Kitap 5
55
But Plato not being content with all these strange stories, introduces the valour which was displayed, or rather which was invented by him at Delium. For if Socrates had even taken Delium, as Herodicus the Cratetian has reported in his Treatise to Philosocrates, he would have fled disgracefully as all the rest did, when Pagondas sent two squadrons of cavalry unperceived round the hill. For then some of the Athenians fled to Delium, and some fled to the sea, and some to Oropus, and some to Mount Parnes. And the Bœotians, especially with their cavalry, pursued them and slew them; and the Locrian cavalry joined in the pursuit and slaughter. When then this disorder and alarm had seized upon the Athenians, did Socrates alone, looking proud and casting his eyes around, stand firm, turning aside the onset of the Bœotian and Locrian cavalry? And yet does Thucydides make no mention of this valour of his, nor even any poet either. And how was it that he yielded to Alcibiades the prize of preeminent valour, who had absolutely never joined in this expedition at all? But in the Crito, Plato, that favourite of Memory, says that Socrates had never once gone out of Attica, except when he, once went to the Isthmian games. And Antisthenes, the Socratic philosopher, tells the same tale as Plato about the Aristeia; but the story is not true. For this Dog flatters Socrates in many particulars, on which account we must not believe either of them, keeping Thucydides for our guide. For Antisthenes even exaggerates this false story, saying,—'But we hear that you also received the prize of preeminent valour in the battle which took place against the Bœotians.' 'Be quiet, my friend, the prize belongs to Alcibiades, not to me.' 'Yes, but you gave it to him as we are told.' But Plato's Socrates says that he was present at Potidæa, and that he yielded the prize of preeminent valour to Alcibiades on that occasion. But by the universal consent of all historians the expedition against Potidæa, in which Phormio commanded, was previous to the one against Delium.
