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purple. For he had, as it was observed, this peculiar talent and artifice for gaining men's afiections, that he could at once comply with and really embrace and enter into their habits and ways of life, and change faster than the chameleon. One color, indeed, they say the chame- leon cannot assume ; it cannot make itself appear white ; but Alcibiades, whether with good men or with bad, could adapt himself to his company', and equally wear the ap- pearance of virtue or vice. At Sparta, he was devoted to athletic exercises, was frugal and reserved ; in Ionia, lux- urious, gay, and indolent; in Thrace, alwaj's drinking; in Thessaly, ever on horseback ; and when he lived with Tisaphernes, the Persian satrap, he exceeded the Persians themselves in magnificence and pomp. Not that his natural disposition changed so easily, nor that his real character was so very variable, but, whenever he was sen- sible that by pursuing his own inclinations he might give offence to those with whom he had occasion to converse, he transformed himself into any shape, and adopted any fashion, that he observed to be most agreeable to them. So that to have seen him at Lacedtemon, a man, judging b}' the outward a2)pearance, would have said, " 'T is not Achilles's son, but he himself, the very man" that Lycur- gus designed to form ; while his real feelings and acts would have rather provoked the exclamation, "'Tis the same woman still." For while king Agis was absent, and abroad with the army, he corrupted his wife Timsea, and had a child born by her. Nor did she even deny it, but when she was brought to bed of a son, called him in pub- lic Leotychides, but, amongst her confidants and atten- dants, would w'hisper that his name was Alcibiades. To such a degree was she transported by her passion for him. He, on the other side, would say, in his vain way, he had not done this thing out of mere wantonness of insult, nor to