Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/48

30 30 HISTORY Of GREECK. ihe conditions favorable to Athens had yet been executed, except the restitution of her captives, seemingly not many in number ; while she tn her side had made to Sparta the capital cession on which almost everything hinged. A long train of accumulated indignation, brought to a head by this mission of Andromedes, discharged itself in the harshest dismissal and rebuke of himself and his colleagues. 1 Even Nikias, Laches, and the other leading men, to whose improvident facility and misjudgment the embarrassment of the moment was owing, were probably not much behind the general public in exclamation against Spartan perfidy, if it were only to divert attention from their own mistake. But there was one of them Alkibiades son of Kleinias who took this opportunity of putting himself at the head of the vehement anti-Laconian sentiment which now agitated the ekklesia, and giving to it a substantive aim. The present is the first occasion on which we hear of this remarkable man as taking a prominent part in public life. He was now about thirty-one or thirty-two years old, which in Greece was considered an early age for a man to exercise important command. But such was the splendor, wealth, and antiquity of his family, of -ZEakid lineage through the heroes Eurysakes and Ajax, and such the effect of that lineage upon the democratical public of Athens, 2 that he stepped speedily and easily into a conspicuous station. Belonging also through his mother Deino- mache to the gens of the Alkmaionida;, he was related to Perikles, who became his guardian when lie was left an orphan at about five years old, along with his younger brother Kleinias. It was at that time that their father Kleinias was slain at the battle of Koroneia, having already served with honor in a trireme of his 1 Tlmoyd. v. 4~2. 2 Tlmcyd. v. 43. 'AA/a/3idi5>/f. . . .uvr/p i/hiKta /J.KV uv tn Tore vcof, df ei> The expression cf Plutarch, however, in. fieipuKtov, seems an exaggera- tion (Aikibiad. c. 10). Kritias and Cliarikles, in reply to the question of Sokrates, whom tbcj had forbidden to converse with or teach young men, defined a young mar. to be one under thirty years of age, the senatorial age at Athens (Xenoj.Lon Mcmor. j. 2. 351