"Mary Renault - Greece 4 - The Last Of The Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Renault Mary)

the Sicilian war. — Then why should he do this to hinder it? — He would do better still out of a tyranny.
The City never tired of gossip about Alkibiades. Tales twenty years old came up, about his insolence to
his suitors when he was a boy.

He has kept the war going for his own glory, someone said. If he had not fooled the Spartan envoys
when they came to make peace, we should have it now. But an angry voice, which had been trying a long
time to be heard, cried out, Shall I tell you the sin of Alkibiades? He was born too late into a City of little
men. Why did the mob banish Aristides the Just? Because they were sick of hearing his virtue praised.
They admitted it. It shamed them. Now they hate to see beauty and wit, valour and birth and wealth,
united in one man. What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence; the desire of the
base to see no head higher than their own?

Not so, by the gods. It is justice, the gift of Zeus to men. — Justice? If the gods give a man wisdom, or
forethought, or skill, must he be brought down as if he had got them by theft? We shall be laming the best
athletes soon, at the demand of the worst, in the name of justice. Or some citizen with pockmarks and a
squint will lay a complaint against such a boy as this (here he pointed suddenly at me) and his nose will be
broken, I suppose, for justice's sake.

At this laughter broke up the argument. The better-bred of them, seeing me confused, looked away, but
one or two kept on staring. I saw Midas pursing his mouth, and walked away from them.

Of the few boys who had made some attempt to exercise, Xenophon was one. He had finished his bout,
and came over to me. I thought he would say there would be less noise in Sparta. But he said, Have you
been listening? I'll tell you an odd thing. Those who blame the Corinthians or the oligarchs all say it stands
to reason, or that everything points to it. But those who blame Alkibiades all say that someone told them
in the street. — So they do. Then perhaps there is something in it? — Yes; unless someone is putting it
about. He had an open face and quiet manners; you had to know him well to learn he had a head on his
shoulders. He stood looking about the colonnade, then laughed to himself. By the way, if you want to
study with a Sophist when you leave, now's the time to choose one.

One could not blame him for laughing. I had forgotten, till he reminded me, that the Sophists were there.
On any other day, each would have stood forth among his pupils like a flower among bees; now, seated
on the benches or pacing the colonnade, they were questioning like the rest anyone who professed to
know something; some with more seemliness than those around them, some not. Zenon was expressing
fiercely his democratic opinions; Hippias, who was accustomed to treat his young men much as if they
were still at school, had let them start a quarrel among themselves and was red in the face from calling
them to order; Dionysodoros and his brother, cheapjack Sophists who would teach anything from virtue
to rope-dancing at cut rates, were screaming like market-women, denouncing Alkibiades, and flying in a
rage when people laughed, for he was well known to have taken them on together and refuted them both
in half a dozen responses. Only Gorgias, with his long white beard and golden voice, though a Sicilian
himself, looked as calm as Saturn; he sat with his hands folded in his lap, surrounded by grave young men
whose grace of posture announced their breeding; when a word or two came over, you could hear that
they were wholly engaged with philosophy.
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My father told me, Xenophon said, that I could choose between Hippias and Gorgias. It had better be
Gorgias, I think. I looked round the palaestra and said, They are not all here yet.