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Alcibiades was a brilliant but rather unprincipled Athenian politician and military commander whose selfish political schemings in several ways caused deep political divisions in Athens which were the main causes of Athens defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War.
Born into a wealthy Athenian family in 450 BC, Alcibiades was very young when his father, a commander in the Athenian army, was killed. As he matured, Alcibiades became strikingly handsome and developed a keen mind and good wit, but also became extravagant, irresponsible, and self-centered as well. This might have been caused because his guardian, Pericles, who happened to have been a distant relation of his, was far too preoccupied with his political leadership to provide the necessary guidance that the young boy needed. He however, was attracted to the teaching of Socrates, who in turn also liked his beauty and intellectual promise. But his immense ambitions soon enticed him away from the philosophical life and in later years Alcibiades would break ranks with Socrates preferring the political games that Socrates abhorred and abandoning the intellectual integrity that Socrates demanded.
Alcibiades then became well known for his courage on the battlefield as well as his personal extravagance. He was a good orator and he became a recognized speaker in the assembly. And as Athens moved toward peace, he had hoped he would be the one to negotiate with the Spartans and hence get the credit for bringing peace to Athens because of the ties that had once existed between his family and Sparta. And according to Thucydides, it was the fact that the Spartans instead chose to negotiate through established political leaders that caused Alcibiades subsequent choice of actions and policies.
When he newly became General in 40, he was strongly antagonistic of the aristocratic leader, Nicias, who had negotiated peace, and steered Athens into an anti-Spartan alliance with Argos, Elis, and Mantineia, three city-states of the Peloponnese. This alliance was defeated by Sparta at the Battle of Mantineia (418). Alcibiades, in a bid to escape banishment ended up joining forces with Nicias against Hyperbolus.
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In 416 Alcibiades entered a number of chariots in the Games at Olympia and came up tops, this earned him back his reputation and popularity once more. It is this sort of flamboyances apart from his good looks, charm and sharp mind that made him very much liked at this time. As his popularity soared, this then made it easier for him, in 415, to use his persuasion skills on the Athenians to send a major military expedition to Sicily against Syracuse. He was then appointed one of the commanders. But, shortly before the expedition was due to sail, the hermae and the Eleusinian Mysteries were found to have been mutilated and profaned. In the ensuing panic Alcibiades was accused of being the originator of such sacrilege. Even though he protested his innocence and demanded an immediate inquiry, his enemies, led by Androcles made sure that he sailed with the charge still hanging over him rather than have him tried immediately. Shortly after reaching Sicily, he was recalled. On his journey back home, upon learning that he had been sentenced in absentia to death escaped to Sparta. There he advised the Spartans to send a general to help the Syracuse and also to help fortify Decelea in Attica, which would cause two serious blows to Athens.
In 41, Alcibiades helped stir up revolt among Athenian allies in Ionia, on the west coast of Asia Minor but Sparta however now turned against him because he had seduced the wife of the Spartan king Agis II. He then moved to Sardis. When some Athenian officers in the fleet began to plan an oligarchic coup, he held out hopes that if the democracy was overthrown he could secure financial support from Persia. In this he failed and, discarded by the oligarchs who had seized power, he was however recalled by the Athenian fleet, which remained loyal to the democracy and needed his abilities. From 411 to 408, he proved his abilities by helping Athens to a spectacular recovery, defeating the Spartan fleet in the Hellespont at Abydos (411) and Cyzicus (410) and in the process regaining control over the vital grain route from the Black Sea. These successes encouraged him to return in 407 to Athens, where he was welcomed with enthusiasm and given supreme control of the conduct of the war. In a bold gesture very typical of him, he led the procession to the Eleusinian festival by road despite the great danger posed by the Spartan force at Decelea. But, in that same year, after a minor naval defeat in his absence, his political enemies incited the people to reject him, and he was forced to retire to a castle in Thrace. He remained, however, a disturbing influence on Athenian politics and destroyed any hopes of a political consensus.
When the Athenians at Aegospotami facing the Spartans in the Hellespont grew increasingly careless, he warned them of their danger. But he was mostly ignored, and, when the Athenians lost their whole fleet in a surprise attack by the Spartans, Alcibiades discovered he was no longer safe in his Thracian castle. He took refuge in Phrygia with the Persian governor, who was induced by the Spartans to have him killed.
Alcibiades was probably one of the most gifted Athenian of his generation, he possessed great charm and brilliant political and military abilities but was unscrupulous. His advice, whether to Athens or Sparta, was usually dictated by selfish motives, and the Athenians could never trust him enough to take full advantage of his talents.
Alcibiades, despite all his other failings was a great military leader. And Thucydides suggests this when he writes that the Athenians brought the city to ruin through their dismissal of Alcibiades and their entrusting of the city to other hands. Thucydides also gives Alcibiades credit when he writes on the failed Sicilian expedition. He writes that the expedition failed "not so much through a miscalculation of power of those who were sent, as through a fault in the senders in not taking the best measures afterwards to assist those who had gone out, but instead choosing to occupy themselves with private cabals for the leadership of the commons by which they not only paralyzed operations on the field, but also introduced civil discord at home."
Thucydides also enthuses that even though the concerns of state should always come before personal concerns, that personal concerns were not totally incompatible with the interests of the state, writing, for example, that personal considerations inevitably guide decision making, but he also suggests that a good general should not allow naked ambition to blind him in his recommendation of state policy as it did Alcibiades.
Thucydides on the whole considers that his strength of performance as a general outweigh his faults. He argued that even though Alcibiades personal behavior was detrimental to his career, the resourcefulness and incisiveness Alcibiades displayed in his various maneuvers to save his life and achieve his personal aims served him well on the battlefield. So also was the boldness and daring which lead him to promote bad policy was channeled toward positive end in his individual operations. In other words, what is in one context a vice, is an asset in another.
It could be suggested that his constant changing of allegiances and the lack of trust in him by most of his people were some of the reasons why Athens never fully benefited from his military skills and leadership, which might just have cost them the war.
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