The Fall of the Athenian Empire-(A New History of the Peloponnesian War) Donald Kagan - (1987)

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THE FALL OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
the straits was not Alcibiades but Thrasybulus. Athens could certainly
have used another military leader of Alcibiades' ability in the last years
of the war, if he could have subordinated his own needs and interests
to those of the state. But whatever Alcibiades' personal inclinations
might have been in 406, the burden of his past was too great. Even
apart from his personality and ambitions, the number of his enemies,
the intensity of their hatred, and the eagerness with which they waited
to attack him compelled him to seek extraordinary achievements and
make promises that could not be fulfilled in order to acquire and
maintain a popularity that was his only security. This drove him to
take risks that another general would have avoided and that were bound
to bring disaster to Athens.
From a political point of view, moreover, Alcibiades was a burden
to his native city. What Athens needed more than anything in its time
of crisis was unity of the kind Pericles had provided at the start of the
war. Alcibiades, however, was preeminently a divisive figure who
evoked powerful feelings of admiration or dislike but not steady support
from a large portion of the citizenry. He could not win a reliable
majority to support his own policies, but he could prevent anyone else
from doing so, for when things went badly, the Athenians often looked
to the glamor and promise of Alcibiades for salvation. As a character
in Aristophanes' Frogs said less than a year after Notium: "They yearn
for him, they hate him, but they want to have him back.""' It is
interesting, if vain, to speculate about what would have happened if
Alcibiades had departed and Thrasybulus, who would later prove
himself an able political leader as well as a great general, had been
allowed to emerge in his place, but the disgrace of Alcibiades discredited
his friends as well as himself. In the new elections of the spring
of 406, neither Thrasybulus nor Theramenes were chosen. Perhaps
that was the most serious result of the Spartan victory at Notium.