A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

Character of Alcibiades 227
mantle trailing on the ground. He had the deck of his
trireme cut away, that he might sleep more comfortably,
with his bed slung on girths instead of resting on the
planks; and he carried a shield not emblazoned with the
ancestral bearings of his family, but with a Cupid wielding
a thunderbolt. The leading men of Athens viewed
his conduct with disgust and apprehension, fearing his
scornful and overbearing manner, as being nearly allied
to
the demeanor of a despot, while Aristophanes has expressed
the feeling of the people towards him in
"They love, they hate, they cannot live without him."
the line:
And again he alludes to him in a bitterer spirit in the
verse:
"A lion's cub 'tis best you should not rear,
"For if you do, your master he'll appear." . . .
Alcibiades, among his extraordinary qualities, had this
AdaptabUity
especial art of captivating men by assimilating his own lb. 23.
manners and habits to theirs, being able to change, more
quickly than the chameleon, from one mode of life to another.
The chameleon, indeed, cannot turn itself white;
but Alcibiades never found anything, good or bad, which
he could not imitate to the life. Thus at Sparta, he was
fond of exercise, frugal and severe; in Ionia he was luxurious,
frivolous, and lazy; in Thrace he drank deep; in
Thessaly he proved himself a good horseman; while when
he was consorting with the satrap Tissaphernes, he outdid
even the Persian splendor and pomp. It was not his real
character that he so often and so easily changed, but as
he knew that if he appeared in his true colors, he would be
universally disliked, he concealed his real self under an
apparent adoption of the ways and fashions of whatever
place he was in. . . .