Textus Originalis

Traduzione

luxurious ease and pleasure; in Thrace, for drinking deep; in Thessaly, for riding hard; and when he was thrown with Tissaphernes the satrap, he outdid even Persian magnificence in his pomp and lavishness. It was not that he could so easily pass entirely from one manner of man to another, nor that he actually underwent in every case a change in his real character; but when he saw that his natural manners were likely to be annoying to his associates, he was quick to assume any counterfeit exterior which might in each case be suitable for them. At all events, in Sparta, so far as the outside was concerned, it was possible to say of him, “No child of Achilles he, but Achilles himself,” such a man as Lycurgus trained; but judging by what he actually felt and did, one might have cried with the poet, “’Tis the selfsame woman still!” For while Agis the king was away on his campaigns, Alcibiades corrupted Timaea his wife, so that she was with child by him and made no denial of it. When she had given birth to a male child, it was called Leotychides in public, but in private the name which the boy’s mother whispered to her friends and attendants was Alcibiades. Such was the passion that possessed the woman. But he, in his mocking way, said he had not done this thing for a wanton insult, nor at the behest of mere pleasure, but in order that descendants of his might be kings of the Lacedaemonians. Such being the state of things, there were many to tell the tale to Agis, and he believed it, more especially owing to the lapse of time.