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While these events were taking place, those in Athens who hated Alcibiades with a personal enmity, possessing now an excuse in the mutilation of the statues,1 accused him in speeches before the Assembly of having formed a conspiracy against the democracy. Their charges gained colour from an incident that had taken place among the Argives; for private friends2 of his in that city had agreed together to destroy the democracy in Argos, but they had all been put to death by the citizens. [2] Accordingly the people, having given credence to the accusations and having had their feelings deeply aroused by their demagogues, dispatched their ship, the Salaminia,3 to Sicily with orders for Alcibiades to return with all speed to face trial. When the ship arrived at Catane and Alcibiades learned of the decision of the people from the ambassadors, he took the others who had been accused together with him aboard his own trireme and sailed away in company with the Salaminia. [3] But when he had put in at Thurii, Alcibiades, either because he was privy to the deed of impiety or because he was alarmed at the seriousness of the danger which threatened him, made his escape together with the other accused men and got away. The ambassadors who had come on the Salaminia at first set up a hunt for Alcibiades, but when they could not find him, they sailed back to Athens and reported to the people what had taken place. [4] Accordingly the Athenians brought the names of Alcibiades and the other fugitives with him before a court of justice and condemned them in default4 to death. And Alcibiades made his way across from Italy to the Peloponnesus, where he took refuge in Sparta and spurred on the Lacedaemonians to attack the Athenians.

1 Cp. chap. 2.

2 Cp. Thuc. 6.61.

3 This was one of the two dispatch boats of the Athenian navy, the other being the Paralus.

4 i.e. in their absence.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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