Alcibiades

and since they considered themselves injured, the Argives and their allies happening to be present, (having been introduced by Alcibiades,) they made a treaty and alliance with them on the following terms:

but on Alcibiades' exclaiming against the Lacedaemonians much more vehemently than before, they both listened to him, and were ready straightway to bring forward the Argives and those who were with them, and take them into alliance.

He gained the confidence of the Lacedaemonians by giving them a solemn assurance, that if they would not acknowledge in the assembly that they had come with full powers, he would restore Pylus to them, (for lie would himself persuade the Athenians to the measure, as he now opposed it,) and would settle all other points of difference.

I beheld also the fair Alcibiades, the son of Cleinias — I know not where, except I beheld in a fine part of Greece — having the inscription of Chalcopogon, and another with his hands cut off, which was said to be of the art of Polycles;

Nor, then, did he make Gorgias or Polus or Thrasymachus or Prodicus or Meno or Euthyphro or Anytus or Alcibiades or Laches speak in vain, when he might have removed the names;

To Croesus she gives gold, to Candaules a wife, to Peleus a sword, to Nestor a shield, to Pterelaus a golden lock of hair, to Nisus a purple lock, to Alcibiades beauty, to Socrates wisdom, to Aristides justice, to the Lacedaemonians the land, to the Athenians the sea.

Pamphila in the seventh book of her Commentaries tells how Alcibiades once offered him a large site on which to build a house;

But he resigned it to Alcibiades, for whom he cherished the tenderest affection, according to Aristippus in the fourth book of his treatise On the Luxury of the Ancients.

and according to some he scorned the beauty of Alcibiades.

Or, if you like, there is Cleinias, the younger brother of Alcibiades here, whom this same Pericles, acting as his guardian, and fearing lie might be corrupted, I suppose, by Alcibiades, carried off from his brother and placed in Ariphron’s family to be educated:

Meanwhile Callias and Alcibiades came, bringing with them Prodicus, whom they had induced to rise from his couch, and Prodicus’ circle also.

Do you mean to say you do not approve of Homer, who said that youth has highest grace in him whose beard is appearing, as now in the case of Alcibiades?

Then, Apollodorus, he said, do you know, I have just been looking for you, as I want to hear all about the banquet that brought together Agathon and Socrates and Alcibiades and the rest of that party, and what were the speeches they delivered upon love.

A few moments after, they heard the voice of Alcibiades in the forecourt, very drunken and bawling loud, to know where Agathon was, and bidding them bring him to Agathon.

On the honor of a gentleman, said Alcibiades, it is no use your protesting, for I could not praise anyone else in your presence.

He was afterwards slain at Coroneia, fighting the Boeotians, and Alcibiades was therefore reared as the ward of Pericles and Ariphron, the sons of Xanthippus, his near kinsmen.

whereas, in the case of Alcibiades, we even know that his nurse, who was a Spartan woman, was called Amycla, and his tutor Zopyrus.

As regards the beauty of Alcibiades, it is perhaps unnecessary to say aught, except that it flowered out with each successive season of his bodily growth, and made him, alike in boyhood, youth and manhood, lovely and pleasant.

and after treating a man with such contempt, later, when it suits his whim, he turns about, and as though he were accusing an Alcibiades or a Themistocles, the most famous men among all the Greeks, he proceeds to charge that same man with having destroyed the cities in Phocis, with having lost you the Thracian coast, with having expelled from his kingdom Cersobleptes, a friend and ally of the city.

My first experience in the field was in what is called division service, when I was with the other men of my age and the mercenary troops of Alcibiades, who convoyed the provision train to Phleius.

His mother’s father, Megacles, and his father’s father, Alcibiades, were both ostracized twice;

It is characteristic of Alcibiades to pay no attention to laws or oaths himself, and to try to teach you to disregard them as well, and while he is ruthless in bringing about the banishment and the death of others, to have recourse to heartrending tears and appeals for mercy on his own account.

It makes me angry to think that while you yourselves cannot place even malefactors under arrest without risk, because it is enacted that anyone who fails to gain one-fifth of the votes shall be liable to a fine of a thousand drachmae, Alcibiades, who imprisoned a man for so long and forced him to paint, went unpunished—nay, increased thereby the awe and the fear in which he is held.

According to the wife of Alcmaeonides—she had previously been married to Damon and was named Agariste—according, as I say, to Alcmaeonides’ wife, Alcibiades, Axiochus, and Adeimantus celebrated Mysteries in Charmides’ house, next to the Olympieum.

The Assembly had met to give audience to Nicias, Lamachus, and Alcibiades, the generals about to leave with the Sicilian expedition—in fact, Lamachus’ flag-ship was already lying offshore—when suddenly Pythonicus rose before the people and cried:

Alcibiades denied the charge at great length;

And when Phryne the Thespian courtesan was in her bloom, all the painters reproduced the images of Aphrodite to the beauty of Phryne, just as again the stone-cutters at Athens likened the Hermae to Alcibiades.

Perhaps also, Socrates, you are not aware that you have only just anticipated me.

For I am sure that my natural powers alone will give me an easy victory over them.

For from moment to moment I change my view under your questioning.

I say this because I notice that you and I are at this moment in much the same condition, since the two of us are enamored each of two things—I of Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, and philosophy, and you of two, the Athenian Demus, and the son of Pyrilampes.

you are unable to resist the counsels and statements of your darling, so that if anyone showed surprise at the strangeness of the things you are constantly saying under that influence, you would probably tell him, if you chose to speak the truth, that unless somebody makes your favorite stop speaking thus, you, will never stop speaking thus either.

Accordingly, when the people were about to exercise the ostracism, and were clearly going to vote against one or the other of these two men, they came to terms with one another, united their opposing factions, and effected the ostracism of Hyperbolus.

—all in a bill which was brought in by Alcibiades.

THE author of the encomium upon Alcibiades for his victory in the chariot-race at Olympia, whether he was Euripides, as the prevailing report has it, or some other, says, Sosius, that the first requisite to a man’s happiness is birth in a famous city;

It was at this time, too, as Demetrius the Magnesian says, that he lifted his hands towards heaven and blessed himself for that day, since he was coming home from exile more honourably than Alcibiades did;

However, although he had thus injured and weakened his enemies, Lysander shrank from a naval battle, through fear of Alcibiades, who was energetic, had a greater number of ships, and in all his battles by land and sea up to that time had come off victorious.

Thereupon the people of Athens, flying into a passion, deposed Alcibiades from his command, and finding himself slighted and abused by the soldiers at Samos, he left the camp and sailed off to the Chersonese.

But Alcibiades, returning from exile and taking the command, wrought a great change, and made his countrymen again a match for their enemies by sea.

It was Nicias, then, who, when an embassy came from Egesta and Leontini seeking to persuade the Athenians to undertake an expedition against Sicily, opposed the measure, only to be defeated by the ambitious purposes of Alcibiades.

At last the feud between Nicias and Alcibiades became so intense that recourse was had to the process of ostracism.

But Alcibiades had other diviners in his private service, and from sundry oracles reputed ancient he cited one saying that great fame would be won by the Athenians in Sicily.

Many also were possessed already with that inordinate and inauspicious passion for Sicily which was afterwards kindled into flame by such orators as Alcibiades.

He was lying dejectedly at home because of his sorrow, but was persuaded by Alcibiades and his other friends to resume his public life.

Witness he who topped them all, Alcibiades, who, when he dwelt at Athens, was as arch and witty as any Athenian of them all, kept his stable of horses, played the good fellow, and was universally obliging;

Thus Socrates humbled Alcibiades, forced him into unfeigned tears, and turned his heart, when he argued the case with him.

and as for Alcibiades, though he was (as must be confessed) as sagacious and happy in his thoughts as any man whatever, yet, for want of a little assurance in speaking a thing, he very often miserably lost himself in his pleadings;

For it is not enough (as Alcibiades was wont to say) that the heart should be turned upside down by hearing the discourses of a philosopher, and that the tears should gush from the eyes;

And after he had spoken in his own defence before the Senate and the Assembly, saying that he had not committed sacrilege and that he had been unjustly treated, and after more of the same sort had been said, with no one speaking in opposition because the Assembly would not have tolerated it, he was proclaimed general-in-chief with absolute authority, the people thinking that he was the man to reco …

And now Alcibiades sailed from Samos with his twenty ships and his money to Paros, and from there directed his course straight to Gytheium, in order to take a look at the thirty triremes which he heard the Lacedaemonians were making ready there and to see how his city felt toward him, with reference to his homecoming.

So Alcibiades, who was in disfavour with the army as well, took a trireme and sailed away to his castle in the Chersonese.

EURIPIDES I hate a citizen who is by nature slow to help his country and swift to harm it greatly, resourceful for himself but helpless for the city.

First, then, what opinion does each of you hold about Alcibiades?

DIONYSUS What?

SOSIAS Then I dreamed Theorus was sitting near her on the ground, with the head of a raven.

XANTHIAS That's the right way for Alcibiades to lisp it.

A particular fact is what Alcibiades did or what was done to him.

Highly gifted families often degenerate into maniacs, as, for example, the descendants of Alcibiades and the elder Dionysius;