IX. He had a dog of remarkable size and beauty, for which he had paid seventy minae. It had a very fine tail, which he cut off. When his friends blamed him, and said that every one was sorry for the dog and angry with him for what he had done, he laughed and said, "Then I have succeeded; for I wish the Athenians to gossip about this, for fear they should say something worse about me."
X. It is said that his first public act was on the occasion of a voluntary subscription for the State. He did not intend doing anything of the sort, but as he was passing he heard a great noise, and finding that voluntary subscriptions were being made, went and subscribed. The people cheered and applauded him, at which he was so much delighted as to forget a quail which he had in his cloak. When it escaped and ran about bewildered, the Athenians applauded all the more, and many rose and chased it. It was caught by the pilot Antiochus, who restored it, and became one of Alkibiades's greatest friends. Starting with great advantages from his noble birth, his wealth, his recognised bravery in battle, and his many friends and relatives, he relied upon nothing so much as on his eloquence for making himself popular and influential. His rhetorical powers are borne witness to by the comic dramatists; and the greatest of orators, Demosthenes, in his speech against Meidias, speaks of Alkibiades as being most eloquent, besides his other charms. If we are to believe Theophrastus, who has inquired more diligently into these various tales than any one else, Alkibiades excelled all men of his time in readiness of invention and resource. However, as he wished not merely to speak to the purpose, but also to clothe his thoughts in the most appropriate language, he did not always succeed in combining the two, and often hesitated and stopped, seeking for the right word, and not continuing his speech until it occurred to him.
XI. He was renowned for his stud, and for the number of his racing chariots. No other person, king or commoner, ever entered seven four–horse chariots for the race at Olympia except Alkibiades. His winning the first, second, and fourth prizes with these, as Thucydides tells us, though Euripides says that he won the third also, excels in glory any other successes by other persons in these races. The poem of Euripides runs as follows:
XII. His success was rendered all the more conspicuous by the manner in which the various States vied with one another in showing him honour. Ephesus pitched a magnificent tent for his accommodation, Chios furnished his horses with provender, and himself with animals for sacrifice; and Lesbos supplied him with wine, and every thing else necessary for giving great entertainments. Yet even at this brilliant period of his life he incurred discredit, either by his own fault or through the spite of his enemies. The story is that an Athenian named Diomedes, a respectable man and a friend of Alkibiades, was desirous of winning a victory at Olympia. Hearing that there was a chariot and four which belonged to the city of Argos, and knowing that Alkibiades had great influence and many friends in that place, he persuaded him to buy the chariot for him. Alkibiades, however, bought the chariot and entered it for the race as his own, leaving Diomedes to call upon heaven and earth to witness his ill–treatment. It appears that a trial took place about this matter, and Isokrates wrote a speech about this chariot in defence of the son of Alkibiades, in which Tisias, not Diomedes, is mentioned as the prosecutor.
XIII. When, as a mere boy, Alkibiades plunged into political life, he at once surpassed most of the statesmen of the age. His chief rivals were Phaeax, the son of Erasistratus, and Nikias, the son of Nikeratus, the latter a man advanced in life, and bearing the reputation of being an excellent general, while the former, like Alkibiades himself, was a young man of good family, just rising into notice, but inferior to him in many respects, particularly in oratory. Though affable and persuasive in private circles, he could not speak equally well in public, for he was, as Eupolis says,
"At conversation best of men, at public speaking worst."
In a certain attack on Alkibiades and Phaeax, we find, among other charges, Alkibiades accused of using the gold and silver plate of the city of Athens as his own for his daily use.
There was at Athens one Hyperbolus, of the township of Peirithois, whom Thucydides mentions as a worthless man, and one who was constantly ridiculed by the comic dramatists. From his utter disregard of what was said of him, and his carelessness for his honour, which, though it was mere shameless impudence and apathy, was thought by some to show firmness and true courage, he was pleasing to no party, but frequently made use of by the people when they wished to have a scurrilous attack made upon those in power. At this time he was about to resort to the proceeding called ostracism, by which from time to time the Athenians force into exile those citizens who are remarkable for influence and power, rather because they envy them than because they fear them.
But as it was clear that one of the three, Nikias, Phaeax, and Alkibiades, would be ostracised, Alkibiades combined their several parties, arranged matters with Nikias, and turned the ostracism against Hyperbolus himself. Some say that it was not Nikias but Phaeax with whom Alkibiades joined interest, and that with the assistance of his political party he managed to expel Hyperbolus, who never expected any such treatment; for before that time this punishment had never been extended to low persons of no reputation, as Plato, the comic dramatist, says in the lines where he mentions Hyperbolus:
We have elsewhere given a fuller account of this affair.
XIV. Alkibiades was dissatisfied at the respect shown for Nikias, both by enemies of the State and by the citizens of Athens. Alkibiades was the proxenus[21] of the Lacedaemonians at Athens, and paid especial court to those Spartans who had been captured at Pylos; yet, when the Lacedaemonians discovered that it was chiefly by Nikias's means that they obtained peace, and recovered their prisoners, they were lavish of their attentions to him. The common phrase among the Greeks of that time was that Perikles had begun the war, and Nikias had finished it; and the peace was usually called the peace of Nikias. Alkibiades, irritated beyond measure at his rival's success, began to meditate how he could destroy the existing treaty. He perceived that the Argives, hating and fearing Sparta, wished to break off from it, and he encouraged them by secret assurances of an Athenian alliance, and also both by his agents and in person he urged the leading men not to give way to the Lacedaemonians, or yield any points to them, but to turn to Athens, and await their co–operation, for the Athenians, he said, already began to regret that they had made peace at all, and would soon break it.
When the Lacedaemonians made an alliance with the Boeotians, and delivered up Panaktus to the Athenians in a dismantled condition, not with its walls standing, as they ought to have done, Alkibiades exasperated the rage of the Athenians by his speeches, and raised a clamour against Nikias by the plausible accusation that he, when general, had hung back from capturing the enemy's forces which were cut off in the island of Sphakteria, and that when they had been captured by another, he had released them and restored them to their homes, in order to gain the favour of the Lacedaemonians. And for all that, although he was such a friend of the Lacedaemonians, he had not dissuaded them from forming alliances with Corinth and with the Boeotians, while he prevented the Athenians from becoming allies of any Greek State which might wish it, if the step did not happen to please the Lacedaemonians.