Alcibiades

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.

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.

To begin with, he saw that the Argives hated and feared the Spartans and sought to be rid of them. So he secretly held out hopes to them of an alliance with Athens, and encouraged them, by conferences with the chief men of their popular party, not to fear nor yield to the Lacedaemonians, but to look to Athens and await her action, since she was now all but repentant, and desirous of abandoning the peace which she had made with Sparta.

And again, when the Lacedaemonians made a separate alliance with the Boeotians, and delivered up Panactum to the Athenians not intact, as they were bound to do by the treaty, but dismantled, he took advantage of the Athenians’ wrath at this to embitter them yet more. He raised a tumult in the assembly against Nicias, and slandered him with accusations all too plausible.