Then as the boor who was
driving would not stop, the other children made way; but Alkibiades
flung himself down on his face directly in front of the horses, and bade
him drive on at his peril. The man, in alarm, now stopped his horses,
and the others were terrified and ran up to him.
In learning he was fairly obedient to all his teachers, except in
playing the flute, which he refused to do, declaring that it was unfit
for a gentleman. He said that playing on the harp or lyre did not
disfigure the face, but that when a man was blowing at a flute, his own
friends could scarcely recognise him. Besides, the lyre accompanies the
voice of the performer, while the flute takes all the breath of the
player and prevents him even from speaking. "Let the children of the
Thebans," he used to say, "learn to play the flute, for they know not
how to speak; but we Athenians according to tradition have the goddess
Athene (Minerva) for our patroness, and Apollo for our tutelary
divinity; and of these the first threw away the flute in disgust, and
the other actually flayed the flute player Marsyas." With such talk as
this, between jest and earnest, Alkibiades gave up flute-playing
himself, and induced his friends to do so, for all the youth of Athens
soon heard and approved of Alkibiades's derision of the flute and those
who learned it. In consequence of this the flute went entirely out of
fashion, and was regarded with contempt.
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