#Plutarch #ParallelLives
#Alcibiades 15/

But when Lysander robbed them of their freedom, and handed the city over to thirty men, then, their cause being lost, their eyes were opened to the course they would not take when salvation was yet in their power.

They sorrow­fully rehearsed all their mistakes and follies, the greatest of which they considered to be their outburst of wrath against Alcibiades.

[Section 38]

#PoliticalRegret

#Plutarch #ParallelLives
#Alcibiades 14/

And it would seem that if ever a man was ruined by his own exalted reputation, that man was Alcibiades.

His continuous successes gave him such repute for unbounded daring and sagacity, that when he failed in anything, men suspected his inclination; they would not believe in his inability.

Were he only inclined to do a thing, they thought, naught could escape him.

[Section 35]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives
#Alcibiades 13/

For now he had taken the city when she was almost banished from the sea, when on land she was hardly mistress of her own suburbs, and when factions raged within her walls, and had raised her up from this wretched and lowly plight, not only restoring her dominion over the sea, but actually rendering her victorious over her enemies everywhere on land.

[Section 32]

#DefeatTurnsIntoVictory
#resistance

#Plutarch #ParallelLives
#Alcibiades 12/

[Alcibiades plays double and trebble bluffs and manages to get himself installed as general of the Athenian army in Samos and external leader of the opposition group back home in Athens.]

An ordinary man, thus suddenly raised to great power by the favour of the multitude, would have been full of complaisance, thinking that he must at once gratify them in all things and oppose them in nothing, since they had made him, instead of a wandering exile, leader and general of such a fleet and of so large an armed force.

But Alcibiades, as became a great leader, felt that he must oppose them in their career of blind fury, and prevented them from making a fatal mistake.

For had they sailed off home, their enemies might at once have occupied all Ionia & the Hellespont without a battle, while Athenians were fighting Athenians and making their own city the seat of war. Such a war Alcibiades prevented.

[Section 26]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives
#Alcibiades 11/

Alcibiades's versatility and surpassing cleverness were the admiration of the Barbarian [Tissaphernes], who was no straightforward man himself, but malicious and fond of evil company.

And indeed no disposition could resist and no nature escape Alcibiades, so full of grace was his daily life and conversation. Even those who feared and hated him felt a rare and winning charm in his society and presence. And thus it was that Tissaphernes, though otherwise the most ardent of the Persians in his hatred of the Hellenes, so completely surrendered to the flatteries of Alcibiades as to outdo him in reciprocal flatteries.

[Section 24]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives
#Alcibiades 10/

[Alcibiades betrays, first his native Athens to Sparta, then Athens and Sparta to Persia.]

He had one power which transcended all others, and proved an implement of his chase for men: that of assimilating and adapting himself to the pursuits and lives of others, thereby assuming more violent changes than the chameleon.

In Sparta, he was all for bodily training, simplicity of life, and severity of countenance; in Ionia, for luxurious ease and pleasure; and when he was thrown with Tissaphernes the satrap, he outdid even Persian magnificence in his pomp and lavishness.

It was not that he could so easily pass entirely from one manner of man to another, nor that he actually underwent in every case a change in his real character; but when he saw that his natural manners were likely to be annoying to his associates, he was quick to assume any counterfeit exterior which might in each case be suitable for them.

[Section 23] #TheWayOfTheTraitor

#Plutarch #ParallelLives
#Alcibiades 9/

So while Nicias was trying to divert the people from the capture of Syracuse as an undertaking too difficult for them, Alcibiades was dreaming of Carthage and Libya, and, after winning these, of at once encompassing Italy and Peloponnesus. He almost regarded Sicily as the ways and means provided for his greater war.

The young men were at once carried away on the wings of such hopes, and their elders kept recounting in their ears many wonder­ful things about the projected expedition. Many were they who sat in the palaestras and lounging-places mapping out in the sand the shape of Sicily and the position of Libya and Carthage.

Socrates the philosopher, however, and Meton the astrologer, are said to have had no hopes that any good would come to the city from this expedition.

[Section 17]