History's Greatest Charmer
At this point Alcibiades was in deep trouble. In Athens, the oligarchs he had been cultivating looked at his record and decided they were better off without him. He had fouled his nest in Sparta by sleeping with King Agis’s wife Timaea, and boasting that it would be his blood-line that perpetuated Spartan royalty: as a result he had to leave town in a hurry, and Timaea’s son Leotychidas (whether by Alcibiades or not) was in due course declared illegitimate. Alcibiades then made approaches to the Persian satrap Tissaphernes, over whom he claimed great influence, a claim that looked a little shop-soiled when the satrap afterwards threw him in jail.
Entertaining potted biography of a classic ancient history pol, masquerading as a review of a book the reviewer very clearly feels he’d have written better.
