Alcibiades

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. IV. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1916.

For no worthless or disreputable fellow had ever before fallen under this condemnation of ostracism. As Plato, the comic poet, has somewhere said, in speaking of Hyperbolus,

  1. And yet he suffered worthy fate for men of old;
  2. A fate unworthy though of him and of his brands.
  3. For such as he the ostrakon was ne’er devised.
However, the facts which have been ascertained about this case have been stated more at length elsewhere.[*](Cf. Plut. Nic. 11 )

Alcibiades was sore distressed to see Nicias no less admired by his enemies than honored by his fellow-citizens. For although Alcibiades was resident consul for the Lacedaemonians at Athens, and had ministered to their men who had been taken prisoners at Pylos,[*](In 425 B.C. Cf. Plut. Nic. 7-8 )

still, they felt that it was chiefly due to Nicias that they had obtained peace and the final surrender of those men, and so they lavished their regard upon him. And Hellenes everywhere said that it was Pericles who had plunged them into war, but Nicias who had delivered them out of it, and most men called the peace the Peace of Nicias. [*](Ratified in 421 B.C. Cf. Plut. Nic. 9 ) Alcibiades was therefore distressed beyond measure, and in his envy planned a violation of the solemn treaty.