Alcibiades
Alcibiades (450 – 404 BC) was a brilliant and unscrupulous Athenian politician and general, and a hero who repaid his country back in spades after it screwed him over. He was perhaps the most dynamic, adventurous, fascinating, and catastrophic Athenian leader, ever. Born into a wealthy family, his father was killed when Alcibiades was a toddler. Athenian leader Pericles became his guardian, but was too busy with his duties as a statesman to give the boy proper guidance. Alcibiades thus grew into a dissipated man, whose gifts of brilliance and charm were counterbalanced by self centeredness, irresponsibility, extravagance, and debauchery.
When the Peloponnesian War against Sparta began, Alcibiades quickly gained a reputation for courage and military talent in battle, and became an Athenian hero. By 420, he had become an Athenian general, and strongly opposed reconciliation with Sparta. In 415, he convinced Athens to send a massive expedition to invade Sicily and conquer Syracuse.
On the eve of sailing, however, statues of the god Hermes throughout Athens were desecrated. Suspicion fell upon Alcibiades, whose dissolute clique had a reputation for drunken vandalism and impiety. He demanded an immediate trial, but his enemies allowed the expedition, whose ranks were disproportionately comprised of Alcibiades’ supporters, to sail on with the charges still hanging over him. Then, after the city had been emptied of Alcibiades’ partisans, he was summoned back to Athens, to be tried before an Assembly in which his enemies were now a majority.
Rather than obey the summons, Alcibiades fled and defected to Sparta. He advised the Spartans to adopt a strategy which annihilated Athens’ Sicilian expedition – the force he had organized, convinced Athens to send to Sicily, and whose men he once led. That was the most catastrophic and bloodiest defeat suffered by Athens during the war. Of the tens of thousands of Athenians who took part, only a handful ever saw Athens again: those not killed in the fighting were enslaved, then sent to Sicilian quarries were they were worked to death.
Alcibiades also convinced the Spartans to abandon their strategy of marching into Athens’ home region of Attica each campaigning season, burning and looting, then retreating and repeating the cycle the following year. Instead, he had the Spartans establish a permanent fortified base in Attica, which allowed them to exert direct pressure on Athens year round. Then, Alcibiades went to Ionia, where he stirred Athens’ allies and subject cities into revolt.
Despite the valuable services he rendered Sparta, Alcibiades wore out his welcome after he was caught in bed with the wife of the Spartan king. So he fled again, this time to the Persians. He convinced them to adopt a strategy that would prolong the war, keeping the Athenians and Spartans too busy fighting each other to challenge Persia’s interests.
Back in Athens, which was reeling from the string of military catastrophes that Alcibiades had helped inflict on his city, political turmoil led to an oligarchic coup. However, the Athenian fleet remained pro democracy, and in the chaos, Alcibiades persuaded the fleet to take him back. From 411 to 408 BC, Alcibiades led the Athenian fleet in a dramatic recovery, winning stunning victories that turned the war around. Suddenly, it was Sparta that was reeling and on the verge of collapse. He returned to Athens in 407 BC, where he received a rapturous welcome. His treasons forgiven and temporarily forgotten, Alcibiades was given supreme command in conducting the war.
However, the Athenians turned on Alcibiades a few months later, after a minor naval defeat when he was absent from the fleet. He fled again, and having burned bridges with all sides, holed up in a fortified castle in Thrace, before fleeing even further away to Phrygia. However, a Spartan delegation traveled to Phrygia, and convinced its Persian governor to have Alcibiades murdered in 404 BC.
