IV. ALCIBIADES

Three factors turned this pledge of a half century of friendship into a brief truce of six years: the diplomatic corruption of the peace into “war by other means”; the rise of Alcibiades as the leader of a faction that favored renewed hostilities; and the attempt of Athens to conquer the Dorian colonies in Sicily. Sparta’s allies refused to sign the agreement; they fell away from Sparta as now a weakened state, and transferred their alliance to Athens. Alcibiades, while keeping Athens formally at peace, maneuvered them into a war with Sparta, and united them in battle against her at Mantinea (418). Sparta won, and Greece relapsed into an angry truce.

Meanwhile Athens sent a fleet to the Dorian isle of Melos to demand its entrance as a subject state into the Athenian Empire (416). According to Thucydides, who here probably sinks the historian into the sophistical philosopher or the revengeful exile, the Athenian envoys gave no otherreason for their action than that might is right. “Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it; we found it existing before, and shall leave it to exist forever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do.”¹⁶ The Melians refused to yield, and announced that they would put their trust in the gods. Later, as irresistible reinforcements came to the Athenian fleet, they surrendered at the discretion of the conquerors. The Athenians put to death all adult males who fell into their hands, sold the women and children as slaves, and gave the island to five hundred Athenian colonists. Athens rejoiced in the conquest, and prepared to illustrate in a living tragedy the theme of her dramatists, that a vengeful nemesis pursues all insolent success.

Alcibiades was one of those who, in the Assembly, defended the resolution condemning the male population of Melos to death.¹⁷ His support for any motion usually sufficed to carry it, for he was now the most famous man in Athens, admired for his eloquence, his good looks, his versatile genius, even his faults and crimes. His father, the rich Cleinias, had been killed at the battle of Coronea; his mother, an Alcmaeonid and near relative of Pericles, had persuaded the statesman to bring up Alcibiades in his home. The boy was troublesome, but intelligent and brave; at twenty he fought beside Socrates at Potidaea, and at twenty-six at Delium (424). The philosopher seems to have felt a warm attachment for the youth, and called him to virtue, says Plutarch, with words that “so overcame Alcibiades as to draw tears from his eyes, and disturb his very soul. Yet sometimes he would abandon himself to flatterers, when they proposed to him varieties of pleasure, and would desert Socrates, who would then pursue him as if he had been a fugitive slave.”¹⁸

The wit and pranks of the young man became the shocked and fascinated gossip of Athens. When Pericles reproved his immodest dogmatism by saying that he too had talked cleverly in his youth, Alcibiades answered, “Pity I couldn’t have known you when your brain was at its best.”¹⁹Purely to meet the challenge of his fellow roisterers, he publicly struck in the face one of Athens’ richest and most powerful men, Hipponicus. The next morning he entered the house of the frightened magnate, bared his body, and begged Hipponicus to scourge him in punishment. The old man was so overwhelmed that he gave the youth his daughter Hipparete in marriage, with a dowry of ten talents; Alcibiades persuaded him to double it, and spent most of it on himself. He lived on a scale of luxury never known in Athens before. He filled his home with costly furniture, and engaged artists to paint pictures on the walls. He kept a stud of racing horses, and often won the chariot race at Olympia; once his entries took the first, second, and fourth prizes in one contest, whereupon he feasted the whole Assembly.²⁰ He fitted out triremes, and paid the expenses of choruses; and when the state called for war contributors his donations topped all the rest. Free from any inhibition of conscience, convention, or fear, he frolicked through youth and early manhood with such animal spirits that all Athens seemed to enjoy his happiness. He lisped a little, but with a charm that made all fashionable young men lisp; he wore a new cut of shoe, and soon all the gilded youth of the city were wearing “Alcibiades shoes.” He violated a hundred laws and injured a hundred men, but no one dared bring him before a court. His popularity with the hetairai was so general that he wore on his golden shield an Eros with a thunderbolt, as if to announce his victories in love.²¹ His wife, after bearing his infidelities with patience, returned to her father’s house, and prepared to sue for divorce; but when she appeared before the archon Alcibiades caught her up in his arms and carried her home through the market place, no one venturing to oppose him. Thereafter she gave him full freedom, and contented herself with the crumbs of his love; but her early death suggests a heart broken by his inconstancy.

Entering politics after the death of Pericles, he found only one rival—the rich and pious Nicias. But Nicias favored the aristocracy, and peace; therefore Alcibiades set himself to favor the commercial classes, and preached an imperialism that touched Athenian pride; the Peace of Nicias was sufficiently discredited in his eyes by bearing his rival’s name. In 420 he was elected one of the ten generals, and began those ambitious schemes that led Athens back into war. When the Assembly acclaimed him Timon the misanthrope rejoiced, predicting great calamities.²²