wild escapades were laughed at, whose figure artists loved to model for their statues of Hermes, and whose very lisp became the fashion of the day. Surrounded by flatterers and admirers, Alcibiades found one man who paid him no compliments, who cared nothing for his rank and accomplishments, yet whose words had the effect of exciting all that was noble in his nature. A strong attachment grew up between the two, and they shared the same tent, and messed together in the winter siege of Potidæa. Alcibiades himself tells us, in the Dialogue which follows, how easily Socrates bore the intense cold of those northern regions, and how, "with his bare feet on the ice, and in his ordinary dress, he marched better than any of the other soldiers who had their shoes on." His personal courage was also remarkable. On one occasion he saved Alcibiades' life at the risk of his own; and in the disastrous retreat after the battle of Delium, we are told that, while all around him were hurrying in wild flight, he walked as unmoved "as if he were in the streets of Athens, stalking like a pelican, and rolling his eyes, while he calmly contemplated friends and foes."
Though Socrates thus discharged his duties as a soldier, he only twice, in the course of his long life, took any prominent part in politics. The first occasion was when he opposed the unjust sentence of death passed by the assembly against the generals after the battle of Arginusæ; and again when, at the peril of his own life, he refused to obey the order of the Thirty Tyrants, and arrest an innocent man. The "divine voice," of which he speaks so frequently, and which interfered
