6 Stoic Principles To ATTRACT Without Looking NEEDY

His name was Alcibiades.

He had everything.

He belonged to one of the most powerful families in Athens.

His father was killed in battle when he was a boy, and he became the ward of Pericles, the most important statesman in the city, who brought him up in his own house.

He was rich, clever, and by every account of the time, the most beautiful young man of his generation.

The whole of Athens hung on his every move.

Men wanted to be like him.

Many sought his friendship, his favor, his attention.

Alcibiades was used to everyone seeking him out.

Plutarch, who wrote his life centuries later, tells us that from a very early age, he was surrounded by flatterers, people who laughed at his every quip, egged him on in every whim, and promised him that the moment he went into politics, he would outshine every general and orator in Athens.

And Plutarch tells an anecdote that sums him up completely.

Alcibiades bought an enormous, magnificent dog that cost him a fortune, and the first thing he did was cut off its tail.

His friends rebuked him for the cruelty and told him the whole city was talking about it.

He simply laughed and replied that this was exactly what he wanted, for the Athenians to talk about his dog so that they wouldn't say anything worse about him.

Notice that gesture.

The young man who had everything needed one thing more, to be talked about, never to drop out of sight, not for a single day.

On the outside, he was the most sought-after man in Athens.

On the inside, someone who couldn't bear to go unnoticed.

And the other man's name was Socrates.

He was the exact opposite.

The son of a stonemason and a midwife, he was ugly with a snub nose and bulging eyes, so much so that people made jokes about his looks, and he was always the first to make them himself.

He was poor.

He went barefoot almost all the time in the same old cloak, winter and summer.

He held no office and had no power.

He spent his days in the public squares of Athens talking to anyone who cared to talk to him, asking awkward questions, and he never charged a penny for it.