having killed a foreigner, he conversed with him on the subject of piety, and turned him from his purpose: and by his exhortations he made Lysis a most moral man. For he was very ingenious at deriving arguments from existing circumstances. And so he mollified his son Lamprocles when he was very angry with his mother, as Xenophon mentions somewhere in his works; and he wrought upon Glaucon, the brother of Plato, who was desirous to meddle with affairs of state, and induced him to abandon his purpose, because of his want of experience in such matters, as Xenophon relates. And, on the contrary, he persuaded Charmidas to devote himself to politics, because he was a man very well calculated for such business. He also inspired Iphicrates, the general, with courage, by showing him the gamecocks of Midias the barber, pluming themselves against those of Callias; and Glauconides said, that the state ought to keep him carefully, as if he were a pheasant or a peacock. He used also to say, that it was a strange thing that every one could easily tell what property he had, but was not able to name all his friends, or even to tell their number; so careless were men on that subject. Once when he saw Euclid exceedingly anxious about some dialectic arguments, he said to him, “O Euclid, you will acquire a power of managing sophists, but not of governing men.” For he thought that subtle hair-splitting on those subjects was quite useless; as Plato also records in the Euthydemus.
XIII. And when Charmidas offered him some slaves, with the view to his making a profit of them, he would not have them; and, as some people say, he paid no regard to the beauty of Alcibiades.
XIV. He used to praise leisure as the most valuable of possessions, as Xenophon tells us in his Banquet. And it was a saying of his that