 Alcibiades’ famous failed attempt to seduce Socrates shows that this is so in his case too (218b8-e5). For Alcibiades doesn’t try to win Socrates’ love by undertaking the difficult task of self-transformation required to become a more virtuous, and so more truly beautiful and lovable, person. Instead, he takes the easy, familiar path of offering the physical attractions he already has—the ones that have earned him the approval of the crowd. When these fail him, it is to the crowd (in the form of the Bacchic revelers we meet at the end of the Symposium) he will regressively return, having never really succeeded in turning away.