the celebrated Athenian general, son of Clinias and Deinomache, was born at Athens about the year 450 B.C. Of high birth, princely fortune, and surpassing personal beauty, he was eminently distinguished for the brilliancy and versatility of his talents; but his youth was disgraced by debauchery and excess, from which his friend Socrates strove in vain to reclaim him. Mutual services had cemented their friendship; Socrates having rescued him from death at the battle of Potidaea, as he afterwards saved the life of Socrates at that of Delium. On the death of Cleon, in 422, he became one of the leaders in the Athenian commonwealth, and the head of the war party, in opposition to Nicias. He warmly advocated the Sicilian expedition, of which he was chosen a joint commander with Nicias and Lamachus. Shortly after his arrival there, he was recalled to Athens, to stand his trial respecting the mysterious mutilation of the Hermes busts, with which act of impiety he was charged as a ringleader previously to his departure; but contriving to escape from the state vessel that was conveying him, he proceeded to Sparta, where he acted as the avowed enemy of his country. Sentence of death was passed upon him at Athens, and his property confiscated. The machinations of Agis II. obliged him to leave Sparta; and taking refuge with Tissaphernes, he induced that commander to desert the Spartans, and declare himself in favour of the Athenians, who therupon recalled Alcibiades from exile. Before he returned, however, the Athenians under his command gained the victories of Cynossema, Abydos, and Cyzicus, and took possession of Chalcedon and Byzantium; after which, in 407, he entered Athens in triumph, and was appointed commander of all the land and sea forces. But the year following he was superseded, in consequence of the defeat of his fleet at Notium, occasioned by the rashness of his lieutenant Antiochus, and he retired into voluntary exile to his fortified domain at Bisanthe. Before the fatal battle of Egos-Potamos, he gave an ineffectual warning to the Athenian leaders. After the fall of Athens, he was banished and took refuge with Pharnabazus, and was about to proceed to the court of Artaxerxes, when assassins, hired either by the Spartans or by the brothers of a lady whom he had seduced, fired his house in the night; and in attempting to escape, he was slain with darts, in the forty-sixth year of his age, n.c. 404. He left a son, of his own name, by his wife Hipparette.