If you turn to the other road, you will find many
people, and among them a wholly clever and wholly
handsome gentleman with a mincing gait, a thin
neck, a languishing eye, and a honeyed voice, who
distils perfume, scratches his head with the tip of
his finger, Cf. Plutarch, Pompey, 48 fin. and carefully dresses his hair, which is
scanty now, but curly and raven-black—an utter]
delicate Sardanapalus, a Cinyras, a very Agathon (that
charming writer of tragedies, don’t you know?). I
am thus explicit that you may recognize him by
these tokens, and may not overlook a creature so
marvellous, and so dear to Aphrodite and the Graces.
But what am I talking about? Even if you had
your eyes shut, and he should come and speak to
you, unsealing those Hymettus lips and releasing
upon the air those wonted intonations, you would




 

discover that he is not like us “who eat the fruit of
the glebe,” Iliad6, 142. but some unfamiliar spirit, nurtured
on dew or on ambrosia. 
If, then, you go to him and put yourself in his
hands, you will at once, without effort, become an
orator, the observed of all, and, as he himself calls it,
king of the platform, driving the horses of eloquence
four-in-hand. For on taking you in charge, he will
teach you first of all—but let him address you
himself.