in Thrace he fought[374] and drank; and at Tissaphernes' court lived delicately and luxuriously and in a pretentious style; and thus curried favour and was popular with everybody by imitating their habits and ways. Such was not the way however in which Epaminondas or Agesilaus acted, for though they associated with very many men and states and different modes of life, they maintained everywhere their usual demeanour, both in dress and diet and language and behaviour. So Plato[375] at Syracuse was exactly the same man as in the Academy, the same with Dionysius as with Dion.