Back in Athens the atmosphere was becoming toxic. False evidence inflamed a witch hunt. Young aristocrats were mainly blamed for the sacrilegious scandals. Feeling against Alcibiades grew. It was alleged that he played the part of the high priest of Eleusis during tipsy revels. The ecclesia recalled him to face his accusers. This turned out to be a mistake.
The impeachment against the general was still on record in Plutarch’s day. It read in part:
Thessalus, the son of Cimon, of the deme of Laciadae lays information against Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, of the deme of the Scambonidae, that he committed sacrilege against the goddesses of Eleusis, Demeter and Kore [another name for Persephone]. He made a mockery of the Mysteries and put them on show in his own house.
It is noteworthy that the accuser’s father was the great Cimon, who lost power for being too pro-Spartan. If he kept up the family tradition, the son will have wanted permanent peace with Sparta as fervently as Nicias. Getting rid of Pericles’ ward would go a long way to achieving that.
The state galley, the Salaminia, was dispatched to bring home Alcibiades and other co-accused. However, he was not placed under arrest, for he was well liked and it was felt the men might mutiny. At Thurii, on the Italian coast, he disembarked, gave his guards the slip, and went into hiding. When the Salaminia returned to Athens without its prize, the demos was enraged. Alcibiades was condemned to death in absentia and his estate was confiscated. The sale list of his bedroom furniture has survived; twelve Milesian (that is, high-quality) couches were auctioned along with coverlets, bedclothes, and “six perfume bottles.”
It was further decreed that his name should be cursed by all the city’s priests and priestesses. When he learned of the death sentence, Alcibiades remarked: “I’ll show them that I am still alive.”
He was as good as his word. After extricating himself from Thurii he made his way across the Ionian Sea to mainland Greece and settled in Argos where he had friends. Then, fearing for his safety, he decided to renounce his country altogether. He wrote to Sparta asking for asylum. He promised: “I will render you services greater than all the harm I have done you when I was your enemy.”
His request was granted, although, not trusting turncoats, the Lacedaemonian establishment was cautious. Alcibiades made his way there and, like a chameleon, quickly turned himself into a proper Spartan. The locals were captivated: according to Plutarch,
When they saw him with his hair untrimmed, taking cold baths, enjoying their coarse bread, and dining on black broth, they could hardly believe their eyes, and doubted the man they now saw had ever had a cook in his own house, or so much as looked at a perfumier, or endured the touch of Milesian wool.
The treachery of Alcibiades gave his hosts a gift beyond price, as the half peace tipped slowly over into war. As a leading politician, he knew all the secrets of Athens, the unstated policies, the future covert ambitions. He appears to have told the Spartans everything. He showed them all the cards in the other player’s hand.
In particular, he gave them two invaluable pieces of advice. First, he persuaded them to send out a competent Spartan general to lead the defense of Syracuse. No time was lost in commissioning a certain Gylippus; his mother may have been a helot and so he was probably not an Equal. However, in his childhood he had been trained in the traditional Spartan fashion. When he grew up, he was allowed to join a military mess and, as he did not have the money, a wealthy patron covered his fees.
Second, Alcibiades proposed that the Spartans resume their invasions of Attica and, above all, build a permanent fort at Decelea, a strongpoint near the northern border with Boeotia. Not wanting to be the first to break the peace, they waited for a year before doing as he said, but the effect when it came was dramatic. From now on, instead of making brief annual visits, a Spartan force was always present on Athenian soil. The economic consequences were severe. Food imports from Euboea were interrupted. Farming had to be abandoned altogether and for food supplies the population now relied exclusively on grain from the Black Sea. The production of silver from Laurium was halted. Over the coming years more than twenty thousand slaves, mainly skilled workers, ran away to Decelea (it did them little good: they hoped for liberty, but, cruelly, were resold into servitude at rock-bottom prices).
Thucydides summed up the situation:
Every single thing the city needed had to be imported, that instead of a city it became a fortress. Summer and winter the Athenians were worn out by having to keep guard on the fortifications….But what oppressed them most was that they now had two wars at once.
Alcibiades had shown his true colors and those who suspected him of being unstable and immature had had their fears confirmed. It was an expensive lesson, for he was doing everything he could to make Athens lose the war. Like an angry child, he was imagining the worst possible revenge for his treatment—saying to himself: “Then they’ll be sorry.” He did not yet understand that he might also be spiting himself.
—
In Sicily the Athenians were doing as well as could be expected when doing very little. Victory in a land battle was not followed up, perhaps for want of cavalry. Winter passed uneventfully. Nicias “kept on sitting around, sailing about, and thinking things over” and so the advantage of surprise was lost.
At last, with the arrival of spring 414, Nicias bestirred himself. His plan was to blockade the city and to achieve this it would be necessary to take control of Epipolae, rising ground that sloped up northwest from the city to a commanding plateau. The Syracusans intended to station six hundred picked troops on these heights, but the Athenians pipped them to the post by landing their entire force north of Syracuse and storming Epipolae. They then began building a wall northwards at speed.
At this rate the Syracusans would soon be sealed off by land as well as by sea. So they constructed a counterwall designed to cut across the Athenian circumvallation. However, the Athenians attacked and destroyed it, and then built fortifications southwards towards the Great Harbor. Once again a counterwall was constructed and once again, in a fierce battle, it was destroyed. The victory came at a high price, for the general Lamachus was killed in the fighting. Now Nicias, the reluctant warrior, was commander-in-chief and alone.
However, victory was in sight. All that remained to be done was to extend the north wall until it met the sea. Thucydides writes: “The Syracusans no longer thought they could win the war, no kind of help having arrived from the Peloponnese, and were beginning to discuss terms of surrender among themselves.”
Once again Nicias dithered. He fortified Plemmyrion, a promontory on the southern end of the Great Harbor of Syracuse, a convenient base for the fleet. Unaccountably he did not trouble to complete the wall on Epipolae. This was another grave error, for it allowed the Spartan general Gylippus to slip into the city and take command. He energized the Syracusans and restored their morale.