They were afraid of an outbreak, or even of a mutiny in the army in Sicily, which Alkibiades could have raised with the greatest ease, if he had wished to do so. Indeed, the soldiers became disheartened when he left them, and looked forward to long delays and periods of dull inaction under Nikias's command, now that he who used to spur matters on was gone. Lamachus, indeed, was a brave and skilful soldier, but his poverty prevented his opinions from carrying their due weight.
XXII. Alkibiades the moment he sailed away lost Messina for the Athenians. There was a party in that city ready to deliver it up, which he knew well, and by disclosing their intentions to the Syracusan party he effectually ruined the plot. At Thurii he landed, and concealed himself so that he could not be found. When one of his friends said to him, "Alkibiades, do you not trust your native country?" He answered, "Yes, in other matters; but when my life is at stake I would not trust my own mother, for fear that she might mistake a black bean for a white one." Afterwards hearing that the Athenians had condemned him to death, he said, "I will show them that I am still alive."
The indictment against him is framed thus:
"Thessalus, the son of Kimon, of the township of Lakia, accuses Alkibiades, the son of Kleinias, of the township of the Skambonidae, of sacrilege against the two goddesses, Demeter and Kora, by parodying the sacred mysteries and giving a representation of them in his own house, wearing himself such a robe as the Hierophant does when he shows the holy things, and calling himself the Hierophant, Poulytion, the Torch-bearer, Theodorus, of the township of Phegaea, the Herald, and addressing the rest of the company as Mysts and Epopts (Initiates and Novices), contrary to the rules and ceremonies established by the Eumolpidae, and Kerykes, and the priests of Eleusis." As he did not appear, they condemned him, forfeited his goods, and even caused all the priests and priestesses to curse him publicly. It is said that Theano, the daughter of Menon, the priestess of the temple of Agraulos, was the only one who refused to carry out this decree, alleging that it was to pray and not to curse that she had become a priestess.
XXIII. While these terrible decrees and sentences were being passed against Alkibiades, he was living at Argos; for as soon as he left Thurii, he fled to the Peloponnesus, where, terrified at the violence of his enemies, he determined to abandon his country, and sent to Sparta demanding a safe asylum, on the strength of a promise that he would do the Spartans more good than he had in time past done them harm. The Spartans agreed to his request, and invited him to come. On his arrival, he at once effected one important matter, by stirring up the dilatory Spartans to send Gylippus at once to Syracuse with reinforcements for that city, to destroy the Athenian army in Sicily. Next, he brought them to declare war against the Athenians themselves; while his third and most terrible blow to Athens was his causing the Lacedaemonians to seize and fortify Dekeleia, which did more to ruin Athens than any other measure throughout the war. With his great public reputation, Alkibiades was no less popular in private life, and he deluded the people by pretending to adopt the Laconian habits. When they saw him closely shaved, bathing in cold water, eating dry bread and black broth, they wondered, and began to doubt whether this man ever had kept a professed cook, used perfumes, or endured to wear a Milesian mantle. For Alkibiades, among his other extraordinary qualities, had this especial art of captivating men by assimilating his own manners and habits to theirs, being able to change, more quickly than the chameleon, from one mode of life to another. The chameleon, indeed, cannot turn itself white; but Alkibiades never found anything, good or bad, which he could not imitate to the life. Thus at Sparta he was fond of exercise, frugal and severe; in Ionia, luxurious, frivolous, and lazy; in Thrace, he drank deep; in Thessaly he proved himself a good horseman; while, when he was consorting with the satrap Tissaphernes, he outdid even the Persian splendour and pomp. It was not his real character that he so often and so easily changed, but as he knew that if he appeared in his true colours, he would be universally disliked, he concealed his real self under an apparent adoption of the ways and fashions of whatever place he was in. In Lacedaemon you would say, looking at his appearance,
"'Tis not Achilles' son, 'tis he himself."
He was just such a man as Lykurgus himself would have trained; but if you examined his habits and actions more closely, you would say:
"'Tis the same woman still."
For while King Agis was away in the wars, Alkibiades seduced his wife Timaea, so that she became pregnant by him, and did not even deny the fact. When her child was born it was called Leotychides in public, but in her own house she whispered to her friends and attendants that his name was Alkibiades, so greatly was she enamoured of him. He himself used to say in jest that he had not acted thus out of wanton passion, but in order that his race might one day rule in Lacedaemon. King Agis heard of all this from many informants, but was most convinced of its truth by a computation of the time before the birth of the child. Terrified at an earthquake, he had once quitted his wife's chamber, and for ten months afterwards had never conversed with her. As it was at the end of this period that Leotychides was born, he declared that the child was not his; and for this reason he never succeeded to the throne.
XXIV. After the Athenian disaster in Sicily, ambassadors came to Sparta from Chios, Lesbos, and Kyzikus. The claims of the Lesbians were favoured by the Boeotians, and those of the people of Kyzikus by Pharnabazus; but, at the recommendation of Alkibiades, the Lacedaemonians decided to give the preference to the Chians. He himself sailed to that island, caused nearly the whole of the cities of Ionia to revolt from Athens, and injured the Athenian cause much by constantly assisting the Lacedaemonian generals. King Agis, however, was already his personal enemy, because of Alkibiades's intrigue with his wife, and now was enraged at his successes; for it was said that scarcely anything was done without Alkibiades. The other leading men in Sparta also hated Alkibiades, because he had thrown them into the shade; and they had sufficient influence with the home government to obtain an order for his execution, to be sent to the generals in Ionia.