Alcibiades (450 BC-404 BC) a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general during the Peloponnesian War. Following the failure of the Sicilian Expedition in 413 BC, he fled to Sparta and became a Spartan military advisor, and he later defected to Persia after the war's end. He was assassinated on the orders of Lysander in 404 BC.
Biography[]
Alcibiades was born in Athens in 450 BC, the son of the prominent general Cleinias and the aristocrat Deinomache, a descendant of Ajax. Alcibiades was trained in rhetoric by Socrates, but he was noted for his unruly behavior; he was known to have a flamboyant attitude and an insatiable libido, and to have threesomes and foursomes with men and women alike. Socrates would save his life at the Battle of Potidaea in 432 BC, and Socrates again saved him at the Battle of Delium in 424 BC.
Alcibiades first rose to prominence when he began advocating aggressive Athenian action after the Peace of Nicias in 421 BC, as he was offended that the Spartans had chosen to negotiate through Nicias and not him due to his youth. Alcibiades denounced Nicias for failing to ensure that the Spartans granted the Athenians full and independent negotiating powers, but he later allied with Nicias to resist Hyperbolos' attempts to ostracize them, inducing the people to exile Hyperbolos instead. He supported the massacre of the men of Melos and the enslavement of the women and children in 416-415 BC, and he had a child by one of the enslaved women.
In 415 BC, he spoke out in support of sending an expedition to assist the Sicilian city of Segesta against Selinus, believing that a campaign would bring more riches to Athens and expand the Delian League, just as the Greco-Persian Wars had. Nicias was given command of the expedition, angering Alcibiades. Alcibiades' political enemies brought up charges of sacrilege against him after a statue of a god was found mutilated, forcing Alcibiades to flee to Sparta. He served as a strategic advisor, proposing or supervising several major campaigns against Athens. In Sparta, too, however, Alcibiades made powerful enemies, and he was forced to defect to Persia. There, he served as an advisor to the satrap Tissaphernes until his Athenian political allies brought about his recall. He then served as an Athenian strategos for several years, and he supported an oligarchic coup in 411 BC. Alcibiades was victorious against the Spartans at the Battle of Abydos that same year, and, a year later, he captured Cyzicus and several other regional cities after the Battle of Cyzicus. In 409 BC, he besieged Chalcedon and forced them to come to an agreement with the Athenians, and he joined in the 408 BC siege of Byzantium.
After these successes, he returned to Athens in the spring of 407 BC, and he was greeted with a hero's welcome at Piraeus. All criminal proceedings against him were cancelled and the charges of blasphemy were withdrawn, and, in 406 BC, he set out from Athens with 1,500 hoplites and 100 ships, failing to take Andros before carrying on to Samos. His defeat at the Battle of Notium led to his removal from command at the behest of his enemies, and he was exiled a second time.
Death[]
Alcibiades' death
After the end of the Peloponnesian War at the Battle of Aegospotami, Alcibiades crossed the Hellespont and took refuge in Phrygia, where he sought to secure the aid of the Achaemenid king Artaxerxes II of Persia against Sparta. However, Satrap Pharnabazus II - at the behest of the Spartan general Lysander - had his soldiers assassinate Alcibiades. As he was about to set out for the Persian court, Alcibiades found that his residence was surrounded and set on fire. Alcibiades was forced to flee with a dagger in hand, and he was killed by a shower of arrows.
