Alcibiades

Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language

Alcibiades' family is thought to have had, on the father's side going back, Eurysaces the son of Ajax as its founder; on his mother's side he was an Alcmaeonid, since Deinomache, Megacles' daughter, was his mother. As for Cleinias, his father, he fought gloriously with a trireme he had fitted out at his own expense near Artemisium, and later died fighting the Boeotians at Coronea. Pericles and Ariphron, the sons of Xanthippus, who were relatives, became Alcibiades' guardians.

It is well said that no small part of his reputation he owed to Socrates' goodwill and affection toward him, since of Nicias, Demosthenes, Lamachus, Phormio, Thrasybulus, and Theramenes, distinguished men of his own time, not even the mother of any one of them is remembered by name, whereas of Alcibiades we know even the nurse, a Laconian by birth named Amycla, and the tutor, Zopyrus — the one recorded by Antisthenes, the other by Plato.

About Alcibiades' beauty perhaps nothing need be said, except that it flowered with him at every stage of life, as boy, as youth, and as man, and gave him charm and loveliness throughout. For it is not true, as Euripides said, that autumn is beautiful in all beautiful things — but this belonged to Alcibiades, along with a few others, thanks to the natural excellence and vigor of his body.

They say that even his lisp became him in speaking, and lent his chatter a persuasive charm. Aristophanes too mentions his lisp, in the passage where he mocks Theorus: "Then Alcibiades said to me, lisping: 'Do you see Theolus? He has the head of a flatterer.' Alcibiades lisped that quite rightly." And Archippus too, mocking the son of Alcibiades, says: "He walks affectedly, dragging his cloak, so as to look as much like his father as possible; he lets his neck droop to one side and lisps."

His character, as was natural given the great affairs and varied fortunes he later moved among, displayed many inconsistencies and changes toward itself. By nature he had many strong passions, but the strongest of all were his love of rivalry and his love of being first, as is clear from the anecdotes remembered of him as a boy.

For instance, once when he was hard pressed in wrestling, to avoid falling he raised the arms of the one gripping him to his own mouth and was on the point of biting through the hands. When his opponent let go his hold and said, "You bite, Alcibiades, like the women," he replied, "No indeed — like the lions." Again, while still small, he was playing at knucklebones in a narrow street, and just as it came his turn to throw, a loaded wagon was coming toward him.

At first he told the driver to wait, since his throw fell in the wagon's path; but when the man, being boorish, would not obey and drove on, the other boys scattered, but Alcibiades stretched himself out full length on the ground right before the team, face down, and told the man to drive on now if he wished — so that the man, frightened, backed the team away, and the onlookers were astonished and ran up to him shouting. When he came to his schooling,

he was reasonably obedient to his other teachers, but refused to learn the flute, thinking it ignoble and unbecoming a free man: playing the lyre or the harp, he said, spoiled neither the bearing nor the appearance proper to a free man, but a man blowing into flutes could hardly be recognized even by his close friends.

Moreover, the lyre, he said, joins its sound to that of the one playing and sings along with him, while the flute stops up and blocks each person's mouth, taking away both voice and speech. "Let the sons of the Thebans play the flute, then," he said, "for conversation is not something they know how to manage; but we Athenians, according to what our fathers tell us, have Athena as our founder and Apollo as our ancestral god, and the one threw away the flute, while the other even flayed the flute-player."

By such jokes, made half in earnest, Alcibiades turned both himself and the other boys away from that subject of study. For word quickly spread among the boys that Alcibiades was right to loathe flute-playing and to mock those who studied it. As a result the flute was altogether banished from the pursuits of free men and fell into complete disrepute.

In the invectives of Antiphon it is written that, while still a child, he fled his own household for the house of a certain Democrates, one of his lovers; and when Ariphron wished to have him publicly proclaimed as a runaway, Pericles would not allow it, saying: if he is dead, the proclamation will only make it known one day sooner; but if he is safe, for the rest of his life he will be ruined by it. It is also said that he killed one of his attendants with a blow of a stick in Sibyrtius' wrestling school. But perhaps these things do not deserve belief, coming as they do from a man who admits he spoke them out of hostility.

Now as many noble men were already gathering around him and paying him court, the others were all plainly overcome by the brilliance of his youthful beauty and courted him for that alone; but the love that Socrates bore him was great evidence of the virtue and natural excellence of the boy, which Socrates saw shining through his outward form, and fearing on his behalf the wealth and rank and the crowd of citizens, foreigners, and allies who tried to get hold of him first with flatteries and favors, he was determined to defend him and not stand by while, like a plant in flower, he lost and ruined his proper fruit.

For fortune has hedged and fenced no one about so completely with what are called goods that he becomes invulnerable to philosophy and inaccessible to words that carry frankness and a sting; and so Alcibiades, though from the very start he was pampered and shut off by those who courted him for pleasure's sake from listening to one who would admonish and educate him, nevertheless by his natural excellence came to recognize Socrates and drew near to him, setting apart from himself his wealthy and famous lovers.

Quickly becoming intimate with him, and hearing words not from a lover hunting unmanly pleasure, nor begging for kisses and caresses, but exposing the rottenness of his soul and pressing hard upon his empty and foolish conceit, he "crouched like a cowering cock, drooping his wing." He came to regard Socrates' attentions as truly a divinely appointed office, one devoted to watching over and rescuing the young; and holding himself in contempt,

admiring Socrates, cherishing his kindness, ashamed before his virtue, he came unawares, as Plato says, to possess a counter-love, an image of love answering love — so that everyone was amazed to see him dining, wrestling, and sharing a tent with Socrates, while toward his other lovers he was harsh and hard to master, and toward some he behaved altogether haughtily, as toward Anytus the son of Anthemion. This man happened to be in love with Alcibiades,

and, entertaining some foreign guests, invited him along to the dinner as well. Alcibiades turned the invitation down, but after getting drunk at home with his own companions, he went off in revel to Anytus' house; standing at the doors of the men's dining hall and seeing the tables loaded with gold and silver cups, he directed his servants to gather up half of these and bring them back to his own house, and he did not even deign to go in himself, but having done this, left. When the guests were indignant and said that Alcibiades had treated Anytus insolently and arrogantly, Anytus said, "On the contrary, quite reasonably and kindly — for when he could have taken it all, he has left us our share."

So he treated his other lovers too — except for one resident alien, they say, a man of no great means, who sold everything he owned and, having gathered together a hundred staters, brought them to Alcibiades and begged him to take them; Alcibiades laughed, was pleased, and invited him to dinner. Having entertained him kindly, he gave back the gold to him, and ordered him the next day to outbid the other buyers of the public tax-farming contracts and to bid against them for it.

When the man begged off, since the contract came to many talents, Alcibiades threatened to have him whipped if he did not do it — for he in fact had some private grievance against the tax-farmers. So at dawn the resident alien went forth to the marketplace and added a talent to the bid. When the tax-farmers, gathering together in anger, demanded that he name a guarantor, supposing he could find none, and the man, thrown into confusion, was backing away, Alcibiades, standing off at a distance, called out to the magistrates: "Write down my own name — this man is my friend,

I stand guarantor for him." On hearing this the tax-farmers were at a loss. For being used always to pay off the earlier contracts out of the later ones, they saw no way out of the matter. So they begged the man, offering him money; but Alcibiades would not let him accept less than a talent. When they offered the talent, he told him to take it and withdraw. In this way he helped the man.

Now Socrates' love, though it had many great rivals, in some measure prevailed over Alcibiades, since by natural gift his words took hold of Alcibiades, gripped his heart, and drew the tears out of him; yet at other times, giving himself over to the flatterers who offered him many pleasures, he would slip away from Socrates and, running off, be hunted down like a runaway, keeping toward that man alone his reverence and his fear, while looking down on all the rest.

Cleanthes used to say that his beloved was held by him by the ears, but offered his rival lovers many handles that were untouchable to him — meaning the belly, the private parts, and the throat; and Alcibiades was indeed, without question, also inclined toward pleasures — for the lawlessness in his bodily way of life that Thucydides speaks of gives grounds for such a suspicion.

Nevertheless, those who were corrupting him, taking hold rather of his love of honor and love of glory, drove him prematurely into grand ambitions, convincing him that the moment he entered public life he would not merely eclipse at once the other generals and popular leaders, but would even surpass the power and reputation Pericles held among the Greeks.

So then, just as iron softened in fire is again hardened by cold water and its parts drawn together into itself, so too Socrates, whenever he caught Alcibiades full of self-indulgence and vanity, would press him with argument and constrain him, making him humble and diffident, teaching him how much he lacked and how far short he fell of virtue.

Passing beyond boyhood, he once went up to a schoolmaster and asked for a book of Homer. When the teacher said he had nothing of Homer's, Alcibiades struck him with his fist and went on his way. When another said he had a Homer he himself had corrected, Alcibiades said, "Then why are you teaching letters, when you are capable of correcting Homer? Why are you not educating the young?"

Wishing to meet with Pericles, he went to his door. Learning that he was not at leisure, but was working out privately how he would present his accounts to the Athenians, Alcibiades, on his way out, remarked, "Should he not rather be working out some way to avoid presenting accounts to the Athenians altogether?" While still a young man he served in the campaign against Potidaea, and had Socrates as his tent-companion and comrade in the fighting.

A fierce battle took place in which both distinguished themselves; and when Alcibiades fell wounded, Socrates stood over him and defended him, and quite plainly saved him along with his arms. By the strictest justice the prize for valor belonged to Socrates; but since the generals, out of regard for his rank, seemed eager to confer the honor on Alcibiades, Socrates, wishing to foster his love of honor in noble pursuits, was the first to testify on his behalf and urged that he be crowned and given the suit of armor.

Again, in the fighting at Delium, once the Athenian ranks had broken and fled, Alcibiades, being mounted, spotted Socrates falling back on foot with a small group and did not simply ride past; instead he stayed beside him and shielded him from harm, even while the enemy pressed close and cut down many. This, however, happened later.

On Hipponicus, Callias' father, a man of high standing and influence owing to his wealth and lineage, he once dealt a blow with his fist — not out of anger or any quarrel, but for a laugh, having made a wager with his companions. When the outrageous act became notorious throughout the city and everyone, naturally, was indignant, Alcibiades at daybreak went to Hipponicus' house, knocked on the door, went in to him, and, laying aside his cloak, offered his body, telling him to whip and punish him as he wished.

Hipponicus forgave him and let go of his anger; and later he made him bridegroom to his daughter Hipparete. Some, though, say that it was Callias the son, not Hipponicus, who gave Hipparete in marriage to Alcibiades, bringing with her a marriage-portion worth ten talents; and that later, after she bore a child, Alcibiades pressed him for an additional ten talents besides, claiming this had been the arrangement should children come of the marriage. Callias, fearing a plot against himself, went before the people, giving them his money and his estate, in case it should happen to him to die without leaving children. Hipparete, being orderly and devoted to her husband,

was grieved at his consorting, during their marriage, with courtesans both foreign and native, and left the house to go to her brother's. Since Alcibiades paid no heed but continued his dissolute ways, it was necessary for the document of separation to be lodged with the archon, not through others,

but by her presenting it in person. So when she came to do this according to the law, Alcibiades came up, took hold of her, and bore her away back home straight through the marketplace, with not a soul brave enough to stand in his way or pull her free. She remained with him, in fact, until her death, which occurred not long after, when Alcibiades had sailed to Ephesus.

This act of violence was not thought altogether unlawful or inhuman; for indeed the law seems to require the woman leaving her husband to present herself in person before the public precisely so that it may be possible for the husband to meet her and win her back.

He had a dog, marvelous for its size and beauty, which he had bought for seventy minas, and he cut off its tail, which was very handsome. When his friends rebuked him and said that everyone was upset about the dog and abusing him for it, he laughed and said, "Well, that is just what I want: I want the Athenians to talk about this, so that they will say nothing worse about me."

They say his first appearance in public came with a donation of money, not by design, but because he happened to be walking by at a moment when the Athenian citizens were raising a clamor, and he inquired what the clamor was about; on learning that a subscription of money was being made, he came forward and made a donation. The people applauded and shouted out with pleasure, and in his delight he forgot about the quail he happened to be carrying in his cloak. Startled, it flew off, and the Athenians shouted out all the more, and many stood up to join in the chase; but Antiochus the helmsman recovered the bird and handed it back to him, and for this act he became very dear to Alcibiades.

Though the grandest avenues into public life stood open to him thanks to his lineage, his riches, and his courage on the battlefield, and though he could count on numerous friends and family connections, he chose to win the crowd's favor through nothing else but the persuasive charm of his speech. That he was a capable speaker both the comic poets attest, and the most capable of the orators, in his speech Against Meidias, says that Alcibiades was, among his other qualities, a most formidable speaker. But if we are to trust Theophrastus,

a man fond of learning and as well-read in history as any philosopher, Alcibiades was more capable than anyone of discovering and conceiving what needed to be said, but in seeking not only what he ought to say but how he ought to say it, in the right words and phrases, he was often at a loss, and he would often stumble, and in the middle of speaking fall silent and pause, the word having escaped him, while he collected himself and cast about for it.

His horse-breeding became famous, both for the number of his chariots — for no other private person, and no king, ever entered seven at Olympia, only he — and for winning, and coming in second, and fourth, as Thucydides says (Euripides says third); this surpasses in splendor and glory all rivalry of ambition in such matters.

Euripides says this in the ode: "But you I shall sing, son of Cleinias. A fine thing is victory; but finest of all — which no other Greek has done — to run first and second and third with the chariot, and to stand without toil, crowned with Zeus's olive, and hand it over to the herald to proclaim."

This splendor, however, was made still more conspicuous by the rivalry of the cities. The Ephesians set up for him a tent decorated with distinction, the city of Chios furnished fodder for his horses and a great number of sacrificial animals, and the Lesbians supplied wine and the rest of the entertainment lavishly for his feasting of many guests. And yet a certain slander, or malicious act, connected with that display of ambition gave rise to still more talk. For it is said that there was at Athens a certain Diomedes,

a man not without honor, a friend of Alcibiades, who desired that an Olympic victory be won for him. Learning that there was a chariot belonging to the state of Argos, and knowing that Alcibiades had great influence at Argos and many friends there, he persuaded him to buy the chariot on his behalf. But Alcibiades, once he had bought it, registered it as his own,

and simply dismissed Diomedes' claim, though the man took it badly and appealed loudly to gods and men alike. It seems a lawsuit did indeed follow from this affair, and Isocrates composed a speech concerning the team of horses on behalf of Alcibiades' son, in which the plaintiff bringing suit is named as Tisias rather than Diomedes.

When he gave himself over to public life while still a young man, he immediately humbled the other popular leaders, but he had a contest against Phaeax son of Erasistratus and Nicias son of Niceratus — the latter already advanced in years and reputed to be an excellent general, while Phaeax, like Alcibiades himself, was then just beginning to rise, being the son of well-known parents, though inferior in other respects and especially in eloquence.

For he seemed to be skilled and persuasive in private conversation, rather than able to carry contests in the assembly. He was, as Eupolis says, the best at chattering, but the most incapable of speaking. There is also in circulation a speech against Alcibiades composed by Phaeax, in which, among other things, it is written that although the city possessed many gold and silver processional vessels, Alcibiades used all of them as if they were his own, for his daily manner of life. There was at that time an individual named Hyperbolus, from the deme Perithoedae,

whom Thucydides too mentions as a worthless man, and who continually furnished occasion for mockery to nearly all the comic poets in the theaters. Being unmoved by ill report and indifferent to reputation — a quality some, mistaking shamelessness and recklessness for it, call boldness and manliness — he pleased no one, yet the citizens frequently turned to him as their tool whenever they wanted to abuse and defame men of standing.

Persuaded by him, then, the people were about to bring in ostracism, by which they always curb and drive out whichever citizen stands out in reputation and power, appeasing envy rather than fear. Since everyone could see the vote would strike down one of these three men, Alcibiades brought the rival factions together, and after conferring with Nicias, turned the ostracism against Hyperbolus. But as some say, it was not with Nicias but with Phaeax that he conferred, and by winning over that man's faction he drove out Hyperbolus, who had expected no such thing.

For no mean or undistinguished man ever before fell into this punishment, as Plato the comic poet somewhere says, mentioning Hyperbolus — though indeed his deeds deserved earlier examples, yet his own person and his brand of shame did not: "for it was not for such things that ostraca were devised." Now on these matters the reported facts have been told elsewhere at greater length.

Nicias was no less troubled that Alcibiades was admired by the enemy than that he himself was honored by his fellow citizens. For Alcibiades was proxenos of the Lacedaemonians, and he had looked after the men of theirs who were taken captive at Pylos;

but when those men, having obtained peace chiefly through Nicias and having recovered their captives, showed excessive affection for him, and when among the Greeks it was said that Pericles had begun the war for them but Nicias had ended it, and most people gave the treaty the name "Nicias' Peace," Alcibiades, deeply irritated and jealous, began scheming to undermine the settlement.

First, perceiving that the Argives, out of hatred and fear of the Spartans, were seeking a way to break with them, he quietly encouraged in them the expectation of a partnership with the Athenians, and through letters and private talks with the leaders of their people he encouraged them not to fear or yield to the Lacedaemonians, but to turn to the Athenians and wait, since the Spartans would very soon repent and abandon the peace.

Then, when the Lacedaemonians made an alliance with the Boeotians and handed Panactum over to the Athenians in a demolished state rather than whole, as they were obligated to do, he found the Athenians already angered and provoked them still further, and he stirred up trouble against Nicias and slandered him with plausible charges,

namely that although he had commanded the forces, he himself had shown no wish to seize the enemy troops trapped at Sphacteria, and once other men had taken them prisoner, he set them free and sent them home as a favor to the Lacedaemonians; and further, that though friendly with the Boeotians, he had not persuaded them not to join in alliance with the Corinthians, while he prevented the Athenians from becoming friends and allies with any of the Greeks who wished it, if the Lacedaemonians should disapprove.

At this point, while Nicias was faring badly, ambassadors arrived from Lacedaemon, as if by chance, bringing reasonable proposals from the outset and declaring that they possessed complete authority to resolve every issue in a fair and just manner. The council gave them a warm reception, and since the people were to convene an assembly the following day, Alcibiades, growing alarmed, arranged to meet the ambassadors privately and speak with them.

When they had come together he said: "What has happened to you, men of Sparta? How has it escaped you that the council always deals moderately and kindly with those who meet with it, while the people are proud and reach after great things? If you say you have come with full powers over everything, the people will think it high-handed and be resentful at your dictating and using force. Come then, set aside this simplicity, and if you wish to deal with the Athenians on moderate terms and not be forced into anything against your judgment, discuss what is fair as men who do not have full powers. We ourselves will cooperate, out of favor to the Lacedaemonians."

Having said this he gave them his oath and won them over away from Nicias, so that they trusted him completely and admired at once his cleverness and his understanding, as being no ordinary man's. The next day the people assembled and the ambassadors came in. When Alcibiades questioned them, with every appearance of politeness, about the terms on which they had arrived, they answered that they lacked full authority.

At once Alcibiades attacked them with shouting and anger, as though he were the one wronged rather than the wrongdoer, calling them faithless and shifty and saying that they had come to do and say nothing sound. The council grew indignant, the people were angry, and Nicias was struck with astonishment and shame at the men's change of position, not understanding the deceit and the trick.

So, with the Lacedaemonians thus discredited, Alcibiades, having been appointed general, immediately made the Argives, Mantineans, and Eleans allies of the Athenians. No one approved of the manner of the deed, but what he had accomplished was great — to divide and shake nearly the whole of the Peloponnese, and to array so many shields against the Lacedaemonians in a single day at Mantinea, and to arrange for the Athenians a contest and a danger so very far from Athens, in which, even in victory, they gained nothing great, whereas if they had failed, it would have been a hard task for Sparta to survive.

Immediately after the battle, the Thousand at Argos set about overthrowing the democracy and making the city subject to Sparta; and the Lacedaemonians came and put down the democracy. But when the populace again took up arms and prevailed, Alcibiades arrived and secured the victory for the people, and persuaded them to build the Long Walls and to bring the city into contact with the sea, thereby attaching it completely to the power of Athens.

He brought in carpenters and masons from Athens and showed every kind of eagerness, gaining favor and influence for himself no less than for the city. He also persuaded the Patraeans likewise to join their city to the sea with long walls. When someone said to the Patraeans, "The Athenians will swallow you up," Alcibiades said, "Perhaps — but little by little, and starting from the feet, whereas the Lacedaemonians would do it from the head, and all at once."

Nevertheless he also advised the Athenians to hold fast to their position on land, and to make good in deed the oath continually put before the young men at the shrine of Agraulos. For they swear to treat as the boundaries of Attica wheat, barley, vines, and olives, being taught to regard as their own the cultivated and fruit-bearing land.

Amid such political actions and speeches and pride and cleverness, there was, on the other hand, a great deal of luxury in his manner of living — outrageous behavior in his drinking and his love affairs, effeminacy in the purple robes he trailed through the marketplace, arrogant extravagance, and the cutting away of the decks of the triremes so that he might sleep more softly, on straps rather than boards, with bedding laid over them; and the making of a shield overlaid with gold, bearing none of the ancestral devices,

but instead a thunderbolt-bearing Eros. Seeing these things, the men of note, along with their disgust and displeasure, feared his contempt for law and his lawlessness, as being tyrannical and monstrous; and the feeling of the people toward him is not badly expressed by Aristophanes: "They long for him, and hate him too, and want to have him"; and pressing the point still further with his insinuation: "Best not to rear a lion in the city at all — but if one does rear it, one must serve its ways."

For his gifts, his choregic outlays, and his acts of public munificence toward the city, unsurpassed by anyone, together with the glory of his ancestors, the power of his speech, the comeliness and strength of his body joined with experience in warfare and valor, made the Athenians tolerant of everything else and inclined to bear with him moderately, always giving the gentlest of names to his faults, calling them youthful sport and ambition.

Such was his shutting up of Agatharchus the painter, and then, once he had painted the house, releasing him with a gift; and his slapping of Taureas, a rival choregus, out of eagerness for the victory; and his selecting a Melian woman from among the captives, living with her, and raising a child by her.

This too they called humaneness — except that he bore the greatest share of the blame for the slaughter of all the grown men of Melos, having spoken in favor of the decree. When Aristophon painted Nemea seated with Alcibiades in her arms, people went to see it and flocked to it with delight. But the older men were displeased at this too, as tyrannical and lawless. And Archestratus was thought to have spoken not unfittingly when he said that Greece could not have borne two Alcibiades.

When Timon the misanthrope saw Alcibiades faring well and being escorted from the assembly in splendor, he did not pass him by or turn aside, as he was accustomed to do with others, but came up to him and, taking his hand, said, "Good for you, growing like this, my boy—for you are growing into a great evil for all these people." Some laughed at this, others cursed, and some it made stop and think a great deal. So undecided was opinion about him, because of the unevenness of his nature.

The Athenians had desired Sicily even while Pericles was still alive, and after his death they laid hands upon it, sending what were called reinforcements and alliances, on each occasion, to those wronged by the Syracusans, treating these as stepping-stones toward the larger expedition.

But the man who fully kindled this passion of theirs, and persuaded them not to go piecemeal or in small measure, but to sail with a great armament and undertake the conquest of the island outright, was Alcibiades—he who persuaded the people to hope for great things, and who himself reached for greater things still. For he regarded the expedition, in relation to what he hoped for, as a beginning, not an end,

as the rest did, of Sicily. And while Nicias tried to turn the people away, on the ground that taking Syracuse was a difficult task, Alcibiades dreamed of Carthage and Libya, and once these were added, already embraced Italy and the Peloponnese as well, and made Sicily little more than provisions for the war. He already had the young men there lifted up by these hopes, and they listened to the older men recount many marvelous things about the expedition, so that many sat in the wrestling-grounds and the semicircular benches sketching out the shape of the island and the position of Libya and Carthage.

Socrates the philosopher and Meton the astrologer, however, are said to have hoped for nothing good for the city from that expedition—the one, it seems, because his familiar divine sign had come to him and given a warning beforehand, while Meton, whether out of fear arising from calculation of what was to come or by using some form of divination, feigned madness, and, taking a lit torch, seemed about to set fire to his own house.

Some say that Meton contrived no pretense of madness at all, but burned down his house by night, then came forward at dawn and begged and implored, on the ground of so great a misfortune, that his son be excused from the expedition. He, then, got what he asked, having deceived his fellow citizens.

Nicias was chosen general against his will, avoiding the office not least because of his co-commander; for it seemed to the Athenians that their prospects in the war would be better if they did not send off Alcibiades unmixed, but blended with his boldness the foresight of Nicias. Indeed Lamachus, the third of the generals, was well along in years, yet he too seemed no less fiery than Alcibiades

and fond of danger in battle. When they were deliberating about the size and manner of the preparation, Nicias once more tried to resist and bring the war to a halt. But when Alcibiades spoke against him and prevailed, one of the orators, Demostratus, moved and said that the generals ought to have full power over both the preparation and the whole conduct of the war. When the people voted this through and everything was made ready for the sailing, nothing favorable attended even the festival that fell at that time.

For the Adonia happened to fall in those very days, and everywhere the women had laid out images resembling corpses being carried out for burial, and imitated funerals, beating their breasts, and singing dirges. But the mutilation of the Hermae, most of them having their faces disfigured in a single night, disturbed many even of those who scorned such things. It was said that the Corinthians had done this for the sake of the Syracusans, their colonists, hoping it would cause a check through the omens, or a change of mind about the war.

Yet this account did not take hold of most people, nor did the view of those who thought the sign meant nothing terrible, but rather that it was the sort of thing unrestrained young men are apt to bring about, carried from playfulness into wanton insolence. Taking what had happened with both anger and fear, as something ventured by a conspiracy aimed at great matters, they examined every suspicion harshly, both the council meeting about these things and the assembly, often, within a few days.

Meanwhile the demagogue Androcles brought forward certain slaves and resident aliens who accused Alcibiades and his friends both of other mutilations of statues and of mocking imitations of the Mysteries over wine. They claimed one Theodorus took on the role of herald, that Poulytion played the torch-carrier, and Alcibiades acted as hierophant, while his other companions stood by and underwent initiation, hailed there as "initiates."

This is what is written in the formal indictment, laid by Thessalus son of Cimon, charging Alcibiades with impiety against the two goddesses. As the people grew harsher and more bitter toward Alcibiades, and Androcles—who was an especially bitter enemy of his—kept stirring them further, at first those around Alcibiades were thrown into confusion.

But perceiving that the sailors who were about to sail to Sicily were well disposed toward them, and the soldiery as well, and hearing that the Argives and Mantineans, a thousand hoplites, openly declared that it was for the sake of Alcibiades that they were undertaking so long a campaign across the sea, and that if anyone treated him unjustly they would withdraw at once—they took heart and stood ready to make their defense when the occasion came, so that their enemies again lost heart and feared that the people might grow more lenient toward him at the trial because of this need.

In view of this, then, they contrived to have those orators who were not thought to be enemies of Alcibiades, though hating him no less than those who openly admitted it, rise before the assembly and argue how senseless it was that, once a commander had been granted unlimited authority over so vast a force, with the army and the allies already assembled, to waste the opportunity in the meantime empaneling a jury and measuring out the water-clock: "No, let him sail now, with good fortune, and once the war is brought to its conclusion let him come and make his defense in person, under the same laws."

Now the malice behind this postponement did not escape Alcibiades, but he came forward and said that it was terrible for him to be sent off in suspense, at the head of so great a force, leaving accusations and slanders unresolved behind him: for it was fitting that he should die if he did not clear away the charges, but if he cleared them away and was shown to be innocent, that he should then turn against the enemy without fear of his accusers.

But since he could not persuade them, and they instead ordered him to sail, he set sail alongside his co-commanders, taking with them nearly a hundred and forty triremes, some five thousand one hundred hoplites, roughly thirteen hundred bowmen, slingers, and lightly equipped soldiers, plus a substantial quantity of other supplies.

Putting in at Italy and taking Rhegium, he proposed an opinion as to how the war should be conducted. And when Nicias spoke against it but Lamachus sided with him, he sailed to Sicily and won over Catana, but accomplished nothing further, being summoned back by the Athenians for trial almost at once. For, as has been said, certain cold suspicions and slanders against Alcibiades kept falling in, coming from slaves and resident aliens:

then, once he was away, his enemies attacked him more vehemently, linking the crimes against the Hermae with the profanation of the Mysteries, as if a single revolutionary plot lay behind them both; and they threw into prison, without trial, those who had been accused on any pretext whatsoever, and were vexed that they had not seized Alcibiades and put him on trial then and there for charges of such magnitude.

Whoever fell under his enemies' anger—kinsman, friend, or acquaintance—was treated all the more harshly because of it. As for those who gave information, Thucydides declined to name them, but others name Diocleides and Teucer, of whom Phrynichus the comic poet also composed these lines: "Dear Hermes, watch yourself, and take care you don't fall and trip yourself up, and hand another Diocleides, who wants to do some harm, an occasion for slander"; and: "I will be on my guard, for I have no wish to give informer's fees to Teucer, that accursed foreigner."

And yet the informers showed nothing firm or solid. One of them, when asked how he had recognized the faces of the mutilators of the Hermae, answered that it was by the light of the moon—and this proved altogether false, since it was the night of the old and new moon when the deed was done. This caused an uproar among sensible people, but it did not make the populace any gentler toward the accusations; rather, just as they had rushed forward from the start, they did not stop bringing in and throwing into prison whomever anyone denounced.

Among those who were then bound and held under guard for trial was also Andocides the orator, whom Hellanicus the historian traced back among the descendants of Odysseus. Andocides was thought to be hostile to the democracy and oligarchic in sympathy, and what made him especially suspected in the mutilation of the Hermae was the great Herm standing near his house, a dedication of the tribe Aegeis:

for among a very few of the notable ones it alone remained almost entirely unharmed—which is why even now it is called the Herm of Andocides, and everyone calls it by that name, contrary to what the inscription attests. It happened that among all those under the same charge, Andocides came to have as a close companion and friend in the prison a man not equally distinguished, but exceptional in intelligence and daring, named Timaeus.

This man persuaded Andocides to become an informer against himself and a few others: for if he confessed, there would be immunity by decree of the people, while the outcome of the trial was uncertain for everyone, and most terrifying for men of standing. Better, he said, to save himself by a lie than to die ingloriously under the same charge, and it was to his advantage, looking at the matter from the common good, to give up a few doubtful men and thereby rescue many good ones from the people's wrath.

When Timaeus said and taught this, Andocides was persuaded, and, becoming an informer against himself and others, secured for himself the immunity granted by the decree; but those he named all perished, except those who fled. And to lend credibility, Andocides added his own household slaves to the list.

The people, however, did not let go all their anger there; rather, once rid of the mutilators of the Hermae, their wrath, as though now free to turn elsewhere, poured wholly upon Alcibiades, and at last they sent the Salaminia after him, though they gave orders—not without prudence—not to use force nor to lay hold of his person, but to employ moderate language, telling the crew to bid him follow them to trial and to persuade the people themselves.

For they feared disturbances in the army in hostile territory, and factional strife, which Alcibiades could easily have brought about had he wished. The troops indeed grew despondent once he left, believing the campaign would now stretch on sluggishly and without result under Nicias, as though a goad had been taken away from their operations. For Lamachus was a warlike and manly man, but he had no dignity or weight to him, because of his poverty.

As soon as he sailed away, Alcibiades deprived the Athenians of Messene. For there were men ready to hand over the city, whom he, knowing exactly who they were, betrayed to the friends of the Syracusans, and so destroyed the plot. Arriving at Thurii and disembarking from his trireme, he hid himself and escaped those searching for him.

And when someone recognized him and said, "Do you not trust your fatherland, Alcibiades?" he replied, "In everything else, yes—but concerning my own life, not even my mother, lest through some mistake she cast the black pebble instead of the white." And afterward, when word reached him that his city had sentenced him to die, he answered, "Yet I shall prove to them that I still live."

They record the formal indictment as running thus: "Thessalus, son of Cimon, from the deme of Laciadae, brought charges against Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, from the deme of Scambonidae, for wronging against the two goddesses, Demeter and Kore, by mimicking the Mysteries and showing them to his companions within his own household, dressed in a garment like the one hierophant wears when he displays the sacred things, and calling himself hierophant, Poulytion torch-bearer, and Theodorus of Phegaea herald, and addressing his other companions as initiates and beholders, contrary to the laws and established customs set down by the Eumolpidae and the Kerykes and the priests of Eleusis."

Having condemned him in his absence and confiscated his property, they further voted that all the priests and priestesses should curse him, of whom only Theano, daughter of Menon, of the deme Agraule, is said to have spoken against the decree, declaring that she had become a priestess for prayers, not for curses.

While such judgments and condemnations were being passed against Alcibiades, he happened to be spending his time at Argos, having been conveyed there to the Peloponnese after his first flight from Thurii; and, fearing his enemies and having wholly given up on his fatherland, he sent to Sparta, asking that safe conduct be granted him and a pledge of trust, for services and benefits of greater value than the harm he had previously done them in his own defense.

When the Spartans granted this and received him, he came at once and eagerly accomplished one thing straightaway: he roused and spurred on those who had been intending and delaying to send help to the Syracusans, to send Gylippus as commander and to shatter the Athenian power there; a second thing, to stir up the war at home against the Athenians; and a third and greatest thing, to fortify Decelea—than which nothing did more to work the ruin and slow destruction of the city.

While he was winning public esteem and admiration, he was no less captivating the multitude and bewitching them privately by his way of life, adopting Spartan habits, so that people who saw him close-cropped, bathing in cold water, eating barley cake, and using black broth, could not believe it and wondered whether this man had ever kept a cook in his house, or so much as looked at a perfumer, or had endured touching a Milesian robe.

For this, they say, was the one great skill in him beyond all others, and his device for hunting men: to make himself like and to share the feelings of whatever pursuits and ways of life he found himself among, shifting more quickly than the chameleon. Except that creature, as they say, is unable to assume one color, white; but Alcibiades, moving alike through good and bad company, found nothing that he could not imitate or practice,

but in Sparta he was athletic, plain in living, grim; in Ionia, luxurious, delightful, easygoing; in Thrace, given to drink; among the Thessalians, devoted to horsemanship; and when he lived among Tissaphernes' court, he surpassed the Persians themselves in showy extravagance and lavish display — not changing himself so easily from one manner to another, nor taking on every alteration in his character, but because if he used his own nature he was bound to give offense to those he met, he always sank into and took refuge in whatever shape and form suited them best.

In Lacedaemon, at any rate, one could say of his outward bearing: 'not the son of Achilles, but the man himself, such as Lycurgus trained him.' But of his true passions and doings one might have cried out: 'It is the same old woman still.'

For during a stretch when King Agis was absent commanding his forces elsewhere, he so corrupted Timaea, his wife, that she conceived by Alcibiades and did not deny it, and when she bore a male child, he was called Leotychidas in public, but the name whispered by his mother to her friends and attendants in private was Alcibiades — so great was the passion that possessed the woman. And he, indulging himself, said he did this not out of insolence nor mastered by pleasure, but so that Spartan kings might one day be descended from him.

Since these things went on in this way, many denounced him to Agis. But what most convinced him was the timing: when an earthquake occurred, he fled in fear from the bedchamber and away from his wife, and thereafter for ten months did not come to her again, after which Leotychidas was born, and Agis denied he was his own son. And for this reason Leotychidas was later excluded from the kingship.

Once the Athenian catastrophe in Sicily had unfolded, envoys came to Sparta together from Chios, Lesbos, and Cyzicus concerning revolt. While the Boeotians were working on behalf of the Lesbians, and Pharnabazus on behalf of the Cyzicenes, the Spartans, persuaded by Alcibiades, chose to help the Chians before all others. And sailing out himself as well, he brought nearly the whole of Ionia into revolt, and being much in the company of the Spartan generals, he did great harm to the Athenians.

But Agis was already his enemy on account of his wife, having suffered wrong from him, and he was also vexed by his reputation, for it was said that most things were being accomplished and were succeeding through Alcibiades; and among the other Spartans, the most powerful and ambitious were already growing weary of Alcibiades out of envy. They therefore prevailed and managed to have the authorities at home write to Ionia, ordering that he be killed.

But he, learning of this quietly beforehand and afraid, while continuing to share in all the operations with the Spartans, altogether avoided falling into their hands, and, giving himself over to Tissaphernes, the King's satrap, for his own safety, he at once became the first and greatest man with him.

For the barbarian marveled at the versatility and extraordinary cleverness of the man, since he was not straightforward but cunning and fond of mischief; and in the daily graces of study and shared living, there was no character so unmoved nor nature so unassailable that it did not, even while fearing and envying him, still take some pleasure and delight in his company and in looking upon him.

So Tissaphernes, though otherwise as much a hater of Greeks as any Persian, gave way so far to Alcibiades' flattery that he outdid him in flattering him back. For the most beautiful of the parks he possessed, admired for its waters and healthful meadows, with its walks and retreats fashioned royally and extravagantly, he made it his practice to call 'Alcibiades'; and everyone continued to call and address it so.

Alcibiades, then, despairing of the Spartans as untrustworthy, and fearing Agis, began to work harm and slander against them before Tissaphernes, not letting him help them eagerly nor destroy the Athenians outright, but urging him to supply them grudgingly and so wear both sides down and grind them slowly, making both peoples pliable to the King and worn out by each other.

And Tissaphernes was easily persuaded and was plainly fond of him and admired him, so that Alcibiades came to be looked to from both sides by the Greeks, while the Athenians repented of what had been decided against him and suffered badly for it, and he himself was now distressed and afraid that, if the city were altogether destroyed, he might become hated even by the Spartans.

At that time nearly all Athenian power lay in Samos; and setting out from there with their naval force, they were partly recovering some of the places that had revolted, partly still holding their own at sea, remaining a match for the enemy, but fearing Tissaphernes and the Phoenician triremes said to be about to arrive, a hundred and fifty of them, whose coming would leave no hope of safety for the city.

Knowing this, Alcibiades sent secretly to the men of influence among the Athenians at Samos, holding out hope that he would win Tissaphernes over as a friend to them — not seeking to please the multitude nor trusting them, but the best men, if they would dare, becoming brave men and putting a stop to the insolence of the common people, to save their affairs and their city themselves, by their own hands.

Now the rest gave close heed to Alcibiades; yet Phrynichus of Deiradiotae, one of the generals, suspecting — rightly — that Alcibiades cared no more for oligarchy than for democracy, but was seeking by every means to return, and was courting the powerful men beforehand by slandering the people, opposed him. But being overruled in his opinion and now openly become Alcibiades' enemy, he sent secret word to Astyochus, the enemy's admiral, urging him to be on guard and to arrest Alcibiades as playing a double game.

But it happened that a traitor was unknowingly negotiating with a traitor. For Astyochus, standing in fear of Tissaphernes and noting how much influence Alcibiades held over him, betrayed Phrynichus's dealings to them. And Alcibiades lost no time sending men to Samos so as to accuse Phrynichus. When all were indignant and combining against Phrynichus, he, seeing no other way out of his present straits, tried to cure the evil with a greater evil.

For he sent again to Astyochus, reproaching him for the disclosure, but promising to deliver the ships and the camp of the Athenians into his hands. This treachery of Phrynichus did no harm to the Athenians, however, because of Astyochus's counter-betrayal, for he reported this too, to Alcibiades and his circle, against Phrynichus.

But Phrynichus, foreseeing and expecting a second accusation from Alcibiades, got ahead of him by himself telling the Athenians beforehand that the enemy was about to sail against them, and urged them to stand ready by their ships and to fortify the camp with a wall.

But while the Athenians were doing this, a letter came again from Alcibiades, telling them to guard against Phrynichus as betraying the naval station to the enemy; they disbelieved it, thinking that Alcibiades, knowing clearly the enemy's preparation and intention, was using it dishonestly to slander Phrynichus.

Later, however, when one of the patrol guards, Hermon, struck Phrynichus down with a dagger in the marketplace and killed him, the Athenians, after a trial, condemned the dead Phrynichus for treason, and crowned Hermon and those who had joined him in the deed.

At Samos, meanwhile, Alcibiades' friends, now prevailing, sent Peisander to the city to change the constitution and to encourage the powerful men to take affairs into their own hands and put down the democracy, on the understanding that Alcibiades would, on these terms, secure them Tissaphernes as friend and ally. This was the pretext and the pretense used by those establishing the oligarchy.

But when the so-called Five Thousand — who were actually four hundred — gained power and took over affairs, they paid very little heed to Alcibiades any longer and pursued the war more feebly, partly still distrusting the change on the part of citizens made strangers to it, partly thinking that the Spartans would rather make concessions to them, being always well disposed toward oligarchy.

So the people in the city, unwillingly, out of fear, kept quiet, for a considerable number of those who spoke out openly against the Four Hundred had in fact been put to death. But those at Samos, learning of this and indignant, set out at once to sail against the Piraeus, and summoning Alcibiades and appointing him general, they ordered him to lead them and put down the tyrants.

But he did not do what someone suddenly made great by the favor of the multitude might have done and been carried away by, thinking he must at once gratify them in everything and oppose nothing to men who, out of a wanderer and an exile, had made him commander and general over so many ships, so great a camp, and so great a force — but, as befitted a great leader, he stood against them as they were carried along by anger, and by preventing them from making a mistake, he then and there plainly saved the city's affairs.

For if they had raised anchor and sailed home, the enemy would immediately have had all Ionia, and the Hellespont without a fight, and the islands, while the Athenians would have brought the war upon Athenians within their own city. This above all Alcibiades alone prevented from happening, not only persuading and instructing the mass of men but also, man by man, entreating some and laying hold of others.

Thrasybulus of Steiria worked together with him in this, being present at the same time and shouting loudly — for he was, they say, the loudest-voiced of the Athenians. This was Alcibiades' first fine deed, and his second was this: having promised the Phoenician ships which the Spartans were expecting the King to send, that he would either bring them over to the Athenians or arrange that they should not even reach the Spartans, he sailed out swiftly.

And the ships, which appeared off Aspendus, Tissaphernes did not bring up, but deceived the Spartans; and the credit for turning them away was given to Alcibiades on both sides, and even more so among the Spartans, as though he were teaching the barbarian to let the Greeks be destroyed by one another. For it was not unclear that so great a force added to the one side would utterly strip the other of mastery of the sea.

After this the Four Hundred were overthrown, Alcibiades' friends eagerly joining forces with those of democratic sympathies; and though the people in the city wished for it and urged Alcibiades to come home, he himself thought he ought not to return empty-handed and having accomplished nothing, through pity and the favor of the multitude, but gloriously. Therefore he first sailed with a few ships from Samos around the sea of Cnidos and Cos,

and there, hearing that Mindarus the Spartan was sailing up to the Hellespont with his whole fleet, and that the Athenians were following him, he hurried to help the generals. And by chance he arrived at just the right moment, sailing with eighteen triremes, at the point when, with all their ships together clashing at the same place and fighting a sea battle off Abydus, both sides, one losing in part, the other winning in part, were locked in a great struggle until evening.

And his appearance gave rise to opposite impressions on both sides, so that the enemy took courage while the Athenians fell into confusion. But quickly, raising a friendly signal from his flagship, he charged straight at the Peloponnesians who were winning and pursuing. Routing them, he drove them onto the shore, and, pressing on, he battered and shattered their ships, while their men swam for it and Pharnabazus came to their aid on foot and fought beside the sea in defense of the ships. In the end they took thirty of the enemy's ships,

and, recovering their own, set up a trophy. Having enjoyed such brilliant good fortune, and eager at once to make a show of it before Tissaphernes, he prepared guest-gifts and presents and, with a retinue befitting a commander, set out to visit him.

Yet he did not get what he expected: Tissaphernes, who had long been spoken ill of by the Spartans and feared incurring blame from the King, decided that Alcibiades had arrived at just the right moment, and having seized him, imprisoned him at Sardis, thinking this act of injustice would serve as a remedy for that slander.

When thirty days had passed, Alcibiades got hold of a horse from somewhere, escaped his guards, and fled to Clazomenae. He further slandered Tissaphernes by claiming he had been released by him, while he in person made sail for the Athenian encampment; there he learned that Mindarus and Pharnabazus had joined forces at Cyzicus,

he roused the soldiers, telling them that they must fight the enemy by sea, by land, and, by Zeus, by storming walls as well; for there would be no money unless they were victorious on every front. He manned the ships, put in at Proconnesus, and ordered the small vessels to be gathered within and kept under guard, so that the enemy would get no advance warning from any quarter of his approach.

As it happened, a heavy rainstorm suddenly fell, along with thunder and darkness, and these helped conceal his preparations. He thus escaped notice not only of the enemy but even of the Athenians, who had already given up hope; he ordered them aboard and put out to sea. Shortly afterward the darkness cleared, and the Peloponnesian ships were seen riding at anchor off the harbor of Cyzicus.

Alcibiades, fearing that if the enemy caught sight of his full number they would flee to land, ordered his generals to hold back and sail quietly behind, while he himself came into view with forty ships and challenged the enemy. When they were deceived, and, holding these few in contempt, sailed out against them, Alcibiades' ships at once engaged and grappled with them; and when the rest of the fleet bore down on them already fighting, the enemy were struck with panic and fled.

Alcibiades, sailing through the enemy line with his twenty best ships, put in to shore, disembarked, and pressed hard upon those fleeing from their ships, destroying many of them; and when Mindarus and Pharnabazus came up to help, he defeated them, killing Mindarus, who fought bravely to the end,

while Pharnabazus fled. Having taken possession of many dead bodies and weapons, they captured all the ships, and having also gained control of Cyzicus—since Pharnabazus had abandoned it and the Peloponnesians there had been destroyed—they held not only the Hellespont securely but also drove the Spartans by force from the rest of the sea. A letter was also captured, reporting the disaster to the Ephors in Laconian style: 'The ropes are gone. Mindaros is done for. The men are starving. We do not know what to do.'

Those who had campaigned with Alcibiades were so elated by this, and grew so proud, that they thought it beneath them, being undefeated, to mix any longer with the other soldiers, who had often been defeated. For not long before it had happened that Thrasyllus suffered a setback near Ephesus, and the Ephesians had set up a bronze trophy to the shame of the Athenians.

So Alcibiades' men taunted those of Thrasyllus with this, boasting loudly of themselves and their commander, and would not even let them use the same drill-ground or pitch camp alongside. But when Pharnabazus, with a large force of cavalry and infantry, attacked them as they had made an incursion into the territory of Abydus, Alcibiades came to their aid, routed him, and pursued him until dark together with Thrasyllus; and then the two forces mingled, returning to camp together in good spirits and rejoicing.

On the following day he set up a trophy and plundered the territory of Pharnabazus, with no one daring to resist. He did take priests and priestesses captive, but released them without ransom. Then, eager to make war on the Chalcedonians, who had revolted and received a Spartan garrison and governor, he heard that they had gathered all the plunder from their land and were depositing it for safekeeping among the Bithynians, a people friendly to them; he therefore led his army to the frontier and, sending a herald ahead, laid a complaint against the Bithynians. They, in fear, gave back the plunder to him and agreed to friendship.

While a wall was being carried across Chalcedon from one shore to the other, Pharnabazus arrived intending to lift the siege, and Hippocrates the governor led the garrison out of the city and fell upon the Athenians. Alcibiades drew up his army against both at once, forced Pharnabazus into shameful flight, and destroyed Hippocrates along with a great number of his defeated troops.

He then sailed off into the Hellespont to collect money, and took Selymbria, risking himself recklessly beyond what the occasion called for. The men within who were betraying the city had agreed to raise a torch signal for him at midnight, but were forced to do it before the appointed time, having grown afraid that one of their fellow conspirators had suddenly changed sides. When the torch was raised while his army was not yet ready, he took about thirty men with him and hurried at a run toward the walls, ordering the rest to follow with all speed.

When the gate was opened to him and twenty peltasts had joined his thirty, he slipped inside, but at once became aware that the Selymbrians were bearing down on him in arms from the opposite direction. Since there was no safety in standing his ground, yet, having remained undefeated in all his commands up to that day, he was too proud to flee; so, having a trumpet sound for silence, he ordered one of those present to proclaim to the Selymbrians that the Athenians were not taking up arms against them.

This proclamation blunted their eagerness for battle, since they believed the enemy were already inside in full force, while others grew more hopeful of coming to terms. While they were gathering and taking counsel with one another, Alcibiades' army arrived; and, judging—correctly, as it turned out—that the Selymbrians were inclined toward peace, he grew afraid that the Thracians might sack the city.

There were many Thracians serving eagerly out of personal goodwill toward Alcibiades. He therefore sent all of them out of the city, and did the Selymbrians no harm when they made their appeal, but took money from them, installed a garrison, and departed.

Meanwhile the generals besieging Chalcedon made a truce with Pharnabazus, on the terms that they would receive money and the Chalcedonians would again become subjects of Athens, that they would do no harm to Pharnabazus' territory, and that Pharnabazus would provide safe escort for Athenian envoys to the King.

When Alcibiades returned, Pharnabazus asked that he too swear to the agreement, but Alcibiades said he would not do so until Pharnabazus himself had sworn to the Athenians. When the oaths had been made, he marched against the Byzantines, who had revolted, and began to wall off the city. When Anaxilaus, Lycurgus, and certain others agreed, on condition of their own safety, to hand over the city, he spread word that he was drawing off because new troubles had arisen around Ionia, and sailed away by day with all his ships,

but by night he turned back, disembarked with his hoplites, approached the walls, and kept quiet, while his ships sailed into the harbor and forced their way in with much shouting, uproar, and noise; this at once alarmed the Byzantines by its unexpectedness, and allowed those favoring Athens to receive Alcibiades in safety, since everyone had rushed to the harbor and the ships to help.

Yet they did not surrender without a fight: the Peloponnesians, Boeotians, and Megarians present in Byzantium routed the men from the ships and drove them back into their vessels; but when they perceived that the Athenians were already inside the city, they formed up and advanced to meet them. In the fierce battle that followed, Alcibiades was victorious, commanding the right wing, and Theramenes the left, and they took about three hundred of the surviving enemy alive.

Once the fighting ended, no Byzantine suffered death or banishment, for the men had handed over the city and made their agreement on these very terms, reserving nothing for themselves personally. For this reason, when Anaxilaus stood trial for treason at Sparta, he was found, in his defense, not to disgrace his deed by his words. For he said that he was not a Spartan but a Byzantine, and that it was not Sparta he saw in danger but Byzantium—the city walled off, with nothing being brought in,

and with the Peloponnesians and Boeotians eating what grain there was in the city while the Byzantines starved along with their children and wives—he said that he had not betrayed it to the enemy, but had freed the city from war and suffering, imitating the best of the Spartans, for whom the one simple and just good is the advantage of one's homeland. When the Spartans heard this, they were ashamed and released the men.

Alcibiades, now longing to see his homeland, and even more wishing to be seen by his fellow citizens after so many victories over the enemy, set sail: his Attic triremes were decked all around with many shields and spoils, and he towed many captured ships behind him, while carrying still more figureheads stripped from vessels he had destroyed and defeated. Together, these numbered no fewer than two hundred.

But what Duris of Samos adds to this, claiming to be a descendant of Alcibiades—that Chrysogonus, the Pythian victor, played the flute to time the oarsmen's stroke, and that Callippides, the tragic actor, called the beat, both men wearing the long robes and other costume worn in competition, and that the flagship put into harbor under a purple sail—

as though he were revelling home from a drinking bout—none of this is written by Theopompus, Ephorus, or Xenophon, nor is it likely that, returning after such an exile and so many misfortunes, he would have indulged the Athenians in such extravagance. Rather, he put in still fearful, and once he had come to shore, he did not disembark from the trireme until, standing on the deck, he had seen his cousin Euryptolemus present, along with a good many other friends and relatives, waiting to receive him and calling out to him.

When he disembarked, the crowds meeting him seemed not even to see the other generals, but ran together toward him, shouting, embracing him, escorting him, and crowning him as they approached; those who could not get near watched from a distance, and the older men pointed him out to the young. Much weeping mingled with the city's rejoicing, and there came a memory of past misfortunes set against the present good fortune, as people reckoned that they would never have failed in Sicily

nor lost any of the other things they had hoped for, had they not then let Alcibiades go when their affairs and that power of his were what they were—if now, taking hold of the city when it had nearly been driven from the sea altogether, when it barely held the outlying land, and when it was torn by faction against itself, he had raised it up from such wretched and humble remnants, and had not only restored its mastery of the sea but was showing it victorious over the enemy on land everywhere as well.

The decree for his recall had already been ratified earlier, proposed by Critias son of Callaeschrus, as he himself records in his elegies, reminding Alcibiades of the favor in these lines: 'It was I who proposed the motion that brought you home; I spoke it before the whole assembly, and by writing the decree I did this deed myself. The seal of my own tongue is set upon these words.' [Critias; Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci, ii (4), pp. 279 ff.]

Then, when the people had assembled in the Assembly, Alcibiades came forward, wept and lamented his own sufferings, made only slight and moderate accusations against the people, laid the whole blame upon some evil fortune of his own and a jealous spirit, and spoke at length, encouraging and rousing their hopes against the enemy; he was crowned with golden crowns and was elected general with full powers over both land and sea at once.

They also voted to restore his property to him, and had the Eumolpidae and the Heralds revoke the curses they had pronounced against him at the people's order. When the others performed the rite of revocation, Theodorus the hierophant said, 'For my part I laid no curse of harm on him, provided he commits no wrong against the city.'

Yet, with Alcibiades flourishing so brilliantly, some were nonetheless troubled by the timing of his return. For on the very day he sailed in, the Plynteria were being celebrated in honor of the goddess. The Praxiergidae perform these secret rites on the twenty-fifth of Thargelion, taking down the goddess's adornments and covering her image. For this reason the Athenians regard this day as one of the most inauspicious and unfit for business.

It seemed, then, that the goddess did not receive Alcibiades kindly or graciously, but veiled herself and drove him away. Nevertheless, with everything turning out according to Alcibiades' wishes, and while a hundred triremes were being manned with which he was to sail out again, a not ignoble ambition seized him and held him back until the Mysteries.

Ever since Decelea had been fortified against them and the enemy, stationed there, controlled the routes to Eleusis, the procession sent by sea had lost all its splendor, and the sacrifices, dances, and many of the sacred rites customarily performed along the road when they escort Iacchus out had, of necessity, been omitted.

It seemed to Alcibiades a fine thing, both for piety toward the gods and for reputation among men, to restore to the sacred rites their ancestral form, by escorting the procession on foot and guarding it as it passed by the enemy: for either Agis, keeping perfectly still, would be humbled and diminished, or he would have to fight a sacred and god-beloved battle over the holiest and greatest things in sight of his own country, and Alcibiades would have all the citizens as witnesses of his courage.

When he had resolved on this and announced it beforehand to the Eumolpidae and the Heralds, he stationed lookouts on the heights and sent some scouts ahead at daybreak; then, taking with him the priests, initiates, and mystagogues, and surrounding them with his troops, he led them in good order and in silence, presenting that campaign as a solemn and god-befitting spectacle, called by those free of envy toward him a hierophancy and a leading of the mysteries.

Since none of the enemy dared to attack, he brought the procession back safely into the city, and was himself lifted up in spirit, and lifted up the army too, as being unbeatable and unconquered under his generalship; and he won over the common people and the poor so completely that they conceived a wondrous longing to be ruled by him as a tyrant, and some of them even said so openly and came to him urging that, rising above envy, he should sweep away the decrees and laws and idle talk that were destroying the city, and act and manage affairs as he saw fit, without fear of the informers.

What intention he himself actually held concerning tyranny is unclear; but the most powerful of the citizens, growing afraid, were eager to have him sail out as quickly as possible, voting him everything else he wanted, including the fellow commanders of his choice. Sailing out with a hundred ships and attacking Andros, he defeated in battle both the Andrians and whatever Lacedaemonians were present there, but he did not take the city — and this became the first of the new charges his enemies brought against him. It seems that,

if anyone ever was, Alcibiades was destroyed by his own reputation. For it was so great, so full of daring and shrewdness on account of what he had already accomplished, that any shortfall in him became suspect, as though he had simply not tried, and people disbelieved that he could fail — for surely, if he had really tried, nothing would have escaped him. They expected to hear that Chios too had been captured, and the rest of Ionia besides.

Hence they grew angry that everything was not accomplished quickly and at once, as they wished, whenever they learned of some delay, without taking into account his lack of funds — because of which, waging war against men who had the Great King as their paymaster, he was often forced to sail off and leave the camp in order to raise wages and provisions. And indeed it was on this very account that the last charge against him arose.

For when Lysander had been sent out by the Lacedaemonians to the admiralty, and was giving four obols instead of three to each sailor out of the money he had received from Cyrus, Alcibiades himself, already paying out grudgingly and unable even to manage the three obols, sailed off to collect money in Caria. The man he left behind in charge of the ships, Antiochus, was a good helmsman,

but in everything else foolish and vulgar. Though he had orders from Alcibiades not to fight a sea battle even if the enemy put out against him, he grew so insolent and contemptuous that, manning his own trireme and one other, he sailed out to Ephesus, and along the prows of the enemy ships he went past doing and shouting all manner of unrestrained and scurrilous things.

At first Lysander sailed out with only a handful of ships in pursuit of him; but once the Athenians arrived to assist, Lysander sailed forth with his whole fleet, defeated him, slew Antiochus in the fighting, seized numerous vessels along with their crews, and erected a trophy of victory. When Alcibiades learned of this he returned to Samos, sailed forth to sea with the whole of his fleet, and challenged Lysander to battle. But Lysander, satisfied with the victory already won, declined to sail out and meet him.

Among those in the camp who hated Alcibiades was Thrasybulus son of Thrason, his enemy, who sailed off to Athens to bring accusations against him. There he inflamed the people, telling the assembly that Alcibiades had wrecked their cause and thrown away their fleet through his own self-indulgence in office, handing the actual command over to men who were capable, among his drinking companions and the riffraff of the fleet, of holding the greatest sway with him,

so that he himself might sail about at leisure raising money without risk, and live licentiously in drunkenness, keeping company with courtesans from Abydos and Ionia, while the enemy lay at anchor close by. They also accused him over the construction of fortifications which he had built for himself at Bisanthe in Thrace, as a refuge — either because he was unable to live in his own country, or because he did not wish to.

The Athenians, persuaded by these charges, chose other generals, showing their anger and ill-will toward him. When Alcibiades learned of this and grew afraid, he withdrew from the camp altogether, and gathering mercenaries he waged a private war on his own against the kingless Thracians, and collected much money from those he captured, while at the same time providing the Greeks who lived nearby with safety from the barbarians.

But when the generals around Tydeus, Menander, and Adeimantus, who had gathered together at Aegospotami all the ships the Athenians then possessed, made a habit of sailing out at daybreak against Lysander, who lay at anchor off Lampsacus, offering him battle, and then turning back again and spending the whole day carelessly and in disorder, in their contempt for him,

Alcibiades, being nearby, did not overlook this or neglect it, but rode up to the generals on horseback and told them they were poorly anchored, in a place with no harbor and no city nearby, but were fetching their supplies from far off, from Sestos, and were allowing their fleet, whenever it came ashore, to wander wherever it pleased and scatter about, while an enemy fleet lay opposite them accustomed to doing everything in silence at the command of a single ruler.

Though Alcibiades said this and urged that the fleet be moved to Sestos, the generals paid no attention to him. Tydeus, indeed, insolently ordered him to withdraw, saying that it was not he but others who commanded now. Alcibiades, suspecting some treachery on their part, went away, and told those of his acquaintances from the camp who escorted him that, had the generals not treated him with such contempt, in a matter of a few days' time he would have compelled the Lacedaemonians to fight a sea battle against their will, or else abandon their ships.

To some this seemed mere boasting, but to others it seemed plausible, that by bringing up many Thracian javelin-throwers and horsemen from the land he might have attacked and thrown their camp into confusion. That he had, at any rate, correctly seen the Athenians' mistakes, the event soon bore witness. For when Lysander fell upon them suddenly and unexpectedly, only eight triremes escaped with Conon, while the rest, falling little short of two hundred, were led away as captives.

Of the men, Lysander took three thousand alive and slaughtered them. Shortly after, he took Athens as well, burned its ships, and tore down the long walls. Because of this, Alcibiades, now afraid of the Lacedaemonians as masters of both land and sea, withdrew to Bithynia, taking much money with him, carrying off still more, and leaving behind even more in the fortifications he had lived in.

In Bithynia again he lost no small part of his own property, being plundered by the Thracians there, and he resolved to go up to Artaxerxes, believing that he would prove to the king, on trial, no worse than Themistocles, and that his pretext would be even better — for he would not, like Themistocles, be acting against his own countrymen, but on behalf of his homeland against its enemies, and would ask for the king's power in aid; and thinking that Pharnabazus above all would provide him a safe and easy way up, he went to him in Phrygia, and spent his time there, both courting him and being honored by him.

The Athenians took it hard to be stripped of their empire; but when Lysander, after taking away their freedom as well, handed the city over to the Thirty Men, whom they had not employed with the good sense that might have saved them though they were still able to, once their affairs were already ruined, they came to understand, lamenting and going over their errors and their ignorance, of which they judged the greatest to be their second bout of anger against Alcibiades.

For he had been cast aside though he himself had done no wrong; rather, angry at a subordinate who had shamefully lost a few ships, they had themselves, more shamefully still, taken away from the city its most capable and most warlike general. Still, even so, from their present circumstances some faint hope arose that Athens' affairs were not utterly lost while Alcibiades still lived: for neither before had he been content to live in exile idly and quietly, nor now, if his own situation were sufficient for it, would he sit by and watch the Lacedaemonians committing outrages and the Thirty behaving with drunken violence.

It was not unreasonable for the many to dream such dreams, seeing that even the Thirty themselves took care to inquire closely and pay the greatest attention to whatever he was doing and planning. In the end Critias instructed Lysander that it was not safe for the Lacedaemonians to rule Greece so long as the Athenians lived under democracy; and that the Athenians,

even if they were very mild and well disposed toward oligarchy, would not be allowed by Alcibiades, so long as he lived, to remain quiet under the present state of things. Lysander, however, was not persuaded by this until a dispatch-staff came from the authorities at home, ordering him to put Alcibiades out of the way — whether because they too feared the man's sharpness and grand ambitions, or because they wished to gratify Agis.

When Lysander sent word to Pharnabazus ordering this to be done, Pharnabazus assigned the task to his brother Magaeus and his uncle Susamithres. Alcibiades happened at that time to be living in a certain village in Phrygia, having Timandra the courtesan with him, and he had a vision

in his sleep of this kind: he dreamed that he himself was wearing the clothing of the courtesan, while she, holding his head in her arms, was adorning his face as if it were a woman's, painting and applying white lead to it. Others say they saw the men around Magaeus cutting off his head in the dream, and his body burning. But they say this vision came not long before his death. Those who were sent against him did not dare to go inside, but surrounded the house on all sides and set it on fire.

Alcibiades, perceiving this, gathered up most of his clothing and bedding and threw it onto the fire, and wrapping his cloak around his left arm, and drawing his dagger with his right, he dashed out unharmed by the flames before his clothes caught fire, and, at the sight of him, scattered the barbarians; for not one of them stood his ground or ventured to close with him hand to hand, but standing off they hurled javelins and arrows at him.

When he had fallen in this way and the barbarians had gone off, Timandra took up his body, and wrapping and covering it with her own garments, gave it as splendid and honorable a burial as her circumstances allowed. They say a daughter of hers was born who was called Lais the Corinthian, though she was in fact from Hyccara, a small town in Sicily, and had been taken captive.

Some, while agreeing with the rest of this account of Alcibiades's death, say that the cause was not Pharnabazus, nor Lysander, nor the Lacedaemonians, but that Alcibiades himself had seduced a certain young woman of a prominent family and was keeping her with him, and that her brothers, unable to bear the outrage with any moderation, set fire by night to the house in which Alcibiades happened to be staying, and struck him down, as has been said, as he leapt out through the fire.

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