Alcibiades

and that the provisions already in the city were being consumed by Peloponnesians and Boeotians, while the Byzantians were starving, together with their wives and children. He had, therefore, not betrayed the city to its enemies, but set it free from war and its horrors, therein imitating the noblest Lacedaemonians, in whose eyes the one unqualifiedly honorable and righteous thing is their country’s good. The Lacedaemonians, on hearing this, were moved with sincere respect, and acquitted the men.

But Alcibiades, yearning at last to see his home, and still more desirous of being seen by his fellow citizens, now that he had conquered their enemies so many times, set sail.[*](From Samos, in the spring of 408 B.C.) His Attic triremes were adorned all round with many shields and spoils of war; many that he had captured in battle were towed along in his wake; and still more numerous were the figure-heads he carried of triremes which had been overwhelmed and destroyed by him. There were not less than two hundred of these all together.

Duris the Samian, who claims that he was a descendant of Alcibiades, gives some additional details. He says that the oarsmen of Alcibiades rowed to the music of a flute blown by Chrysogonus the Pythian victor; that they kept time to a rhythmic call from the lips of Callipides the tragic actor; that both these artists were arrayed in the long tunics, flowing robes, and other adornment of their profession; and that the commander’s ship put into harbors with a sail of purple hue, as though, after a drinking bout, he were off on a revel.