Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates 12

But to return to Critias and Alcibiades, I repeat that as long as they lived with Socrates they were able by his support to dominate their ignoble appetites; but being separated from him, Critias had to fly to Thessaly, where he consorted with fellows better versed in lawlessness than justice. 

And Alcibiades fared no better. His personal beauty on the one hand incited bevies of fine ladies to hunt him down as fair spoil, while on the other hand his influence in the state and among the allies exposed him to the corruption of many an adept in the arts of flattery; honored by the democracy and stepping easily to the front rank he behaved like an athlete who in the games of the Palaestra is so assured of victory that he neglects his training; thus he presently forgot the duty which he owed himself. 

Such were the misadventures of these two. Is the sequel extraordinary? Inflated with the pride of ancestry, exalted by their wealth, puffed up by power, sapped to the soul's core by a host of human tempters, separate moreover for many a long day from Socrates—what wonder that they reached the full stature of arrogancy! 

And for the offences of these two Socrates is to be held responsible! The accuser will have it so. But for the fact that in early days, when they were both young and of an age when dereliction from good feeling and self-restraint might have been expected, this same Socrates kept them modest and well-behaved, not one word of praise is uttered by the accuser for all this. 

That is not the measure of justice elsewhere meted. Would a master of the harp or flute, would a teacher of any sort who has turned out proficient pupils, be held to account because one of them goes away to another teacher and turns out to be a failure? 

Or what father, if he have a son who in the society of a certain friend remains an honest lad, but falling into the company of some other becomes a good-for-nothing, will that father straightway accuse the earlier instructor? 

Will not he rather, in proportion as the boy deteriorates in the company of the latter, bestow more heartfelt praise upon the former? 

What father, himself sharing the society of his own children, is held to blame for their transgressions, if only his own goodness be established? 

Here would have been a fair test to apply to Socrates: Was he guilty of any base conduct himself? 

If so let him be set down as a knave, but if, on the contrary, he never faltered in sobriety from beginning to end, how in the name of justice is he to be held to account for a baseness which was not in him? 

—from Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2 

IMAGE: John Macallan Swan, The Prodigal Son (1888)