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CONDUCT OF ALIU5IADES. 147 triumph greatly surpassed the anticipations of both. It intoxicated him, and led him to make light of enemie3 whom only just before he had so much dreaded. This mistake, together wi:h the care- lessness and insolence arising out of what seemed tc be an un- bounded ascendency, proved the cause of his future ruin. But the truth is, that these enemies, however they might remain silent, had not ceased to be formidable. Alkibiades had now been eight years in exile, from about August 415 B.C. to May 407 B.C. Now absence was in many ways a good thing for his reputation, since his overbearing private demeanor had been kept out of sight, and his impieties partially forgotten. There was even a disposition among the majority to accept his own explicit denial of the fact laid to his charge, and to dwell chiefly upon the unworthy manoeuvres of his enemies in resisting his demand for instant trial immediately after the accusation was broached, in order that they might calumniate him during his absence. He was characterized as a patriot animated by the noblest motives, who had brought both first-rate endowments and large private wealth to the service of the commonwealth, but had been ruined by a conspiracy of corrupt and worthless speakers, every way inferior to him ; men, whose only chance of success with the people arose from expelling those who were better than them- selves, while he, Alkibiades, far from having any interest adverse to the democracy, was the natural and worthy favorite of a dem- ocratical people. 1 So far as the old causes of unpopularity were concerned, therefore, time and absence had done much to weaken their effect, and to assist his friends in countervailing them by pointing to the treacherous political manoeuvres employed against him. But if the old causes of unpopularity had thus, comparatively speaking, passed out of sight, others had since arisen, of a graver and more ineffaceable character. His vindictive hostility to his country had been not merely ostentatiously proclaimed, but ac- tively manifested, by stabs but too effectively aimed at her vitals. The sending of Gylippus to Syracuse, the fortification of Deke- Icia, the revolts of Chios and Miletus, the first origination of the conspiracy of the Four Hundred, had all been emphatically -tha 1 Xcnoph. Hellcn. i 4,14-16.