Alcibiades

So this week marks the 16-year anniversary of Badass of the Week, and in celebration I am happy to say that we (and by we, I mostly mean my badass intern Alyssa) have managed to make massive steps in rebuilding the Badass of the Week Archive.  You should check it out when you can – it's been a ton of work, but we're currently on pace to have the entire archive up and running by the end of the month, which is awesome.  What isn't awesome, though, is that during the course of uploading these archives I have come across many old-ass articles from the first days of the website, and they are… well… let's just say I've come a long way as a writer in 16 years.  And since this is the website's anniversary and all, I've decided to take this week to rewrite the entry one of my favorite historical figures, since his original article just isn't cutting it for me anymore.

I'm going to revisit the story of Alcibiades, a guy I correctly described a decade ago as being, "the biggest jerk of the Classical Age".

Alcibiades was born in Athens in 450 BC, the son of a wealthy politician back in the Golden Age of Athenian Democracy.  Though his father died heroically in battle while Alcibiades was just a boy, he was also the scion of a well-known aristocratic family that claimed to trace its lineage back to the Telemonian Ajax of Homer's Illiad, and Alcibiades was sent to live with his uncle, the famous Athenian diplomat Pericles.  Running in the high society of Ancient Athenian social circles, Alcibiades was mentored by Socrates, studied oratory and music, won first place in chariot racing in the fucking Olympic Games, and was also known for being basically the hottest dude in all of Athens.  He was rich, extravagant, a total self-centered irresponsible asshole, and a complete pain in everyone's ass pretty much all the time.  One time he got in trouble during a wrestling match because when the other dude got a good hold on him, Alcibiades bit the guy so hard he took a big piece of the dude's arm off.  On more than one occasion he got in trouble for drunkenly punching aristocrats in the face in public.  Another time he started a revolution in music class, because Alcibiades really fucking hated playing the flute so bad that he basically wrote an entire treatise on the subject of "fuck flutes" – he said he looked ugly while blowing on it, cited the fact that Apollo also hated flutes, and said it was a lame instrument because it was impossible to play it and sing at the same time.  Alcibiades then added that flutes are "for the sons of Thebes", since those assholes are such bad singers and conversationalists that nobody wants to hear them talk anyways.  He hated fucking flutes so bad that Alcibiades incited the entire rest of his class to also declare "fuck flutes", and got flauting removed from the Athenian curriculum entirely. And, no, I'm not kidding about this, Livy dedicates like two paragraphs describing how bad Alcibiades hated fuckin' flutes and all things flute-related.

As basically the hottest dude in Athens, Alcibiades was also a sex-crazed maniac and essentially humped everything that he could get his hands on, at all times, without rest.  Men, women, whatever, it didn't matter.  It's also very strongly implied that him and the philosopher Socrates had a thing going for like a decade too, and many ancient writers take great pains to describe that Socrates was basically the only lover Alcibiades had that he wasn't a complete dick to.  Plus, like, Socrates wrote like three books about how hot Alcibiades was, and referred to him as basically the most attractive human being who ever lived.

Of course, being an asshole to everyone you know isn't really all that badass, and the only reason anybody put up with this guy's shit is because he was also insanely brave in combat and a very active and bold military commander.  While still in his 20s, Alcibiades joined the Athenian military, fighting in the early days of the Peloponnesian War against Sparta.  Now, volunteering to go into hand-to-hand combat against the Spartans is no small decision, but Alcibiades was routinely cited for bravery on the field of battle.  Running into combat with a golden shield studded with jewels (because of course he did), Alcibiades fought at the Battle of Potidea, where he was wounded in action but had his life saved by Socrates (people forget that guy was a soldier).  Alcibiades returned the favor in 424 BC at the Battle of Delium, when Socrates was wounded and Alcibiades cut his way through a crowd of blood-lusted Spartans to reach Greece's most famous philosopher and heroically drag him from the fighting.  The Athenian commander was so impressed that he offered his daughter to Alcibiades in marriage.  They had two kids together.

After a couple years of fierce combat up and down the Greek peninsula, the War with Sparta ended in a stalemate.  The Spartans came to Athens to negotiate a treaty and Alcibiades was a huge asshole to them, but they met with another Athenian statesman named Nicias and eventually a cease-fire was negotiated.  They called the treaty the Peace of Nicias.  And Alcibiades, of course, was super pissed off with Sparta because he thought they should have called it the Peace of Alcibiades.

Why do I like this guy again?  I don't know.  There's just something about being such an unabashed self-righteous prick that speaks to me, I guess.

Ok, so Alcibiades is pissed, and he decides he's going to fuck up Sparta if it’s the last thing he does.  In 420 BC, at the age of 30, Alcibiades is made a General in the Athenian military, and the first thing he wants to do is sail over to Sicily to beat the shit out of the town of Syracuse, because those jerks were dumb enough to ally themselves with the Spartans and now they gotta pay.  He gave these big speeches to the Athenians saying that if we can take Sicily there will be tons of timber for ships, trade, an expansion of the Athenian empire, and everyone will be happy and rich, and people all seemed to be on board with it  -- though it's tough to say if it's because they all liked this dude or if they all just really wanted a good reason to shank more Spartans.  Alcibiades' biggest opponent was Nicias, the dude who just negotiated the Peace of Nicias, probably because that guy had just spend a lot of time negotiating a peace treaty and didn't really want to just immediately declare war on Sparta again.  Nicias argues with Alcibiades, debates ensued, there was a vote, and the Athenian military council decided, ok, here's the compromise – we're going to send 6000 guys and 60 ships attack Sicily, but both Alcibiades and Nicias will be in charge of commanding the assault, and they'll have equal power over the campaign.

Alcibiades was so fuckin' stoked about kicking ass in another war that the night before the fleet was supposed to sail he hosted a huge-ass symposium – which might sound like a boring-ass lecture about plant economics but is really just the ancient Greek word for a drunken fiasco.  Alcibiades and his buddies got blindingly drunk, raged around Athens pulling the dicks off every statue in the town square, and then, according to his arrest record "profaned the Mysteries of Eleusis", which I think means he like exposed himself to Persephone or something.  Anyway, when Athens woke up the next morning and found a pantheon of dong-less gods, they were all pretty pissed about it, and the sailors and marines all thought maybe this was a bad omen for the upcoming campaign.  Alcibiades denied everything, demanded an immediate trial, and when they didn't give him one he sailed off to Sicily and started kicking the shit out of the Spartans.

Of course, after winning like two battles off the coast of Sicily, Alcibiades received a letter from Athens.  It said, hey bud, bad news, we had a trial while you were away and you were found guilty, so now you gotta come home so we can execute you.

Alcibiades nodded his head, folded up the letter, got on a boat, and sailed immediately to the King of Sparta to offer his services to the Spartans.

Alcibiades arrived in Sparta, gave up a bunch of Athenian state secrets and drew out the entire Athenian plan of attack in the Sicilian Campaign.  He told the Spartans which fortresses to reinforce, which ones were going to be attacked, and even led Spartan military forces in the capture of a few critical Athenian towns and fortresses and incited a few revolts among Athens's allies.  Weirdly, that guy Nicias never deviated from the war plan that Alcibiades had drawn up, and the entire Athenian attack in Sicily was completely crushed.  Nicias died in the fighting, which super sucks for that guy because you'll remember he didn't even want to be there in the first fucking place.

Well, oops, while all that was going on Alcibiades also banged the King of Sparta's wife and impregnated her, and eventually her husband found out about the whole thing and decided he was going to have Alcibiades' head mounted on a pike somewhere.  Alcibiades fled an impending death sentence once again, this time heading to Persia, where he became friends with the Persian Satrap Tissaphernes.  Alcibiades told that guy to ally with Athens, but Tissapherns was like, no, that's a terrible idea, the Athenians totally hate us and they have this Democracy thing, so you'll never get them to vote for us to help them.

So Alcibiades incited a coup amongst some disgruntled aristocrats and overthrew Athenian Democracy.

The new oligarchy that took control of the city then invited Alcibiades back home, dropped all charges, threw him a parade, and made him commander-in-chief of the Athenian Navy.

Alcibiades took command of the fleet and led on a series of bold attacks, smashing the Spartan navy in the Hellespont, defeating them in a series of battles that in 410 BC broke their hold on the Black Sea and opened up that vital waterway for trade.  Then he took his fleet north, fought the Persians, defeated them at Abdyos, recaptured Byzantium from Persia, and returned home a conquering big-ass hero.  They threw him a huge triumph through the streets of Athens in 407 and made him strategos autokrater, the overall commander of all Athenian military forces.

It… didn't last long.

The Spartan navy regrouped and closed in for another battle, but Alcibiades put together another daring plan – he left his helmsman, a guy named Antiochus, in charge of 80 ships and told him to hold steady and do not attack the Spartans for any reason.  Then Alcibiades headed across the Aegean, and attacked a Spartan base in Asia Minor.  The hope was that this would draw the Spartans away, but, while Alcibiades was gone, his dumbass helmsman disobeyed his only order and attacked the Spartan navy like a moron.  Antiochus the Helmsman was not a naval military genius, was completely crushed, and lost his entire command.  Alcibiades was stripped of command because he left a big portion of his fleet in the hands of a moron, so he left to go live in a castle in Thrace.  The Spartans won the Peloponnesian War a few years later, pulled down the city walls of Athens, and essentially ended Athens as a military power in Greece for good.  Alcibiades would have been happy that everything went to hell the moment he left.

Well, once the Spartans took Athens, Alcibiades wasn't safe in Thrace, mostly because he was still pretty sure that the King of Sparta wasn't over the whole Queen-humping thing.  So Alcibiades went back to Persia and tried to incite the Satrap to go to war with Sparta, but basically everyone was sick of this guy's shit by then.  In 404 BC a bunch of dudes set his house on fire while he was in the shower.  Alcibiades jumped out of the bath, grabbed a sword, and ran outside completely naked, hacking and slashing at his assailants and wounding several of them.  He was eventually killed when they started hurling javelins and firing arrows at him.

The identities of his killers were never discovered.  Maybe they were Spartan assassins, or maybe they were sent by the Persians.  At least one ancient source says that Alcibiades was sleeping with one of the local girls and her brother found out and assembled a posse to go kill him.  Which, maybe.  The fact is, this guy's life was so nuts and off-the-rails that when Socrates was standing trial for "corrupting the youth of Athens," an accusation that would eventual lead to the philosopher's execution, one of the prime examples presented by the prosecution was that Socrates was friends with Alcibiades, and this guy was fucking bonkers.

Links:

Ancient History Encyclopedia

Ancient World Magazine

Britannica

Livy, Life of Alcibiades

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

Wikipedia