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Section 122

Socrates. Of these, the first teaches the magic of Zoroaster, the son of Horomazes—and this is the worship of the gods—and he also teaches the duties of a king; the most just teaches him to be truthful throughout his whole life; the most moderate teaches him not to be mastered by a single one of the pleasures, so that he may become accustomed to being free and truly a king, ruling first the things within himself and not being a slave to them; and the most courageous prepares him to be fearless and without dread, since whenever he feels fear he is a slave. But for you, Alcibiades, Pericles set over you as a tutor the most useless of his servants because of old age, Zopyrus the Thracian. And I would go through the rest of the upbringing and education of your competitors, if it were not a long task and at the same time these things are sufficient to make clear the other things that follow from them. But of your birth, Alcibiades, and your upbringing and education, or that of any other Athenian, practically speaking no one cares, unless someone happens to be your lover. And if again you are willing to look to the wealth and luxuries and trailing garments of clothes and anointings with myrrh and the trailing crowds of attendants and the other refinements of the Persians, you would be ashamed of yourself, perceiving how much you fall short of them. And if again you will be willing to look to the moderation and orderliness and ease and even temper and high-mindedness and discipline and courage and endurance and love of toil and love of victory and love of honor of the Lacedaemonians, you would consider yourself a child in all such things. If again you pay attention to wealth and think you are something in this respect, let not this either remain unspoken by us, if somehow you may perceive where you stand. For in this respect, if you wish to look at the wealth of the Lacedaemonians, you will know that what is here falls far short of what is there; for as to the land they have, both their own and Messenia, no one here could dispute with them in size or virtue, nor again in the possession of slaves, both the others and the helots, nor indeed of horses, nor all the other flocks that graze throughout Messenia. But I let all these things go, yet in gold and silver there is not among all the Greeks as much as there is privately in Lacedaemon; for over many generations it enters there from all the Greeks, and often from the barbarians, but it goes out nowhere, but simply according to the fable of Aesop which the fox told to the lion, while the tracks of the currency entering into Lacedaemon are clearly turned thither, nowhere could one see any going out.