Figure

Alcibiades

also answers to Alcibiades of Athens — catalog apparatus · kind: person
363 mentions across 147 episodes of the record — counted by the house’s first pass receipt — the figure shelf, first pass receipt — the curator’s pass

The regnal line — the editor’s table of years, never the record’s voice

The editor’s table of years hangs in this house, but this life is not yet pinned to it. Until it is, the when is a label, not a shelf.

··

The life on our shelf — told from the witnesses; every quotation is the record’s own · not yet read back at the desk

The Athenians condemned Alcibiades to death without hearing his defence; the Spartan magistrates sent orders out to Ionia that he be put to death; the satrap Tissaphernes seized him and shut him up in Sardis. Two powers of the war of 431–404 BCE wanted him dead, a third locked him up, and each had first wanted him — Athens as general of the armament bound for Sicily, Sparta as the exile who turned nearly all Ionia against Athens, Persia as the adviser at the satrap's ear.

Three witnesses hold the case at three distances. Thucydides (late 5th century BCE, a participant historian of the war itself, in Richard Crawley's 1874 translation) stands inside the first condemnation: an Athens feverish over mutilated images and profaned rites, where "everywhere something was found to create suspicion against Alcibiades". The ship Salaminia was sent to Sicily to fetch the general home for trial — under orders not to arrest him, since the army was his — and at Thurii he slipped ashore and vanished; the Athenians "passed sentence of death by default upon him". Plutarch (c. 100 CE, writing under Trajan, in Bernadotte Perrin's 1914–1926 translation) reads the charge sheet five centuries on — Thessalus, son of Cimon, impeaching him for a drunken parody of the mysteries of Eleusis — and follows the outlaw to Sparta, then to Persia, where his counsel to Tissaphernes was to feed both warring sides thinly, "by niggardly assistance to straiten and gradually wear out both".

Xenophon (4th century BCE, the continuator whose Hellenica takes up the war from 411, in H. G. Dakyns's 1890–1897 translation) carries the third act by its dates: the night escape from Sardis, the victory at Cyzicus, and in B.C. 407 the sail home into Piraeus — on the day of the Plunteria, when Athena's statue stands veiled, an omen some read against him. The crowd on the shore was already the record in dispute: some called him "the best of citizens", banished unjustly; others answered that every past misery was his work and the next stood ready.

Here the shelf argues with itself. Duris the Samian, claiming descent from Alcibiades, gives the homecoming fleet a victor's flute and "a sail of purple hue". Plutarch rules against him — "neither Theopompus, nor Ephorus, nor Xenophon mentions these things" — and the surviving witnesses agree on a smaller image: a man afraid to leave his trireme, scanning the crowd from the deck until he found his cousin Euryptolemus, and only then stepping down. Athens answered by setting him over the whole State. When a city sentences a man to death and later hands him everything it has left, which verdict was the honest one?

Sources: Thuc. 6.61 · Plut. Alcibiades 19 · Plut. Alcibiades 24 · Plut. Alcibiades 25 · Plut. Alcibiades 32 · Xen. Hell. 1.1 · Xen. Hell. 1.4

cast from the served record · every quoted span verified against it receipt

The witnesses — who says so

Plutarch · the biographer's shelf

Plut. Alcibiades 25 named 10 times in this episode — as “Alcibiades” Alcibiades · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Alcibiades 1 named 8 times in this episode — as “Alcibiades” Alcibiades · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Alcibiades 19 named 8 times in this episode — as “Alcibiades” Alcibiades · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Comparison of Alcibiades and Coriolanus 2 named 7 times in this episode — as “Alcibiades” Comparison of Alcibiades and Coriolanus · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Alcibiades 26 named 7 times in this episode — as “Alcibiades” Alcibiades · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Alcibiades 7 named 6 times in this episode — as “Alcibiades” Alcibiades · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Alcibiades 8 named 6 times in this episode — as “Alcibiades” Alcibiades · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Nicias 11 named 6 times in this episode — as “Alcibiades” Nicias · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Alcibiades 32 named 6 times in this episode — as “Alcibiades” Alcibiades · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Xenophon · the shelf

Xen. Hell. 1.1 named 8 times in this episode — as “Alcibiades” Hellenica · H. G. Dakyns, 1890-1897

Xen. Hell. 1.3 named 7 times in this episode — as “Alcibiades” Hellenica · H. G. Dakyns, 1890-1897

Thucydides · the shelf

Thuc. 8.50 named 6 times in this episode — as “Alcibiades” History of the Peloponnesian War · Richard Crawley, 1874

…and 135 more episodes attest — counted by the house’s first pass.

Deeds this life stands in — standing in the same episodes; counted by the house’s first pass

siege of Athens — a candidate entry taking of Sicily — a candidate entry battle of Miletus — a candidate entry siege of Miletus — a candidate entry siege of Syracuse — a candidate entry battle of Chios — a candidate entry siege of Abydos — a candidate entry siege of Byzantium — a candidate entry

Who is inside this name — the drawer files by name; the person layer keeps the men apart

Alcibiades son of Cleinias — c. 450–404 BCE

One identity is discriminated behind this drawer — each room states which bearer of the name it is, on what ground, and with what confidence.

Doors to the sister houses

logoi — the words

No door is cut to the word-house from this room yet. Doors are cut from the record itself, never guessed; logoi.health keeps the words meanwhile.

mythoi — the stories

No door is cut to the story-house from this room yet. mythoi.health keeps the stories meanwhile.

The record here: The Histories, Herodotus — Godley, 1920–25 · Parallel Lives, Plutarch — Perrin, 1914–26 · 166 works · 12,119 episodes served

lives · deeds · times · the shelf