we have no exact account; it is natural however to suppose, from the sobriety and solidity of his character, and from the long-continued quiet search after truth which occupied him in his early years, that he did not suddenly emerge into notoriety, but grew up step by step into that general acknowledgment of superior wisdom, on which, according to a well-accredited account, the Delphic oracle was not afraid to put its seal. Certain it is that in the year 423 B.C., when he was about forty-seven years of age, he was such a notable character in Athens as to have been brought upon the stage by the broad license of Attic comedy as the representative of the whole class of Sophists, with whom, by the superficial eye, he was naturally confounded. We must suppose therefore that his reputation as a great public talker and debater had been gradually growing, up to that period. And no doubt, even if he had been a man of less original talent, there was something about his personal appearance and character that could not fail to make him the mark of general observation among the busy-idle community of Athens. He was no less odd in his features and in his manner than in his doctrines; an ἄτοπος or {9} eccentric person In the general opinion, whom no man knew exactly what to make of. His features, the very reverse of classical, are familiar to all the frequenters of our public museums; and are, besides, minutely described by both his illustrious disciples. His general appearance was that of a Silenus or Satyr, with a flat, somewhat turned-up, nose, full prominent eyes, big lips, and in later life, as appears from the monuments, a bald head; but these defects were of no avail, even with the beauty-loving Athenians, to diminish the charm of his conversation and the power of his address. For, as Alcibiades says in the Platonic dialogue, where he is one of the chief speakers, he was a Satyr only externally, but internally full of wonderful shapes and sights of gods, like certain hollow figures full of pipes and tubes, seen in the statuaries’ shops, which outwardly were shaped like Sileni, but within contained a machinery of beautiful sacred images. So, as is wont to happen to wise men, his loss became his gain, and his uncomely physiognomy, to all that entered into conversation with him, was the cause of an agreeable surprise. Very different in this from a great modern poet, who was sensitive about his club-foot, the Athenian philosopher made a jest of his unclassical nose, saying that if noses were to be valued as they ought to be, by their fitness for performing the proper functions of a nose, his olfactory organ was better than those noses whose shape was vulgarly accounted more classical; for the upward cast of his open nostrils made them more ready to receive smells from all quarters, while the comparative flatness of his nasal protuberance removed it from the possibility of interfering with the