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- [00:00]
Dr. Claire Aubin
A list of sensitive themes and topics covered in this episode can be found in the episode description. Welcome to this Guy Sucked, the show, where we prove that it's never too late to have haters and you can't libel the dead. I'm your host, Dr. Claire Aubin, and I'm a historian, writer, and most importantly, as we all know, certified hater. On this podcast, we talk about people from throughout history with legacies that need a little updating. Whether it's because of their politics, their behavior, or their impact on society and culture, these guys actually kind of sucked. And we bring in a new scholar every week to tell us why. With me today is Dr. Roll K9 and who is a Darby Fellow in Ancient History at Oxford and an expert on classical Greek warfare and a moderator at Reddit's illustrious R Ask Historians forum or subreddit. He's written stuff that's all over the place. You might also have seen him on YouTube as the ditch guy or the guy that insider makes rate all the ancient battle scenes in movies and TV shows. So welcome to the show and thanks for being here.
- [01:17]
Dr. Roll K9
Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
- [01:20]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I also want to thank you for agreeing to this because you're one of, I don't know if you know this, one of the very first people that I asked to come on the show. So I asked Dr. Koninendyk to come on the show before I even had a show because I just knew he was gonna have something good to say.
- [01:36]
Dr. Roll K9
I was super keen to see it. It's such a great idea. So I'm really, really glad to be part of it.
- [01:41]
Dr. Claire Aubin
My first question before we actually start is, what's it like being the Internet's go to ancient warfare guy and also being known as the Ditch guy?
- [01:52]
Dr. Roll K9
Yeah, that last part is actually the weird one because you'd think if you're talking about, like, digging earthworks and things like that, maybe we should leave that to archaeologists. My slant on ancient history has always been very literary focused, so I'm not that kind of historian who actually goes and explores sites, let alone fortified places or city walls or anything like that. So I actually don't know anything about ditches. I need to ask my colleagues what actually happens when you try to, for instance, excavate, you know, a circuit like a wall or a fortified. Fortified position or something like that. So, like, I don't really know what I'm talking about when it comes to ditches. It's just something that keeps coming up in these Movies that I commented on. But actually that was a really long interview, that first video, and they really sort of pared it down to like the best 25 minutes or so. But they kept every single time that I mentioned the absence of ditches in these movies because that came up a few times in different movies. And so it's essentially in the edit that I came to sound like I'm obsessed with this, but it became such a meme that now I'm just like, I'm obviously running with it because it's very funny to see people kind of responding to that and echoing it back at me and just being like, hey, you know, knowing that because ditch guy is a lot more memorable than my horrible Dutch surname.
- [03:01]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Well, I think it's also what's funny about that is like, you actually don't need to know that much about ditches and ditch construction in the first place in order to be able to say, hmm, there's something conspicuously absent from these. Just on a logical basis, like there's.
- [03:16]
Dr. Roll K9
It just doesn't look right. Yeah, exactly.
- [03:17]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah, it's not right. And logically speaking, there's a lot more time being spent digging ditches during ancient warfare than we're willing to give screen time to because it's not that interesting.
- [03:27]
Dr. Roll K9
And so in terms of like bringing that to people's attention, I'm very pleased to have been the guy to do that. But actually that could have been any of us, I think, pointing that out. In fact, to some extent, I got the inspiration for making this point by reading Brett Devereux writing about the Lord of the Rings. I mean, these are all just obviously historians that I, you know, that I interact with and look up to and that we were doing very similar things. And so as we all try to reach wider audiences with what we've learned and we all try to share, you know, things that people might want to know, we end up kind of saying the same things, I think a lot of the time, because, you know, all the movies keep making the same mistakes, so point them out.
- [04:03]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I think it will be such a win when there finally is a mainstream, large, well funded film featuring ancient or ancient stuff style classical warfare that involves significant ditch taking. Then you'll know at that point I.
- [04:19]
Dr. Roll K9
Just have to retire. If that happens, I'll just be like, you know, my job here is done.
- [04:23]
Dr. Claire Aubin
It'll be one of those. His influence kind of rests on my.
- [04:27]
Dr. Roll K9
Laurels from that point.
- [04:28]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah, let's do what we're actually here to do. Who are we talking about? Today.
- [04:35]
Dr. Roll K9
So the topic. Topic of this episode is Alcibiades, who is physically figure of Athenian history. So the 5th century BC we're talking about the time in which Athens rules an empire that stretches around the Aegean and further around the Mediterranean Black Sea. They're at the height of their power. They are the leading power of the Greek world, really. And at the end of that century, they come into conflict with the Spartans, which unleashes this big conflict called the Peloponnesian War. And in the course of that conflict, various different leaders rise to prominence, especially in the aftermath of the death of Pericles, who is the great leader of the Athenians in that period, or the foremost, like, commander and politician in Athens. And one of those figures is this Alcibiades, who is from an extremely wealthy family, has a very, very rich background, and he makes his way into sort of prominent places in the Athenian democracy and then has a very important role to play in the sort of final stages of the Peloponnesian War.
- [05:32]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Within the Peloponnesian War, as a sort of, like, large concept, people will also sometimes separate into, like, the first Peloponnesian War and the Second Peloponnesian War. On what basis?
- [05:43]
Dr. Roll K9
So the first Peloponnesian War, annoyingly, the Peloponnesian War that we refer to as the Peloponnesian War is technically the second. Right. So there's a war before that which is referred to as the first Peloponnesian War, which has no name in ancient sources. So we just kind of make up that name because it involves the same actors. So it involves a conflict between Athens and Sparta, also Argos and Corinth. So a couple of these other city states around the Greek world that are also heavily involved in this. But it's a little bit of a confusing conflict where it's not really clear who actually has beef with whom over what. And so you end up constructing something of an overall narrative of a war that clearly involves a lot of Greek states in central and southern Greece. But that is kind of hard to trace. But it kind of sets out a couple of the main points of contention that will later become sort of grounds for the eruption of the pelovonnesian War. But actually, that first conflict is much more about, essentially, Corinth being upset about Athenian naval hegemony. So they are sort of worried about the increase of power of Athens and keep complaining to Sparta, like, you've got to do something about this. It's your job. Like, you're supposed to be the traditional hegemon of the Greek world, it's your job to stop them. And Sparta is not bothered because Sparta doesn't lose any influence if Athens controls the sea, because they're not invested in that sphere, essentially. So it's the Corinthians who do have a naval empire of their own, who basically keep complaining to the Spartans saying, okay, you've got to stop this or you got to put a stop to this. And that eventually brings the Spartans to committing fully to a conflict. During the first Peloponnesian War, they have really quite a lukewarm participation. But by the later period, by the proper Peloponnesian War, the second Peloponnesian War, they start to make more of a principled commitment to helping out their allies, essentially.
- [07:26]
Dr. Claire Aubin
So Alcibiades, I think not necessarily wildly important, but important part of this and why it's important to understand that there's kind of a distinction between the first Peloponnesian War and the Peloponnesian War or the second Peloponnesian War is also, aside from being Athenian and a statesman and doing all these other things. His father Kleinias, who is also a military general, is killed in the. Is some sort of military figure of some sort is killed in the first Peloponnesian War. When Alcibiades is quite young, like, is still like a toddler, I think he's like three when this happens and he gets adopted or his guardianship is taken over by Pericles. So he's very closely related to this major figure within the sort of historiography of Athenian politics and military.
- [08:22]
Dr. Roll K9
So we know a fair bit about these families, which, I mean, one of the main sources we have is this life. This biography is written by Plutarch in the Roman period who actually says that there are so many of these great commanders of the Athenian empire that we know only by name. We couldn't even mention the names of their mothers. But for Alcibiades we have this huge pedigree because he comes from the absolute, the richest families in Athens, the most powerful, most influential families. And these are families that predate the democracy. Right? They have been powerful for centuries. And so for instance, Kleinias, not his dad, but his uncle, he actually has his own private trireme, like this huge warship that he has sort of self funded into existence.
- [09:01]
Dr. Claire Aubin
So he has an uncle and a father named Cleinias.
- [09:05]
Dr. Roll K9
This often happens. Yeah.
- [09:07]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Okay, just to be clear.
- [09:08]
Dr. Roll K9
Okay, yeah, just to be clear, these names run in the family. So actually there's several people called Alcibiades running around the same time who are Related. And there's also, like, various people called Kleinias in that same family. So this is, you know, at least the sources are aware that this causes confusion. So they will often try to specify, okay, this is Alcibiades, the son of Kleinias and things like that. Okay, yes, His. In his family there was so much wealth that they could afford to have their own private warship that took part in the Persian wars. So that's one of his claims to fame, one of the claims to glory. The commitment to the city was such that they spent this enormous amount of money on essentially something that they couldn't use themselves because you can't do anything with these warships except wage war as part of a larger fleet. So this is them just being this huge part of the. Of the absolute top level, the 1% in ancient Athens, so to speak. And so when his father dies in this war, he is adopted by another one of the great families, the Alcmeonid and the Alid family. So this is the family of Cleisthenes himself, the founder of democracy. Right. This is the family that goes. The earliest event that we know of in Athenian history at all, in the late 7th century, involves the Ocmeonid family. This is like one of the sort of quote unquote aristocratic, these great families of Athens. And so he gets adopted into that, Pericles obviously, being the leading figure at that time. And he more or less takes over power in Athens, effectively. He is the one who's in charge of everything that happens because of his informal power, both as a general and as a speaker in the assembly. This is kind of how it works in the democracy. Right. You don't have a position of like prime minister or anything, president. You just have these people who have influence by virtue of the fact that, you know, the assembly leans to them. They have the ear of the people, essentially.
- [10:56]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah. When I was researching Alcibiades, there are a few other things that I think are sort of notable without. Without necessarily the context of these things being bad, obviously, or of these being why he sucks. But that I think are funny and interesting about him. So he's obviously seen as a sort of shrewd military thinker. And also he's think. Is seen as a sort of thinker in general. He's a student and very close personal friend, slash mentee of Socrates, which is putting it lightly because he was, you know, they were very close friends, as some of us.
- [11:37]
Dr. Roll K9
Very good friends, as historians say. Right. That's very.
- [11:39]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah, very good friends indeed. He's also seen or portrayed as being very handsome and very charming and witty, which, I mean, if we're still talking and thinking about this, this 2,500 years later, good job to him, if that's what he's famous for. He literally gets called what translates to the gorgeous Alcibiades in Plato's Symposium. So even Plato was being like, look, this guy's hot.
- [12:10]
Dr. Roll K9
Plutarch says low bar for Plato, to be fair.
- [12:13]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Well, yeah, true. Plutarch says quote in this, in this biography that he's writing or that he writes later, most of them were plainly smitten with his brilliant youthful beauty and fondly courted him. But it was the love which Socrates had for him that bore strong testimony to the boy's native excellence and good parts. These Socrates saw radiantly manifest in his outward person. And fearful of the influence upon him of wealth and rank and the throng of citizens, foreigners and allies who sought to preempt his affections by flattery and favor, Socrates was fain to protect him and not suffer such a fair flowering plant to cast its native fruit to perdition.
- [13:00]
Dr. Roll K9
Ladies and gentlemen.
- [13:03]
Dr. Claire Aubin
A strong endorsement of, like, what a sort of, like, desirable wealth, A wealthy, desirable, privileged, attractive, in many senses kind of person. He's also an extremely strong orator as part of this too. He's very passionate. He's very good at convincing people to follow him or listen to him. He has a lisp which playwright Aristophanes notices but basically says is very cute and charming. Like, this kid can do no wrong, essentially, particularly early on in his life. One last thing I wanted to mention about this in terms of the what people might know about him or have come across about him. In my episode Prep, he shows up in Plato's Symposium as one of the seven major characters in it who delivers a big speech on the nature of love and relationships. And despite being very, very drunk within the context of the dialogue, this Socratic dialogue, he delivers a whole speech about trying to use his good looks and charm to seduce Socrates and talks about this sort of eroticism of the WISD that Socrates possesses, which in Gen Z terminology would be a world historical crash out. 2,400 years later, we're still talking about this guy being sad that Socrates won't sleep with him. And as an aside, I texted my sister about Alcibiades because she and I were both like, you know, Greek mythology children, if that makes sense. Like, we were the kids who were, like, really into ancient mythology and stuff. So sometimes figures will be someone that she'll have heard of and she said the only thing she knew about Alcibiades was that. And I forgot this. You can peg him in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which I. She said that's the only thing she knew. So if you haven't encountered him before, or if you don't know about him as a military general, you might know him from the symposium or from Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
- [15:14]
Dr. Roll K9
So I knew he was in the game. I didn't know you could peg him. I missed out.
- [15:17]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah. If you play the woman character. The woman version of the character.
- [15:22]
Dr. Roll K9
Right. If you play Cassandra. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so I know he said. So in the time that the game is set, this is like the first. First stage of the Peloponnesian War. So this is sometimes called the Archidamian War, the Ten Year War. During that period, Alcibiades was still young. Like he was in his 20s, and he wasn't. Or maybe like late teens, early 20s, and he wasn't prominent yet. So he was still kind of just a citizen growing up. But what you're saying now is a lot of these things are basically just characteristic of how you grow up as a leisure class young man in Athens. Basically, you spend your time with a bunch of other young men. You try to get the attention of others. You're obviously doing a lot of networking. You're trying to get used to. You're being socialized to the life of an adult citizen by building these networks among other elites, other members of the elite, essentially seeking friends, seeking alliances, seeking people with common interests. And part of that, obviously, is cultivating these kinds of pederastic relationships, these kind of relationships in which you put yourself as a sort of junior romantic partner with someone who's older and who might be able to teach you something or introduce you to certain circles or help you behave the way you're expected to behave in order to become an influential citizen. And so this is the kind of thing that Alcibiades is up to. Essentially. He's building a reputation for himself while getting an education, building up a social network, et cetera. And so all of these kinds of things are part of that. So Plato says that obviously about Alcibiades. He also has an entire dialogue about his cousin Charmides, and how everybody's sort of walking around completely in love with him, and he's sort of everybody's talk of the town, literally, because he's a young rich man growing up, and he's supposed to be very beautiful, and that's what they're all really interested in. Because they think that the people who are beautiful must have some kind of innate greatness. And this is obviously something that also applies to Alcibiades. So they all want to get with him for more reasons than one. He's very wealthy. He has a lot of natural abilities. But also this is kind of all of the things that are associated with potential, with this idea that he's going to live up to a great. He's going to leave a great legacy.
- [17:26]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah. And to be fair, I'm not mentioning any of these things in terms of them being bad or out of the norm either. This is totally, totally normal at this period in time and within this culture. So it's. It's not like it's bad that he's seen as this, like, beautiful, seductive young man. And, in fact, those things are seen as indicators of, like you said, of potential, of future worth, of the strength of his relationships with great thinkers, with great military generals. All of these things are really part of setting him up to be the guy that we know him as today. But I think they're also important to understanding how he is able to do some of the things that he's able to do later. And just the fact that this is the way that we remember him so strong is his relationship to his own attractiveness, both physically and politically. Well, I think we've reached the point where, you tell me what's wrong with him.
- [18:28]
Dr. Roll K9
What's wrong with him.
- [18:29]
Dr. Claire Aubin
The whole rest of the episode.
- [18:33]
Dr. Roll K9
It'S hard to know where to start, obviously, especially after an introduction like that, where you feel like, okay, well, this guy's got absolutely nothing wrong with him. Right. Everything is going his way. There is to some extent, I'm sure that there is, in my own distaste for this man, a level of. I wouldn't call it jealousy so much as just distaste for people who get things so stacked in their favor, right? Like, he grows up rich and super handsome and super talented. Everyone loves him, and everybody wants to be his friend or his lover or his patron or his whatever. Like, he has just this apparent natural magnetism that just makes you go like, oh, come on. Like, just be above that. Be better than that. You know, like, you just, like, you want people to sort of see past that in some way. Especially when you have this anecdote that occurs in Plutarch later on, that there was such a belief in his abilities in general, that if he tried something and didn't succeed, people suspected him of failing on purpose. Like, basically, come on. Right? I mean, there's just such a sort of innate sense of like, okay, this guy can do anything, like anything, doesn't matter what. And like, you know, you want to hate those, you want to hate those guys.
- [19:38]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Right.
- [19:40]
Dr. Roll K9
You always feel like in some way we want to preserve this concept of the world. Like we all have skill points. Right. Like you only have so many.
- [19:48]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Sure. And also like in your. Okay. I think in this, it's like, well, if you can, you can do all these things, you have all these abilities, you have all this money, you have all these connections, surely one would then if they were, you know, us or someone else, surely you would use them for good. But no, very often the answer is not as the opposite.
- [20:09]
Dr. Roll K9
The real reason, right. So anything, setting aside all the rest, the real reason why, you know, why he's, he sucks is it's this, this desire for power, this ambition for, for greatness that he has, which obviously is sort of drilled into him from the outset. It's a very cultural thing. Obviously you can't really necessarily blame him for wanting to be sort of wanting to be famous, wanting to be powerful, etc. That's obviously something that runs in these sort of rich families. But the way he goes about it, ultimately it's completely unscrupulous. Right. He just will do whatever he needs to do in order to glorify himself, create opportunities for himself and further his own personal ambition, his own personal glory. And initially that means essentially driving Athens back to war after they've just made peace and finally finished an extremely costly conflict with Sparta. He is the one who more or less, as far as we're told from the sources, out of a desire to be a general, reignites this conflict. And it takes quite a bit of work by him. He needs to be putting quite a bit of effort to try and engineer and manipulate forces in various different Greek states in order to get people back to the point where they actually want to want to start fighting each other. Just because he wants to take part in a war, you know, just because he wants to be a leader. And obviously in peacetime there's not much glory to be had. So he's just like, you know, destroying the hopes and desires of his own country, leading them on all sorts of hair brain schemes and ill fated expeditions. And ultimately, for various reasons that I'm sure we'll get into, once he actually gets thrown out of Athens, he ends up just straight up betraying them, runs straight to his enemy, to their enemies, starts helping them. When that doesn't work out, runs straight to A third party who's kind of an enemy of both, goes and helps them out, betrays them too, goes back to Athens, betrays them again. He's just running around trying to get sort of some kind of eye score of the number of people these stabbed in the back. Purely because it's never enough for Alcibiades. He's never prominent enough. He gets all these things thrown at him, he gets essentially every card stacked in his favor and it's just never enough for him. And so he keeps on wanting more, he keeps on driving for more of that personal influence and wealth and importance and admiration and everything else that he longs for. And it brings him ultimately to destruction along with basically everyone he's ever encountered, everyone he's ever been, he's ever interacted with. He just ends up being this sort of black hole of misfortune because a figure like him just doesn't fit in the Greek world. Even in this period when Athens is that rich and powerful, it just can't contain. There's a famous saying from the time that, you know, there's no room in Athens for two Alcibiades. There's not even room for one. Really.
- [23:06]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah. And this is also a point where things like, despite wanting power for oneself, there is also a strong emphasis on doing things for the good of your state. Like you can get your own build, fund your own worship because that's a sign that you are dedicated to the well being of your state. But if you are so personally dedicated to your own power, that is not compatible in a lot of ways with what's being sort of espoused in terms of politics and philosophy at this point in time. So it makes sense that he's like, I gotta go somewhere else, I gotta go somewhere else.
- [23:43]
Dr. Roll K9
You know, Persians. Yeah. So I mean, one of the great examples of that is that early on, when he's still quite young, so this run the Olympics of 420, right? So this is still fairly early in his own personal career. He decides because his family is filthy rich, right. Even though his dad died, I mean he inherited just vast amounts of wealth. And so what he decides to do, what you can do for your city even at a young age, is you can sponsor a chariot team, right? You can send them to the Olympic Games. And this is going to be one of the ways in which you can really show off your wealth and gain glory for your city, right? So he sends, instead of sending one chariot team for the greater glory of his city, which is something that, you know, it's quite common also in Sparta. It's something a lot of Greeks would do, rich Greeks, you don't have to be an athlete for it, right? You just throw a lot of money at it, get the best horses, get the best charity team, and then you win and everybody loves you. And he says, that's not enough because I'm not some random rich guy. I'm Alcibiades. So he says, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to send seven chariot teams on his own money, right? Funded by his family's ridiculous wealth, he sends seven teams at once. And they allegedly, they win first, second and fourth prize in the race. So instead of just winning, he just sort of super wins basically.
- [24:56]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Oh my God.
- [24:57]
Dr. Roll K9
Just in order to be able to say, you know, because one of those, the victory, victory itself would have been enough, right? Glory to Athens. Glory to Archibiades. Everybody's happy. But he says, like, you know, I don't just want to win. I want people to know that it was me. I want to do something that no one's ever done. And so that's what he does. And no one ever does it afterwards either. This is really just something that he did as a way to try and be, you know, to do things within the conventional forms of what you might do in order to be, you know, a rich Athenian trying to show their commitment to the state, but in a way that makes everybody say, well, this isn't just some guy doing that thing that we like. This is Alcibiades doing it his way. And so there is such an arrogance to it. This is what always pisses me off about him. On the one hand, what he's doing is exactly what Athens wants. Have stories told about them, about how rich they are, how powerful they are. But it's all in the greater interest of polishing Alcibiades reputation and in a way that no one else can afford to do. So good for him, I guess. But that's.
- [26:02]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I mean, he also, when I was doing research on him, and maybe this is the part of him sort of trying to reignite the Peloponnesian War, or maybe this is part way, partway through that. A big thing he's remembered for outside of the sort of general treachery, is for promoting the sicilian expedition in 415 to 413 BCE. So that's midway through the second Peloponnesian War. Slash the Peloponnesian War.
- [26:33]
Dr. Roll K9
That's right.
- [26:33]
Dr. Claire Aubin
And it's a disaster, right? Like it's this total failure oh, utter disaster.
- [26:39]
Dr. Roll K9
Yeah, yeah. No, it's. I mean, it's hard to overstate it in the sense that practically none of the forces sent out by Athens ever make it home. And that includes a fleet of something like 160 triremes. So half of their fleet, vast amounts of money that they've poured into this, and possibly somewhere in the area of 40,000 people who just don't come home. Like, many of them die during the campaign. Many others are captured, sold into slavery, many others starve to death in captivity. Very few of these people ever get back to Athens or to the Allied states who are also contributing to this expedition. So it's not just catastrophic failure, it's just immense loss of life at a time when Athens was starting to recover from the horrors of the first stage of the Peloponnesian War, so especially the plague at Athens, which had sort of carved a bloody path through the population, they were starting to sort of slowly recover from that. Their finances were starting to recover, and he essentially blew it all on the ridiculous dream of conquering Sicily, which included the city of Syracuse, a city almost as powerful as Athens in a lot of ways, which was able to resist them to the point where that entire expeditionary force was completely destroyed. So this was the point at which Athens, in one go, it loses half of its fleet. That's the moment when Sparta starts to believe that what it previously wasn't able to achieve, namely challenge Athens at sea, is now becoming a feasible thing. So they might actually do that. So where previously Athens was really not at risk, despite the war going on for 10 years, not at risk of really losing its empire at this point, suddenly, this is very much on the cards. Sparta can actually start to try and challenge Athens at sea, which had been unthinkable for decades. And that's pretty much entirely due to the fact that Alcibiades proposed a scheme to them that was just wildly overambitious. And the very Alcibiades thing about it is that pretty much all the historical sources about this, they say if Alcibiades had been allowed to lead the expedition, we could have done it. So they still believe. Right. Even though he essentially conned the assembly into going out into this insane operation to try and conquer Sicily, which know no Greek had ever tried or even contemplated, they still think that if he had only been allowed free reign, you know, he would have pulled it off. Alcibiades, of course, would have pulled it off. The only reason they lost is because Alcibiades got caught up in a terrible Sort of sacrilege lawsuit and had to. Had to essentially abandon the operation. And so the leaders who were left behind to essentially carry out his plans included the older experienced general called Nikias, who was widely discredited for timidity. So he wasn't active, he wasn't proactive enough, he wasn't sort of confident enough. And because of his timid behavior, all was lost in the end, you know, the, the. The Sicilians were able to organize their resistance and that was, that was the end of it.
- [29:33]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah. The issue is not that it was a bad plan, it was simply that the wrong people were. Were doing it, not that it was absolutely doomed from the start.
- [29:43]
Dr. Roll K9
Right. And you know, it worse than that because the. It is said, you know, this is that Thucydides in particular likes to say the historian of this period, so he's our main source for all of this, that because the Athenians were recalling Alcibiades to stand trial, at which point he knew that he had very little chance of coming away with his life. So instead he fled and he fled to Sparta. Obviously not a great look to begin with, but then he told the Sparta, he urged the Spartans to go and help the Syracusans in order to bring about the destruction of the Sicilian expedition. So Alcibiades is credited with both launching and torpedoing this expedition.
- [30:26]
Dr. Claire Aubin
So somehow he still comes out on top regardless, right. In this scenario.
- [30:31]
Dr. Roll K9
One of the things, I mean, this is the other thing, obviously, partly it's his ridiculous sort of fortune of being who he was. Partly it's the actions that he. What he does with that. But it's also partly my frustration with this person as a historical figure is that our sources credit him with such an incredible level of agence in especially in contrast with almost everyone else in this story who is just helpless before whatever he comes up with. Any kind of scheme that he has, they're all just puppets to him, right. They are all playing their part in his grand plan somehow, even though everything he does fails in the end. And so it's very hard to credit him with any kind of 4D chess still. He's credited with basically coming up with all the good ideas for the entire final half of this war on both sides, in fact, in three sides, because he also has all the good ideas for the Persians.
- [31:21]
Dr. Claire Aubin
One of the things I thought was interesting about this also is that he, when you look him up or research him just from a sort of general perspective, things like the Sicilian expedition show up in the plus column for him a lot of times where people will sort of say, oh, and he also did this as just generally part of his military career. And then later when you go and look at the Sicilian expedition, you're like, hold on, this is bad. This goes really poorly, actually.
- [31:49]
Dr. Roll K9
He was there for about three days and then, you know, he took one city which was, you know, anyone could have done it, presumably. And then he had to, you know, flee essentially. Or rather he was recalled home. He was, he was escorted home, but he managed to get away from the people who were escorting him. So he was barely involved in it. He had a plan for it, we're told, but we have no idea how that would have turned out because it wasn't followed, right, because they didn't do it that way. So, you know, it's. It is. He is credited with it just because there is this understanding that, you know, circumstances may have prevented Alcibiades, but Alcibiades surely never prevented Alcibiades from achieving anything.
- [32:27]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Let's get him to Sparta now in the first, sort of, in this first saga of treachery. So he gets in trouble at this point during the beginning of the Sicilian expedition, gets in trouble for allegedly vandalizing religious statues, so engaging in blasphemy and impiety, and is set to face trial for doing this. Unclear whether he did it or not. Is that true? Do we think he did it?
- [32:57]
Dr. Roll K9
Yeah, we really. There's no way to confirm it, of course. All of the surviving material suggests that, you know, accusations were flying everywhere and there was really not a good way to distinguish the true ones from the false ones or even to ascertain to what extent these terrible things were even committed. All we know is that the Herms, these statues that indicate boundaries and are meant to be ward off evil within Athens, they were vandalized. So either their faces or their erect penises were cut off. It's not really clear how they were damaged, but fundamentally that was a huge sacrilege and a very bad omen on the eve of this expedition. And so someone had to obviously pay the price for that, but it wasn't really clear who did it. And at that point there was sort of a big panic in the city and everybody was sort of pointing fingers at everybody else. This fairly quickly came to be associated with the idea that there were people who were not happy with the democracy and so that this was in some way a sign of anti democratic conspiracy. Right. So there is a huge sort of panic among those who preferred democracy, which is obviously the majority of the population in Athens were very ideologically committed to this form of government that were afraid that there were circles among the rich who would prefer a change in the constitution to an oligarchy in which they would have more power and the people would be shut out from power. That's always the thing that happens in these Greek states. And so there was this understanding that it must be among those circles. There's people who meet in their little drinking parties that we're not invited to and then, and whatever it is that they discuss and they talk with these weird philosophers like Socrates who have all these crazy ideas in which, you know, up is down and the gods don't exist and all that kind of things that people believed he believed regardless of what he actually preached or argued for. And so there was a suspicion of all of that. And so it's almost kind of natural that Alcibiades, who's one of the most prominent figures in those circles, would be implicated. You know, he's. Or he had old friends in all those circles. He must have known people who didn't like democracy. He must have been involved with anything that might have happened if it did happen. And so it's not surprising to find his name on that list. But obviously at that point for him, he kind of knows that this court is pretty stacked against him. He's not going to be able to get away with, even with innocence, they're just not going to believe that he didn't do it, that he wasn't involved. And so that's why he flees to Sparta.
- [35:26]
Dr. Claire Aubin
So after he gets in trouble for allegedly vandalizing these things, he defects to Sparta, which by the way, are the people who killed his father. I think that needs to be clear. He immediately leaves for the people who killed his father in this first Peloponnesian War and is like, you know, who, who I should talk to those guys. So we already can see that a level of loyalty just is non existent here.
- [35:51]
Dr. Roll K9
Yeah, I mean, the weirder part actually, I mean, not weirder in the sense where he must have had some sort of emot regarding this. But in fact, one of the things that really surprised us about this is he actually cheated the Spartan emissaries out of an earlier treaty which they thought they were going to make with the Athenians essentially lying to them about what he was going to say in the assembly and then bringing them into the assembly to say the wrong thing and then accusing them of saying so. It's a sort of long story of how he sort of put them in a position where they Thought they were going to get one thing, and then he just completely pulled the rug out from under them in order to further his own position and his own political plans. And so, I mean, you might have expected this Spartans to be like, well, this guy, he's, you know, he's treacherous. You can't trust him. Like, obviously we shouldn't want to work with this guy, but he somehow managed to convince them that he was trustworthy and had good advice to offer. And what we're told, you know, Thucydides gives him a long speech at Sparta, how he knew that that speech was delivered. Maybe he was there too, he was in exile at this point. But one of the main points he makes is that he is an opponent of democracy, actually. And so this is kind of, this ties in with the earlier accusation that he was involved in some kind of conspiracy to overthrow the Athenian democracy. It's the idea that as a rich man, he understands, obviously because he has the better education and he's connected to all the better people, whatever, he believed that democracy is foolishness and that it should come to a stop, there is better ways to run Athens. And so that's how he convinces the Spartans that he is sufficiently critical of his home city to be a potential worthy advisor. And so we obviously don't know the truth of it. What we can say is that there are many people of that sort of social circle. You know, people like Thucydides himself, people like Aristophanes, you know, these rich dudes who represent the vast majority of our source material. They were very critical of democracy, all of them were. And all of them had the understanding, this sort of belief that it would be better if the rich, who were obviously the best people and the most suited for this, if the rich had more power and the poor had less. And that is generally just their understanding of how the world works. And so you have to imagine that when Thucydides writes about Alcibiades, he's not a neutral observer, he's writing about someone like him. He is also a member of one of the richest families in Athens. He's also one of those people who has ambitions to prominence which were thwarted by the democracy. And so they have a lot of affinity for each other, right? They're very much the same kind of people. So this is very much like the sort of old boys network of people who went to the same private school and afterwards kind of have a certain, although it's maybe not fully acknowledged, but a certain disdain for everybody who didn't go to that kind of. That's very much the kind of people that we're talking about here. Right.
- [38:42]
Dr. Claire Aubin
And I mean, I think there's also some historical continuity now also with the idea that, like, even Athenian democracy and what we hold up as. As being the experience of Athenian democracy and how different things are now from that and how far we've strayed from it. Actually, the people who are living and participating in Athenian democracy were also being like, man, I wish poor people had less say in what we were doing. There actually is some historical continuity in some of these things. Things.
- [39:10]
Dr. Roll K9
Oligarch's good. Oligarch. Yeah.
- [39:12]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Well, yeah. So he goes to Sparta. I don't know how to pronounce this word. So let's see here. He. He recommends that they fortify Desolaya. How do I say that? Oh, I got so close. He recommended they fortify Decalea in Attica, which is a sort of crucial move that devastates the Athenian countryside. Again, the switch to immediately being pro Sparta anti Athens is so fast, so much so that he's willing to really sacrifice the people that he's just spent his whole life being admired by and having power over. He then, like you said, or maybe this is earlier, he advises aiding Syracuse against Athens in Sicily. So both plans the Sicilian expedition or suggests it and then is responsible for its failure. Like he. Yeah, it can. I think it's pretty clear that this guy is out for himself and everything's coming up Alcibiades.
- [40:26]
Dr. Roll K9
He's turned. Yeah. No, he's very completely sort of swapped allegiances at this point. And, you know, all of these people are trying to bend over backwards to make excuses for him, like, oh, he had no choice. You know, this is the only way to convince the Spartans that he was willing to. I mean, he could have done a lot less, I think.
- [40:41]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Well, yeah.
- [40:42]
Dr. Roll K9
And so you can do two things. You can either suspect this tradition, that it was all his idea, you know, the fortification of Dekaleia, which was a fatal moment of Athens essentially losing access to its own countryside because there was a foreign garrison planted in their territory. And then the specific things that needed to happen in order to allow the Syracusans to win their war against the Athenians. I mean, all of that is credited to Alcibiades himself. And you can always wonder, are we sure that they needed him to tell them this? I mean, couldn't they have had those ideas themselves? Possibly. But this is the tradition we have, right? That it was all Alcibiades and he volunteered just some really Good advice on both fronts. And allowed the Spartans to sort of even the odds, you know, to make it so that they could seriously threaten Athenian power for the first time.
- [41:29]
Dr. Claire Aubin
And he's also, it's clear, willing to sacrifice, as we said, thousands and thousands of lives in order to avoid making any concession that would require to him, that would require him to live a slightly worse life. Like he's willing to literally kill thousands and thousands of people or let thousands and thousands of people be sacrificed in order for him to still have political power, to still be wealthy, to still basically have all of the. Obviously, Spartan lifestyles are a little bit different than Athenian lifestyles at this point, but to have, you know, all of the pleasures and comforts of the life he had before. So when we say, well, he couldn't have done anything else, I think he probably could.
- [42:09]
Dr. Roll K9
Oh, yeah. And I mean, like, you can compare him to other people who are thrown out of Athens. Right. I mean, obviously he's fearing for his life if he ever goes back home. Sure. But he is, let's not forget, massively wealthy. Right. His property in Athens has been confiscated. But these people always manage to find ways to sort of get. Get their friends to patronize them if they need to. So, you know, people get thrown out of Athens, they will just retire to whatever land holdings they might have elsewhere in the empire or elsewhere outside the empire, or they will go to some court of some king and say, hey, I'm an influential and important person, but they threw me out. Can you look after me until I can, you know, further your interests with regard to them. You know, you flee to Persia, you flee to Thrace, you can do all sorts of. All manner of things. But Alcibiades, as I said, just makes a beeline for the Spartans and then starts telling them how they can win the war against Athens. I mean, he clearly doesn't care. Right. This idea that he is somehow doing all of this for the great of his fatherland, as Plutarch would have it, you know, everything he does ultimately is in the interest of Athens. Obviously not.
- [43:09]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah. Just clearly not true.
- [43:11]
Dr. Roll K9
No way.
- [43:12]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Because it's also the things that he later does, because there is a whole. As we said, and we'll get to in just a second, there's this whole return to Athens arc. He does all kinds of stuff. Some of the things that he does could not have been anticipated at the point that he goes to Sparta. So it's not like he knows that these things are. These options are going to be available to him. And it's also not like he's creating them for himself so much as he's kind of like tricking all these other people into doing the things that he wants them to do, or finding a way for there to be a popular narrative about him being this sort of like, shrewd, clever person. And I mean, you mentioned though, they could go somewhere else and ask someone to kind of look after them until they, until they're accepted back into the fold or while they further interest or whatever. He's also not asking people to just look after him. He's saying, how can I destroy the people that kicked me out or. And this didn't exile him, he's self exiled, right?
- [44:12]
Dr. Roll K9
Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, this is where he probably would have been sentenced to death. So that's not necessarily a choice. But there are so many places you can go. Right. There are literally hundreds of states in the Greek world world. And there are others that are known to receive people who have been exiled from their home states because those are assets. Right. Those are people you can use later. Those are people you can turn. And so there's a lot of ways in which you could almost go anywhere if you're a wealthy, prominent figure from a certain state. But you got thrown out. I mean, Thucydides himself got exiled. As I said, it's always assumed that he just sort of travels around. He goes to Sparta, he goes other places, he hangs around in his establishment states in Thrace. I mean, there's nothing stopping Alcibiades from going literally anywhere in the world. But no, he goes to Sparta. And then of course, he has the genius idea that he should seduce the Spartan king's wife.
- [45:00]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I was gonna say, I was so excited. Yeah. The most dramatic trigger for his downfall is that he has an affair with the Spartan king's wife and possibly fathers her baby.
- [45:14]
Dr. Roll K9
Yep. I mean, that's pretty definite. He is later denied the throne because he's Alcibiades kid. So, yeah, Timea is the name of this queen. And we don't know anything about how this happens or how he even gained sort of access to that household. But fundamentally, he has an affair with the Spartan king's wife. And allegedly, you know, his reasoning for it is that he wanted his descendants to be kings in Sparta. So again, not just doing it for the lulz or because he's just really attracted to this lady or anything, it's like. No, no, no, no.
- [45:50]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Alcibiades, he's playing the long game here, right?
- [45:55]
Dr. Roll K9
No, but it's all about him. He always wants to do something that no one else has done before. He always wants to do something that shouldn't be possible. And, you know, this has huge implications because the person who gets that throne instead, Agisilaus, is one of the most prominent kings of the 4th century BC. He rules for more than 40 years. And so this is a huge figure in Spartan history that gets the throne because the son of AGI's can't get the throne because he's a bastard.
- [46:21]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I mean, it's also like, it's just so funny because there are also accounts of. So King AGIs II, who is the king, who's there at the time that he is, that Alcibiades is Sparta, had already kind of started to dislike him because he was too, you know, cosmopolitan. He's too, you know, fancy.
- [46:46]
Dr. Roll K9
I would dislike him.
- [46:47]
C
He sounds horrible.
- [46:48]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I mean, he sounds like a fun guy at a party, but that's kind of it. Like, as a person wouldn't like him that much, but sounds like a sleaze ball.
- [46:55]
Dr. Roll K9
Yeah.
- [46:55]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Well, also that maybe not. Maybe I'm being too generous here. Maybe I just like fun, hot people. But he basically like, like. And who, who doesn't. But he basically, you know, Agus is seeing him as this person who is bringing Athenian lifestyles to Sparta, expecting Sparta, who famously do not live like this. We literally still will use Spartan to describe minimalist homes. Like, they're not living the way that Athenians are living. He doesn't like that. And then he bangs his wife. Like, that's like, what? Obviously you're going to get kicked out of someone's house.
- [47:31]
Dr. Roll K9
Obviously, you literally rely on their goodwill. Right. So, you know, what you should do.
- [47:37]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Is sleep with their spouse.
- [47:40]
Dr. Roll K9
Absolutely. Like bang their wife. That's obviously the way to show gratitude. Right.
- [47:44]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah. And Spartan leaders are understandably bothered by this.
- [47:48]
Dr. Roll K9
Yeah. And they're known for their kindness, you know. Spartan leaders.
- [47:52]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Well, yeah.
- [47:53]
Dr. Roll K9
Very forgiving types.
- [47:55]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah. Famously in all movies presented as really.
- [47:58]
Dr. Roll K9
Kind, gentle, very chill, extremely chill dudes. Yeah.
- [48:02]
Dr. Claire Aubin
And in response to the Spartan leadership being angry with him for fathering a bastard child of the queen, et cetera, et cetera, he skedaddles over to Persia. Yeah.
- [48:13]
Dr. Roll K9
Because what's your option if you're not welcome at home and you're not welcome in Sparta? Well, go to like, literally the ancestral enemy of everyone, you know, so it.
- [48:21]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Goes to the Achaemenid Empire and starts doing the same thing there, basically, and trying to advise them on military and political stuff, which is just so wild. And he's mostly using them again to get back at Athens. Initially. That's what he's trying to make happen, is he's using them to get back at Athens, and then he starts brokering negotiations between Persia and Athens. Is that right? Trying to follow all of this was crazy complicated.
- [48:52]
Dr. Roll K9
Yeah. So what's happening is that this war is breaking out again between Athens and Sparta. Right. So this Peloponnesian War is flaring up again. The Spartans are trying to challenge Athens at sea. And everybody knows by this point, and they have known for a long time, that the only way they can realistically do that is if they can get an income stream to match that of the tribute that comes out of the Athenian empire. So they need money, because naval warfare is literally the single most expensive thing you can do in the ancient world. There's nothing more expensive than naval warfare because it has huge crews. Basically, you need to pay them. And so what everybody knows is that where do you get money? Well, where the money grows, which is Persian. Persia. Persia has infinite funds, functionally, from a Greek perspective. And this isn't actually true, necessarily. And the Persian king has a sort of varied reputation as a paymaster, but everybody knows he has loads of cash. He has more cash than you do. It doesn't matter who you are. That's just a fact. He's the most powerful man in the world. He has the largest empire that has ever existed. And so if you need money, you go to Persia, you ask them, would you like to support my cause, please? And the Persians are starting to figure out that if they want to stabilize their western frontier, one of the best ways to do that is not to get involved themselves, themselves, which has obviously gone very badly that century, but rather to essentially have people represent their interests for them, essentially act as vassals. And to some extent, even though the Athenians consider themselves to be enemies of the Persians for a large part of that period, they kind of fulfill that role because they create political stability by conquering everything. And it's the Peloponnesian War that upsets that balance. And so at that point, they have to get involved in order to try and sway the balance. And so they decide on the advice of Alcibiades, in part or initially, they think, okay, we should prop up the Spartan bid for naval supremacy because they can push back on these Athenians, and then we can reclaim control over the western Asia Minor, so what is now the coast of Turkey. So that sounds great for the Persians, right? Weaker Athens, Persia wins. Alcibiades advises them Actually what you should do is not put all of your chips on Sparta essentially, but support Sparta in a very sort of lukewarm, kind of hesitant way so that Sparta can make the challenge but also not really win that war. And so if you weaken both sides, then Persia can sort of step in and take whatever it wants. And that's Alcibiades advice to Tissaphernes, who is the satrap, kind of the governor of this region in southwestern Turkey. And so Tissaphernes, like that sounds like a good plan. And so that's what he does. So there's various negotiations initially with the Spartans where they try to settle on a wage that he's going to pay the sailors of the Spartans in order to fight the Athenians. But that is all a political ploy in order to essentially strengthen Sparta, but not enough to really defeat the Athenians. And so they end up being very sort of hesitant to give them all of the resources that they have at their disposal. Instead they sort of drip feed them little bits here and there. They promise help but don't give it. They say our fleet's coming to help you, but it never materializes. There's this huge debate in the sources over whether the Persian fleet ever existed. Because he's always saying, oh no, it's in Sicily, it's coming, it's on the way, and it just never shows up. Right, Great. Fucking great. Like I love that trick, you know, you can always say, oh, the fleet, no, no, no, we're building it, you know, it's coming together. You just the checks in the mail, you know, exactly. Like couple of months, you know. You know, I know a guy who knows a guy who says they're just around the corner. It's really like this kind of manipulation in order to make the Spartans feel that they're supported, but also not really support them. And that is supposed to be Alcibiades advice again, because he has all the good ideas. But it means that essentially Athens and Sparta, for that duration of that ploy, for the duration of that strategy, are sort of locked in a war that neither of them can win and are absolutely bleeding money and manpower because the only thing they can then do is essentially just fight a war of attrition over who gets to control the islands of the Aegean. And so that's a bad time for all involved.
- [52:48]
Dr. Claire Aubin
One of the things that really struck me, or strikes me in general when looking at ancient history and warfare, just in the pre modern and pre modernity sort of era in general, is we've Gotten soft in terms of how long we think wars take now. Because the Second Peloponnesian War, slash, the Peloponnesian War, lasts two decades, two and a half decades.
- [53:13]
Dr. Roll K9
Yeah. 27 years. Yeah. Although it's a bit of a construct. So it's 10 years of war, 7 years of peace, and another 10 years of war technically. And those are, you know, there's a serious stretch of peace in the middle which the Sicilian expedition fits into. So it's technically two wars. And the Greeks tend to talk about it as two wars, actually. So. So it's only Thucydides, the historian, who has sort of grouped this together and said, no, no, no, this is one story. You have to understand this as a single narrative. So that is where we get the idea of this 27 year war. But actually it's kind of two sets of nine to 10 years, essentially.
- [53:49]
Dr. Claire Aubin
And then the Sicilian expedition kicks it back off also, which is wild because it could have been much shorter. But I think it's just interesting that he's able to do all of these things in part because he, like, I just. Okay, I can't imagine now being like, well, this war we're going to be in decade, couple decades, who knows? Like, that's not something that we are now particularly accepting of because we're not for the most part squabbling over like a couple of islands or a city state or whatever. Not squabbling. It's probably not 40,000 people are dying. So I don't know if we're using the word squabble on this, but, you know, it's. It is. I think it does help to sort of unintentionally, it ends up reinforcing this division people feel now between how humans behave now and how humans used to behave. Because we look at things like that and think, well, wars were so different, things were so different. But also things like travel take longer. They don't have drones that they can strike people with and stuff. So there's, you know, the war itself takes longer.
- [54:50]
Dr. Roll K9
You have to imagine, like warfare for the most part doesn't continue year round because it's not safe to sail in the winter. So, like a lot of these conflicts actually just go on pause for like four to six months every year and then they flare up again. So you have this sort of weird rhythm in which sometimes some people go off to war and other times they're just sort of sitting at home waiting for the next campaign season or they're in winter quarters somewhere and they're not doing anything. So to some extent the drain is more financial than anything else. But of course there is also just this constant sense that you're not safe, you can't travel, you can't trade very easily. There's a lot of people who you might know who are on campaign who are obviously happy that they're making a regular wage, but then they're also risking their lives and the effects are really quite lasting in terms of demographic effects. The Athenian citizen population is permanently cut in half by this war, so they lose half of their population to plague and war losses in terms of our best estimates of how big the citizen body is before and after. So this is absolutely massive considering that Athens is the largest of the states of the Greek world. So it's devastating. And the fact that it goes on that long is absolutely in part due to Alcibiades wanting to have the glory of being a great general and a leader. For Athens or for anyone else, as far as I can tell anyone else they can find who's willing to back him.
- [56:15]
C
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D
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Dr. Roll K9
By texting 64,000, you agree to receive.
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D
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Dr. Roll K9
Available@pockethost.com terms.
- [58:05]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah, and you have Alcibiades being like, you know what I wish was happening. I'm a little bored of this piece and I'm not gaining political power. Let's start it back up. And you know, the long term devastation of that and just, even, even the short term devastation. Like we say this a lot on the show, but it really emphasizes the idea that for large, often revered political and military thinkers like Charlemagne or Alcibiades, the individuals who are dying, who are as much people as, like, a person who dies or a serf is as much of a person as Charlemagne is a person or as Alcibiades is a person, any normal Athenian citizen is as much a person as Alcibiades is a person. But in his mind they are not or they are expendable in a way that he is not. And the way he behaves shows that, like, very strongly demonstrates that he does not feel that they are as important as him because they are easy for him to sacrifice. Easy for him to sacrifice in order to simply further his own aims.
- [59:13]
Dr. Roll K9
Yeah, there's definitely evidence that he does some of that on purpose. Right. So when the Melians surrender to Athens after they've been attacked completely unprovoked, this island of Milos, which had been neutral during the first stage of the Peloponnesian war, then in 416, the Athenians sail out and go and subject it essentially just because they can and because it's a neutral state that hasn't been subjected to them yet.
- [59:34]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yet.
- [59:36]
Dr. Roll K9
And when the city finally starved out and surrenders, the Athenians basically decide to, as they often do when a city surrenders to them, to kill all the male citizens and to sell the women and children into slavery. And that is something that we're told is specifically in the case of Milos, is on the advocacy of Alcibiades, who is like, this is how we should treat the surrendered population. Because you have a choice. Like when the population surrenders, a message is sent back saying, what should we do with them? And there are different options. You know, there are cases in the Peloponnesian War, where the population essentially sent off or removed, essentially, they were sort of told like, okay, you can take a tunic and two drachmae and fuck off. And that's one of the ways to resolve the siege, and then the Athenians will settle the land. But in this case, he's just like, no, no, no. Just. Just kill them all.
- [60:24]
Dr. Claire Aubin
He's the worst.
- [60:28]
Dr. Roll K9
He's not the only one who makes those decisions. Right. That's never true in the Athenian democracy in particular. No one is making by decisions, even generals on campaign. Usually there's a board of generals, right? So usually there are several. They have to agree on policy. So there's rarely a single person that you can say, okay, that guy, he did it. But at the same time, you know, he's willing to advocate policies like that, you know, genocidal policy. Literally just saying, this polis, this city state of Milos shouldn't exist.
- [60:56]
Dr. Claire Aubin
We should just kill all of them. Yeah. And I mean, even if there are a board of generals, we're talking about al Kabaidi, he's 2000 years later because he has this influence and is remembered in these certain ways.
- [61:10]
Dr. Roll K9
In fact, I mean, there is, in Greek history, there develops a title of one general who stands above the rest. So there's a board of generals that are elected each year, but one of them can be, in some cases pronounced Strategos autocratur, which is single ruling general or supreme general, essentially. And guess who's our first attested figure to be awarded disposition?
- [61:33]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Shut up. Is it Alcibiades? That is ridiculous.
- [61:39]
Dr. Roll K9
Of course it is. So this is later on, right? I mean, we're skipping ahead a little bit. But when he, through his machinations with the. With the Persians, manages to regain the confidence of the Athenians, that he can do something for them, essentially by saying, I'm big friends with Tissaphernes over here, who's the satrap who has all these resources. I can get him to choose your side instead of the Spartan side. They say, that's great, Alcibiades. Make it happen. And at that point, they actually the fleet first of all. And then later the city itself elects him Strategos Autocrato, which is the first time we encounter that title anywhere in the Greek sources. So it's Alcibiades who gets to be pronounced. We might compare it to a rank like field marshal, someone who stands above the generals. But this is effectively saying you have more power than anyone else in Athens at that point. You have the power to overrule the other general. General. There is no check on this, right? There is nothing except for the fact that the term still runs out. Okay? So at the end of the year, he needs to be reelected. But that's it. That's the only reason. There's the only limitation to his power that exists at that point, because they just. He's better than everyone else, just like.
- [62:46]
Dr. Claire Aubin
He does, just for timeline continuity, so that people know when this is happening, when he becomes this sort of like, supreme general. So he. He's brokering negotiations between Persia and Athens. And so he's playing a really dangerous game here. Athens, Sparta and Persia all have strong feelings about him and some kind of relationship to him. And then he starts negotiating in earnest with the Athenians. It's already clear that he's trying to get back in with Athens. And in order to be elected this sort of supreme, singular general, he makes a speech to assembled troops where he complains about being exiled. He starts off this speech because we have, like, some evidence of the speech or there's. It's written like something.
- [63:31]
Dr. Roll K9
There's a version of it.
- [63:32]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah, yeah, there's a version. Yeah. He complains about being exiled and then he brags about his relationship with Persian Satrap Tissaphernes. So he. His first speech back to Athenians en masse is to be like, this is stupid that I've been exiled. You guys are idiots. I can't believe I've had to go through this. This is ridiculous. Also, look at this friend I made. You should let me back in. And they go, not only are we going to let you back in, we're going to put you in charge.
- [64:02]
Dr. Roll K9
Yep, yep. No, it's worse than that, right? Initially, because it is actually worse than that, because initially they seem to think, and it's not really clear what the connection is between his views and what happens in Athens, but they seem to think that, or he may have suggested to them that the Persians would more happily deal with the Athenians if they weren't a democracy. Right, because they think that oligarchies are more trustworthy. And so he actually prompts a revolution in Athens in which democracy is overthrown and the reign of the 400 is instated. And he immediately says, oh, no, I didn't mean it, and chooses the side of the fleet which rebels against the city at that point. It's a fascinating moment in history where essentially the armed forces mutiny against the home government, because the armed forces, the fleet contains a very significant chunk of the citizen body, but the home Authorities essentially overthrow democracy and instate an oligarchic regime in the hope that that will give them a better chance of negotiating with Persia. Persia through Alcibiades. So, you know, the first time. Oh my God. I mean, we're here for a reason.
- [65:04]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah, that is wild. Okay, so then there's a lot of naval battles. There's the siege of Byzantium happens.
- [65:14]
Dr. Roll K9
I should point out the rule of 400 is very quickly sort of deactivated, disbanded, because I mean, obviously it immediately defended, evolves into a reign of terror and nobody likes it very much. So it. It is. I mean, you know, however many people die in this regime as well, we're not actually told Alcibiades, chalk it up. Add it to the list.
- [65:35]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Add it to the body count for this.
- [65:37]
Dr. Roll K9
All fine. Everybody's happy with Alcibiades still. So that regime is overthrown and then there's. First there's an interim regime and then the democracy is eventually restored. But that's only after some of these naval victories, which regain. Allows the people to regain gain confidence that actually Athens still has a chance. And so there's several naval battles which reverse Athens chances in the war. They actually destroy the Spartan fleet and then they start retaking parts of that empire. So Alcibiades has a very clear role to play in that. Which is probably one of the reasons why anyone would say anything good about him is because in those campaigns, and we're talking about the years 410 to 408 BC, he's actually very successful. He manages to recover huge stretches of territory around the Hellespont, around, you know, where now today is sort of Istanbul, the Sea of Marmaris, Gallipoli peninsula, that area. He regains that for Athens.
- [66:29]
Dr. Claire Aubin
So there's. Yeah, he goes back to Athens, does all of these things straight back to battle and like, he's right back in that. And not in a sort of advisory role like he has been in Athens and Sparta in more of like in charge of what's. What's happening. There's one. He flees once again at one point. So how does he get from more battles and being in charge of them to the annihilation of his fleet and his final sort of flight to another state.
- [67:03]
Dr. Roll K9
We're skipping a few. So one is crippling mismanagement, which is may or may not be be laid at his feet. But obviously, given the theme of the podcast, I'm gonna sure. So essentially, right, the Athenians put him in charge of the fleet. They send him out with a Huge fleet. After he comes home, he's basically accepted again into the Athenian citizen body after his exile because of his achievements, right? So he's kind of worried about what they're gonna do, but they embrace him. And so he then decides, okay, well, you know, they make him this sort of supreme general, and they send him out again. There is actually a lot of division among the Athenian population, which every source of stress is there is this real sense of, like, okay, some people are really happy that he's back, and other people are like, we're fucked. Now, this guy is definitely, understandably, right. We have to imagine, like, what they're assuming is that Alcibiades is aiming for the tyranny, right? And this is something that happens in a lot of Greek states throughout the period archaic and classical, sort of throughout these centuries. Sometimes wealthy citizens become so convinced of their own superiority over their peer citizens that they try to seize absolute power. And that happens in this period as well, very prominently. It happens at Syracuse just a few years after they defeat the Athenians. So a very, very capable commander named Dionysius comes to power, becomes tyrant of Syracuse, and remains that for about 40 years. So you have these kind of figures who become the sort of sole rulers of their territory. Now, when that happens, obviously, you know, suspend all civil liberties. At that point, you are absolutely at the mercy of these single rulers. And so. So Athens, which has long been this sort of center of democratic ideology and which has long enjoyed the benefits of ruling an empire and being a democracy, so having quite a lot of civic liberties sort of afforded to them by the means that are at their disposal, they're facing the possibility that this guy, because of his wealth, his prominence, his good reputation, his friendship, his connections, and his massive track record of military victories, this is exactly what normally is. The kind of person who would normally go for that tyranny, right? That's the kind of stack of background elements or things that they've achieved that would lead people to think, okay, now I can go for it and I can seize power here. And so that's what they're worried Alcibiades will do, that he's going to seize the tyranny of Athens after 100 years of demon democracy with one short interruption. That was entirely his fault. So you basically have that very real threat, I think. But he doesn't. He does get sent out again as a general. He does sail out again in charge of a fleet. But then the problem is that he has to manage a lot of different interests at the same time. He also has to manage sort of fund collection essentially to be able to afford this huge fleet that he gets sent out with. And so at one point, he leaves his own subordinate it, not one of the other generals, but his helmsman, so a professional sailor essentially in charge of the entire fleet. While he's out gathering money, this guy is expressly told, don't sail out and face the Spartans. So what does he do? He sails out and challenges the Spartans. Battle ensues. The Athenians suffer some losses. It's not really crippling, but they suffer some losses. And they all blame Alcibiades, right? So they all say, what the hell, you left. This is completely irresponsible. This is a neglect of your duties. No, you can't possibly do this. They don't actually get to punish him because he just sort of decides to leg it at that point. So he sails off to his little private fortress in the Chersonese, which he has, which is nice. If you're a rich man, you can just build a private fortress. He's not the first one to do it. In fact, not even the first Athenian to do it. So he goes off, he totals off to his private fortress in the Chersonese and leaves things as they are. The Athenians recover from this. They actually send other generals out, and they win a great victory at Argynusi the following year. So they actually destroy the Spartan fleet again, which is the weird final stage of the Peloponnesian War. But at that point, they are basically out of money. They can't afford this anymore. So they really need a decision. While the Spartans, I mean, they essentially have managed to find the money to the infinite money tree, because young Cyrus, the prince, the son of Darius ii, who's the great king of Persia, gets sent down to the coast with a giant bag of money and gets told, just make it stop. Just give everything the Spartans want, absolutely fund them to the hilt so that they can actually finally win this. Because we're tired of, obviously, all the disruption, all the raiding, all the campaigning, all the manpower losses and all the resources that are being squandered in this endless conflict. Conflict. And so they basically said, we'll decide in favor of Sparta, and then we'll see what we do. So that seems to be what the Persians decide. And that's why Cyrus, who is at this point, it should be noted, 16 years old, gets sent down to the coast to settle the business. Because nothing says, I have absolute contempt for you and your tiny, tiny little states, you bunch of babies than to send your teenage son to go and settle your two decade war. Like he wasn't even born when it started. It's cool. I love this. I love it so much. Cyrus, who is clearly definitely a very capable person, does this essentially. Well, yeah, with the help of the Spartan admiral Lysander. So eventually they manage at this final battle called the Battle of Agus Potamoi, to catch the Athenian fleet unawares and destroyed. And that is effectively the end of the war. Athens is then besieged and has to surrender after about eight months.
- [72:40]
Dr. Claire Aubin
There's an interesting quote from Aristophanes that he says about Alcibiadiades, which I think is really interesting and sort of highlights a lot of his life, which is that Athens yearns for him and hates him too, but wants him back, which is like this. He has a toxic relationship with Athens as a sort of general state and they have a weird toxic relationship with him too. And it leads to all of this destruction. After this annihilation of the Athenian fleet, or upon the annihilation of the Athenian fleet, he flees once again to Phrygia. Right, right.
- [73:16]
Dr. Roll K9
This is the final flight of Alcibiades, which is because he's worried that basically the regime that gets set up in Athens, obviously Sparta is victorious at this point. Sparta hates him anyway. The Athenians have imposed on them an even worse oligarchy called the regime of the 30, which is essentially a Spartan puppet regime, which also hates him because they're worried that if anyone can upset this situation in Athens and maybe even overthrow this puppet regime, it's going to be Alcibiades. Because everybody loves him so much, even though they hate him and they don't know what he's going to do with the power that they might give him. So they're very worried about what he's going to do. They're looking for him. And then the Persians also are kind of, you know, looking to settle accounts with this guy, understandably. Right, right. But he imagines that he can still persuade either the satrap Pharnabazos, who is in the northwest of Turkey, or even the great king himself, who is Artaxerxes at this point, Artaxerxes ii, that he can be a useful asset to them. So he decides to flee to the Persian Empire and he tries to get permission, because you need permission to use the royal roads, you need sort of satirical sponsor to be able to go to the Persian Corps court. Someone needs to essentially vouch for you. So he wants to petition Pharnabazos, the satrap to be allowed to go to the. To go to Susa where they think the Persian capital is. Where it is sometimes. Basically he wants to go and talk to Artaxerxes and say, look, I can be useful to you. So he's chilling in Phrygia, waiting for his permission to come down, at which point they find him. Yeah.
- [74:50]
Dr. Claire Aubin
At which point he is very brutally assassinated. So I would also like to point out because it's, it's important to understand the timescale on this. He's 46, at the end of his life. He's done all of this by 46y.
- [75:07]
Dr. Roll K9
Still handsome.
- [75:08]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Probably still, I'm sure, still handsome. So he, in 404, his house slash compound thing that he's staying in with his mistress gets surrounded and set on fire. He runs outside. Sorry, go ahead.
- [75:21]
Dr. Roll K9
He runs outside literally with his mistress over one arm and a sword in the other. Right.
- [75:25]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Well, yeah. What else did you do?
- [75:28]
Dr. Roll K9
His assassins refuse. Firstly, they refuse to go in the house to kill him because they're afraid of him. And then when he comes out like that, you know, from a burning house with a woman over his arm and a sword in his hand, they refuse to approach him. They don't want to fight him in sort of hand to hand combat. So they just shoot him down with arrow.
- [75:46]
Dr. Claire Aubin
You know, it sounds like it's, it's a very sort of like movie scene esque ending. But also really like kind of disrespectful too, to be like, let's just set his house on fire. It's like if someone was like, I don't really want to deal with this guy. I'm just gonna blow him up kind of vibe where get rid of him. Yeah, they're like, let's just. They like Rasputin him. Or they're like, just do whatever. We're tired of this. We need to get, we need this to be done, you know, I mean.
- [76:18]
Dr. Roll K9
Who knows, you might have set them up against each other or something if they.
- [76:20]
Dr. Claire Aubin
He would befriend them. Yeah, we know. Yeah, we are like not incredibly overtime necessarily. This will just be a really long episode. But I think it's important that we kind of of do a wrap up moment. Here is the list of things that I think contribute to this guy sucking. And you can tell me if there's more you want to add to the list. I have reckless, opportunistic, disloyal, incredibly manipulative, philandering, mostly cared about personal glory. He's romanticized as a leader despite the fact that There are all these other chicks that he messed up and how. How frequently he failed at the things he was leading in.
- [77:07]
Dr. Roll K9
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [77:08]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Anything else to add?
- [77:10]
Dr. Roll K9
Yeah, I mean, the point I'd like to pick up is because Plutarch makes a point of stressing, like, oh, but the Athenians thought. I mean, you know, even if it was Alcibiades, there were just no other experienced generals that they might use. You know, who else are they going to draw on? And then you're reading the accounts from Xenophon and Thucydides, and you're like, wait, it keeps seeing the same names. I mean, it's Thrasylos, Theramenes, Thrasybulus, Conon. All of these generals who are clearly very experienced, very capable, some of them have heroic roles to play in the immediate future in the rest of Athenian history. And so you're just like, no, you had your pick of the litter. You really didn't have to go back to Archibiades.
- [77:46]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah. And again, he dies at 46. So, like, when we're saying experience, that's relative, because he's also being cast as this, like, great thinker, experience leader in his early 20s. Like, he's being presented as someone who can make all these decisions. And then later they say, well, he's so experienced, but the way he got the experience in the first place was by being handed these opportunities. So it all ends up in this really sort of cyclical logic about how great he is.
- [78:16]
Dr. Roll K9
Yeah. And, I mean, this is where I always come back to the fact. I mean, he's just immensely privileged. Right. Like, he is just growing up with this enormous privilege of being from this immensely wealthy family, being patronized by the literal leader of the Athenians, you know, being adopted into the family, the most prominent family of the city. You know, having his looks in his favor, having his oratorical skills in his favor, having this massive range of connections that he can use, he can draw on. So, like, he helps. He just has every possible advantage. And the only thing, the only conclusion he drew from that is, like, I should be greater than all these people. They should think more about me than they should about themselves or about anyone else in our. Our history. I mean, this. This feels like a vast abuse of power. And the fact that anybody's in these sources is making excuses for him and saying, actually it was all because he was so great and he had such. Such noble goals, not such noble outcomes in mind. They're just like, are they all right? Like, are these people? Do they do. They hear themselves.
- [79:17]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I think the good thing is that here we are several thousand years later, several 2000 years, two and a half thousand years later, writing a great injustice, which is instead of saying he's so great, we're saying he's a fucker. And I'm happy to go on, on record saying that, yeah, he fucking sucks. He sucks. This guy sucked. I wish I had, like a big stamp that I could, like, use. Maybe Tom, our producer, can put in a stamping nose noise. But I just want to be like, yeah, Confirmed. This guy sucks. Approved.
- [79:50]
Dr. Roll K9
Certified. Sucked. Yeah.
- [79:53]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Thank you so much for coming on and having this conversation. Dr. Kininadite can be found on Blueskyorl Koninen. It will be linked in the bio as well, in case you can't spell Dutch last names. Fair enough.
- [80:06]
Dr. Roll K9
I don't blame you.
- [80:07]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Don't worry, you can always find him on R. Ask historians. He lurks. He looms large above the forum, above the subreddit. You can watch all his videos on YouTube. They're very funny. And yeah, now is our first proper ancient guy who sucked. And thank you so much for joining us on this journey.
- [80:29]
Dr. Roll K9
Amazing. Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed that.
- [80:32]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of this Guy Sucked. A member of the Multitude podcast collective, this episode was hosted by me, Dr. Claire Aubin, featuring special guest Dr. Roll Kaninendike, and produced and edited by Tom Omani. All of our theme music was written and produced by legendary Death Ride competitor Marshall Dean Williams. If you'd like to support the show and get access to all episodes, including two extra episodes per month, and access to our full archive of episodes, you can subscribe@patreon.com thisguysucked See you next week.