THE GREAT DIAMOND MOUNTAIN Chapter Two

I don't suppose most people have ever heard of Henry Comestock (above). And the few who know he was the namesake of the 1859 Comestock Lode silver strike, probably do not know he had acquired his share in mines worth $14 million in gold and $21 million in silver, not with a pick and shovel but by trading a blind horse and a bottle of whiskey for a mining claim.  But even fewer know that within a few weeks he sold out his shares for less than $20,000.00,  Ten years later,  in September of 1870,  Henry was flat broke again and was forced to take advantage of the poor man's retirement plan. He shot himself.

William “Billy” Ralston (above), aka “The Magician of San Francisco”, founder and manager of the Bank of California, had no intention of suffering a similar fate. In 1864, almost by slight of hand, he had convinced twenty-two of California's Gold Rush millionaires to finance his new bank. He used their capital to make predatory loans to miners in the Comestock Lode. And although Ralston did not invent the idea of giving his mining partners the shaft, he did practice it on an industrial scale. He carefully hid inflating payments in his loan documents, and used them ruthlessly, to ensnare miner after miner, seizing mine after mine until he was one of the richest and most powerful men in California.

He invested his profits in wool mills, cigar factories, hotels and theaters. And he gave money to the needy so willingly that it seemed at times as if Ralston wasn't interested in money, so much as he had an insatiable hunger to be richer than he was. And that was why in the spring of 1872 he jumped on the diamond mountain with such enthusiasm. And having jumped, he wanted to quickly squeeze the original founders of the strike, Philip Arnold and John Slack, out of the deal completely.  But his problem in this case was that to properly exploit the diamond mountain Ralston figured he would need $50 million, far more cash than even he possessed.  He needed lots of investors, and lawmakers to protect his share of the investment.  Ralston sent his good friend and sometime business partner, the magically named Asbury Harpending to New York City via the transcontinental railroad,  with a bag of gems and instructions to get them valued by none other than the “King of Diamonds”, Charles Lewis Tiffany.

The truth was Charles Tiffany had never seen a raw diamond in his life. What he was, was a marketing genius. He had opened his stationary store in 1837 with $1,000 in capital borrowed from his father. Then, when P.T. Barnum had to shoot one of his elephants, Charles Tiffany bought the poor pachyderm's hide and had it sewn into cigar cases, diaries and wallets. When Barnum's Tom Thumb got married, the miniature pony and coach which carried the diminutive bride and groom away from the church, were provided by Tiffany, and beforehand displayed in his store. And when the the first Transatlantic Telegraph cable was completed in 1858, Tiffany bought several hundred yards of the excess wire, sliced it into sections and sold it mounted on plaques. On the first day of sales, the crowds were so large the police had to restore order – or so Tiffany claimed

But it was Gideon Reed from Boston who ran the firm's Paris store, and who invented the diamond engagement ring, to handle a glut of small stones from South Africa then swamping the market. And it was George McClure, the companies' head gemologist, who oversaw the army of designers who created the Tiffany jewelry style. But nobody outside of the diamond industry had ever heard about those guys. Charles Tiffany (above in his 5th Avenue shop) was the public personification of Tiffany and Company. And so when Asbury Harpending stepped off the train in Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station in the spring of 1872, it was Charles Tiffany's valuation of the gems that he was seeking.

Asbury Harpending (above) described Tiffany's dramatic performance, at his lawyer's home. “A number of distinguished men were present to see the gems displayed...General George B. McClellan, Horace Greeley, Mr. Duncan, of the banking house of Duncan, Sherman & Co....(and Congressman) General B. F. Butler...I opened the bag of diamonds....Mr. Tiffany viewed them gravely, sorted them into little heaps, held them up to the light, looking every whit the part of a great connoisseur. "Gentlemen," he said, "these are beyond question precious stones of enormous value”...In an official statement, still available, his valuation on the lot was $150,000....At that figure, we had diamonds enough already in stock to make up a total of $1,500,000 in hard cash, whenever we wanted to turn them into money....The news of the Tiffany appraisal ...soon became common property in New York and made a big stir in speculative circles.”

Thrilled at Tiffany's estimation of the value of the diamonds, back in San Francisco William Ralston officially incorporated the San Francisco and New York Mining and Commercial Company, with so many investors forcing money into his hands the new firm quickly had a million dollars in “working” capital, and 100,000 shares of stock, initially valued at $40 a share. William Lent was named as President, Ralston named himself as treasurer, and David Colton became the general manager. Even the Baron Rothschild bought stock in the new company.

As the addition of the word “Commercial” indicated, Ralston was dreaming big – very big. The board of directors of his new company were empowered not only to dig out the diamonds of Diamond Mountain – where ever that might be – but they were also empowered to cut and polish the stones, and develop the market for them. Less than six months after Allen and Slack had shared the existence of the Diamond Mountain with him, Ralston was planning on transplanting the entire Amsterdam (above) diamond market to San Francisco, replete with cutters, polishers, graders, wholesalers and, of course, customers. Anyone who could be helpful to Ralston's grand plan, including Congressman Butler, was granted shares in the new venture.

What the rotund Congressman Butler (above) from New York delivered were a few words added to the General Mining Act of 1872, approved in record time and with a minimum of debate in either the American House of Representatives or the Senate. The new law took effect almost immediately, ,on 9 July 1872.   This rushed bill established the price of a mining claim on federal land at between $2.50 and  $5.00 an acre, a figure which has ever since resisted all pressure for an increased benefit to the federal purse. Under this landmark legislation, mining claims on public lands were offered at those bargain prices to those seeking gold, silver, copper or, as Butler amended the act, “other valuable deposits”. In short, diamonds.

By the time this loose end had been tied down, Philip Allen and John Slack were back in San Francisco again, with another bag of diamonds and sapphires. By this time, however, William Ralston had managed to convince the Kentucky simpletons to sell their entire claim to him outright. Their price was $660,000.00; half up front and half upon a final examination by a third engineer, picked by Ralston,  and the revelation of the exact location of the claim.

The man Ralston picked for this final and most important appraisal of the diamond mountain was one of the most respected consulting mining engineer's in America, a man whose 600 previous appraisals had been so accurate his clients had never lost a dollar on his jobs; Henry Janin.  His fee was standard - $2,500 in cash, all expenses paid to and from the claim, as well as the price of chemicals required to confirm the quality of the claim, and the right to buy 1,000 shares in the enterprise at a nominal price. It was all boiler plate, industry standard arraignments.  Of course, contained within them were the seeds of destruction for the entire enterprise, and everyone associated with it. At least one person had figured that might be where they were heading, right from the start.

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THE GREAT DIAMOND MOUNTAIN Chapter One

I would like to see every PhD.. candidate in economics at an American university required to make at least one pilgrimage to the Unita Mountains. The range can be found about 100 miles due east of Salt Lake City, and about the same distance north-north west of Golden, Colorado. There, looming over tributaries of the Green River stands a lonely, wind swept conical peak, and a 7,000 foot high mesa called Diamond Mountain Plateau (above). There are no diamonds on.the Diamond Plateau. Never have been. But amongst the scrub brush, gravel, and oppressive isolation there is a zircon of veracity for these academic acolytes to contemplate, one brilliant shinning baguette of reality illuminating the fundamental and eternal truth behind capitalism – greed makes you stupid.

In 1846, the 17 year old Philip Arnold left his home in Elizabethtown,  with his cousin John Slack. They  joined 4,700 of their fellow Kentuckians serving in the Mexican war.  Both men were mustered out in 1848 in Texas, and rather than returning east, they joined the California gold rush. Like the vast majority of prospectors, they found no gold. They both worked for a time at a mine in New Mexico. Philip eventually found employment in San Francisco at the new Bank of California - owned by William Ralston. Phillip became an appraiser of other prospector's gold claims. It was not the romantic adventure Philip had dreamed of.  But as the precipice of middle age yawned open before him, Philip found it less physically demanding and better paying than prospecting itself. He eventually found even more sedentary employment, as an assistant bookkeeper for “General” George D. Roberts, at his Diamond Drill Company. And it was at the diamond drill company that Philip saw his first diamonds, in the diamond dust used in the rock drills. 

From this reasonably secure pedestal Philip watched as the pattern established in California in the 1850's was repeated in the gold and silver strikes in Nevada of the 1860's. Out of the thousands of prospectors who rushed in, a mere handful of the early arrivals actually found any gold, and they were quickly bought out or squeezed out by the banker run mining conglomerates which followed.  In 1869, when word spread that an 83 carat diamond had been picked up in plain sight on the ground by a sheep herder in South Africa. Hundreds of aging and desperate 49's, knowing nothing about diamonds, and arriving months too late to strike it rich, ,still boarded ship for Capetown,  But the smart ones, who hadn't already drifted back to "the states",  stayed in California.  And being reasonably smart,  in 1870,  forty year old Philip Arnold gathered his life savings, quit his job and along with his cousin John Slack, went prospecting for diamonds in America. Amazingly they found them.

In early February of 1872, two dusty unshaven prospectors carrying a battered raw hide bag walked into a crowded San Francisco saloon, ordered drinks and sat alone. Their furtive whispered arguments  and their sheltering of the tattered bag, immediately drew attention from the boozy crowd. A few of the denizens recognized them as  the long missing John Slack and Philip Arnold.  After several minutes, the pair paid their bill and left. But they repeated their argument at several saloons before finally presenting themselves, now reeking of whiskey, at the main office of the Bank of California - Phillip Arnold's old firm.  Without a word of explanation, they presented their bag for deposit. It was accepted and recorded by the bank manager as filled with diamonds, rubies and other sapphires. It took about twenty minutes for the whole town to assemble the story and to be set afire with rumors.

The bank manager immediately notified his boss, William Ralston. And after Ralston made inquires about the  two men, he then urged Major George Roberts to contact his old “friend” Philip Arnold. But Philip was reluctant to talk, and John Slack was virtually mute. After plying the prospectors with whiskey for hours, Philip finally admitted that some where in the great desert wilderness of Utah territory, just before winter drove them back to civilization, they had found a mountain literally peppered with diamonds and sapphires. The bag deposited in Ralston's bank was just a sample of what they had picked up in a few hours. Right off the ground. Arnold explained, they had filed on the claim and were now the legal owners of a diamond mountain.

It was an unbelievable story. But Ralston (above) and Roberts both knew Philip Arnold as a trustworthy and honest employee. And John Slack was also know around town as a dull but hard working man. And there was a logic to finding yet another massive, rich deposit of wealth in the American west, where everything was possible. The biggest problem at this point was getting information out of the two prospectors. Over the next few weeks banker Ralston and a small group of close investors managed, by befriending the two miners, to convince the pair to allow two local jewelers to examine the diamonds. They pronounced the contents as worth $125,000. This inspired Ralston to offer $50,000 for one half of one percent interest in the claim, if it were first examined by two experts, one being David Colton, part owner of the successful Amador gold mine, and the other expert being General Roberts. Reluctantly, Philip Arnold and John Slack agreed to take these experts to their claim.

In early March they traveled by railroad from San Francisco to Sacramento. There the two prospectors and their charges boarded the Central Pacific Transcontinental Railroad line, climbing over the Donner Pass, down into the Nevada basin and across the Utah desert. After 36 hours on the train, and in the middle of the night, Philip insisted the two experts put on blindfolds, and they meekly complied. They continued their train ride across the desert with their eyes covered, and then just before dawn, at a small seemingly abandoned station, the train pulled to a stop for water and coal.

Philip and John helped the two men, still blindfolded, off the train and onto horseback. Immediately they continued their journey. For the next two days the experts, softened by life in San Francisco, suffered on horseback in the oppressive heat by day and endured freezing temperatures each night. They were allowed to remove their blindfolds only after sunset. And starting before sunrise each morning, they were required to replace their blinders. And then, just as they had grown so frustrated they were on the verge of ripping off their blindfolds, the horses were brought to a stop, and their blindfolds were removed.

What was revealed was a flat desert mesa, covered in scrub brush and gravel, with an odd thrust of a mountain at it's foot. Colton and Roberts wandered about, staring at and kicking the nondescript terrain until, suddenly, Colton reached into what appeared to be an ant mound and pulled out a small hard brilliant crystal. In an instant the two excited experts agreed. The Great Diamond Mountain was real!

They spent several hours collecting gems – diamonds and sapphires – before Philip Arnold and John Slack re-blindfolded the men and led their horses back off the mesa. It was a two day journey back across the horrible desert until they flagged down the west bound transcontinental passenger train in the dark, Colton and Roberts were accompanied by Arnold and Slack as far west as Oakland. There they collected their $50,000 down payment and returned to their "diggings". But the two experts  continued on to San Francisco with the two bags of jewels they had collected.

With those jewels in hand it seemed obvious to William Ralston (above) that the Diamond Mountain Claim was going to make him and his friends (such as Colton and Roberts) even richer than they were already.  It was the usual two step plan for these masters of high finance, one they had already perfected in California and Nevada.  First they had to squeeze Philip Arnold and John Slack out of the deal as quickly and as inexpensively as possible. Then it would be just a matter of piling up the riches in their bank accounts. And you know, Mr. Ralston was half right.

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APRIL FOOLS

I don’t approve of practical jokes. I see nothing humorous in having my shoes set afire while I am  wearing them. And dribble glasses are not only not practical they are also not funny - especially on “April Fools Day”, when every glass is a dribble glass and every shoe is a potential combustion chamber. And it turns out that this celebration of sociopathic behavior was invented by the French, a nation without humorous inclinations since Moliere slipped on a banana peel in 1673. But the story of April Fool’s Day began over a century before that comedic-tragic event, when in 1564 King Charles IX decided to follow Pope Gregory’s suggestion and begin the calendar on January rather than April. Why the French originally celebrated New Years Day on April 1st, I have no idea.

Now, in the 16th century, France had only one road. It came out of Paris, turned left, looped all the way around the city and re-entered on the other side of town. This tragic design error,(the world’s first Traffic Circle) made communication with the majority of the nation difficult (and introduced the phrase “Out-of-the-Loop”), and when combined with the French telephone system - which was in no better shape in the 16th century than it is today - meant that a lot of peasants never got the King’s memo concerning the calendar adjustment.

So as they had every year, thousands of these ill-informed peasants journeyed to Paris during the last week of March and on what they thought was New Year’s Eve, gathered in Bastille Square to say bonjour to 1565 and watch the guillotine drop on 1566. In unison they gleefully chanted, “Cing, quartre, trios, deux, un” and…No guillotine. No satisfying plop of a head into the basket. No Champagne corks popping. No red faced Anderson Cooper, no naked Kathy Griffith. Instead of cheers and shouts of glee, mass ennui broke out among the masses. Now anyone who has experienced the Parisian version of “good manners” can imagine what came next; the locals mocked the bewildered peasants and made them feel like complete Americans,…ah, I mean,fools. But the way they did it makes the word “odd” seem inadequate.

For reasons beyond understanding the Parisians snuck up behind their confused country cousins, surreptitiously stuck a paper fish to the bumpkin’s backs and then shouted in a loud voice, “Poisson d’Avril!”, which translates as “April Fish!”, and then collapsed in raucous laughter and shouts of “tres bien.”

Why would they shout “April Fish!”? I have no idea. But, perhaps the first Parisian to label his victim an "April Fool” immediately received a mouth full of fist, while calling the victim an "April Fish” confused him just long enough so that the prankster could escape.

I have long thought that this uncharacteristic outbreak of French “humor” was actually inspired by Charles’ Italian Queen, Catherine de Medici, who was already famous throughout Europe for her gastronomical gags,  such as her duck a la cyanide with a hemlock sauce. Only a Medici could see the humor in humiliating the people who handled your food.

But however it started, the Parisians knew a good time when they saw it and they sent peasants on “fool’s errands”, and tricked peasants with “fool’s tales”, until every April 1st, France reverberated with gales of laughter and shouts of “Poisson d’Avril!”  Ah, good times. But eventually the Parisian bullies grew bored with taunting the unresponsive peasants and in 1572 they shifted their attentions to the Huguenots. But by then the tradition of humiliating people for your own amusement on the first day of April had become generally popular. And like Disco music and Special Federal Prosecutors, once invented such institutions have proven impossible to dis-invent.

This holiday for the humor-impaired spread around the globe with the new calendar like a fungus, infecting and evolving a little in each newly afflicted nation. The Germans added the “Kick Me” sign, and a second day which they called “Taily Day”, to further enjoy the frivolity of bruised buttocks. Ahh, those Germans.

In Portugal, today’s innocent victim is hit with flour, sometimes while it is still in the bag - the flour not the victim.  In Scotland the target is humiliatingly referred to as an “April Gawk” (?!), in England as a “Noodle” and in Canada as an “American.”  I would have expected mental health professionals to call for a stop to this public insanity but evidently they are too busy setting their patients’ shoes on fire.

Not even a war could snap the world out of this cruel insanity. In what may have been the first time a practical joke qualified as a war crime, on April 1, 1915 a French pilot buzzed the German trenches and dropped a huge bomb, which bounced. Four years later the citizens of Venice awoke on April 1, to discover their sidewalks littered with cow manure, the "gag" of a visiting Englishman, Horace de Vere Cole, with too much time on his hands and too much money in his pockets. But then what can you expect from a man who would honeymoon on April Fool's day? Bad humor moved into the electronic age in 1957 when BBC Television News broadcast a report about that year's successful and bountiful Swiss harvest of spaghetti.  On April Fool's Day in 1992, National Public Radio in the United States, broadcast the announcement that Richard Nixon was coming out of retirement to run again for President, under the slogan, "I didn't do anything wrong and I won't do it again."

Some years later, ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Company, carried a report that the nation was about to switch to "Metric Time". The next morning would begin at midnight, but each minute would be made up of 100 milidays, each hour of 100 centedays, and each day would consist of 20 decadays. It is alleged that  the following morning nobody in Australia showed up for work on time, but it is unclear if that was because the April Fools joke worked, or merely because everybody in Australia still had a hangover, mate  

Admit it; there is no defense against April Fool tomfoolery, except a preemptive strike. So button up your top button, zip up your pants, tie your shoes and look out for that cat. Load up your water gun, warm up your fart cushion and repeat after me; “Poison d’Avril, sucker!”

Funny, huh?

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THE GREATEST POLITICIAN OF ALL TIME

I hear the complaints piling up again, about all the crooked, two-faced, lying politicians. And, there always being a coming election, most of these descriptions seem to be coming from the mouths of other politicians. But it seems to me that the objections and the job description are nearly identical. The rules of politics were first laid down at least 2,400 years ago, and they have not been improved upon since. To be successful a politician must first be elected, and second he or she must be re-elected. And the proof of these simple rules was firmly established by the golden boy of ancient Greek democracy, the man who turned hypocrisy, sycophancy, performance and prevarication into an art form, the greatest politician of all time bar none, Alcibiades Alcmaeonidae. It wasn’t that after Alcibiades they broke the mold, it was that Alcibiades was the mold.

His world was shaped by his uncle and guardian, Pericles (above), who defined a great leader as someone who “…knows what must be done and is able to explain it; loves one’s country and is incorruptible.” Having decided that Athens and Sparta were destined for war, Pericles devised a most unusual strategy. He first displayed this strategy in 430 and again 429 B.C. Spartan armies invaded Athenian territory (called Attica), burned crops and villages and took hostages. But the Athenian army refused to give battle. The lost crops did not worry Pericles because he was relying on the Athenian fleet to bring in grain from Egypt and the Ukraine. Pericles’ plan was to frustrate the Spartans by avoiding battle with them until the eventual internal political dissent encouraged them to end the war to Athens's advantage. And it might have worked but for one unanticipated event. A plague arrived on the grain ships from Egypt in 428 B.C. and killed perhaps a third of the population of Athens, including Pericles.

The abrupt vacuum at the top of Athenian politics was an opportunity for the young Alcibiades (above). He was a superstar right from the start. First, he was a real Olympic athlete and “the Adonis of Athens…tall, shapely, remarkably handsome, fond of showy attire and luxurious surroundings…” (p 221, Baldwin Project) He was a powerful speaker whose slight lisp made him all the more endearing. And he seduced women and men with equal ease and equally often. He was the ancient Bill Clinton without the scandal attached to the  sex.

At 19 years of age, Alcibiades even beguiled that old pedophile Socrates. Reading Plato’s version of their dialoges is like watching a snake charmer with arthritis toying with a hungry python. Socrates began by berating Alcibiades’ youthful arrogance. “You say you do not need any person for anything …For you think you are the most beautiful and greatest”. But eventually Socrates fell under Alcibiades' spell, calling him “…the greatest of the Greeks.” Still, Socrates shared his bed with Alcibiades only once; if Athens herself had only been that wise Athens would have been better off.

It seems that all that Alcibiades learned from Socrates was that he needed a project worthy of his ambition. So in 415 B.C. Alcibiades suggested a cloak and dagger strike against the island of Sicily, a commando operation to capture Messina and threaten the port city of Syracuse, where most of Sparta’s was shipped from.  But Alcibiades’ political opponent in Athens, Nicias, did not want Alcibiades given the chance to succeed. He warned the city council that such an expedition would have to be hugely expensive, requiring as many as 140 ships and 6,000 men. He meant to mock Alcibiade's idea. But to the shock of both Nicias and Alcibiades, the Athenian council voted to fund the massive mission which neither man had wanted, and then placed both Alcibiades and Nicias in charge of it.

Somehow the two foes managed to assemble the huge force. But Alcibiades should have been more worried when Nicias had not objected that most of the officers appointed to the force were allies of Alcibiades. Nicias's calm was explained when the fleet successfully landed on an empty beach outside of Syracuse  only to find a trireme from Athens had arrived there ahead of them. It seems the night before the expedition had sailed, somebody had gone around Athens and whacked off all the phalluses on statues of of the god Hermes. As soon as Alcibiades had sailed away,  Nicias' allies had accused Alcibiades of masterminding the sacrilege. And with most of Alcibiades' allies away on the expedition, the Athenian council had ordered Alcibiades home to stand trial for heresy and treason. It was obvious that Nicias was behind this, and Alcibiades had no intention of trusting his fate to the good will of his enemies.

On his way back to Athens,  Alcibiades jumped ship at Thurii, and boldly contacted the enemy Spartans. He offered them information on the Athenian expedition’s plans to capture Syracuse. When that information proved correct the Spartans warily agreed to allow Alcibiades sanctuary in their city - what a foolish thing to do. 

Alcibiades had made his first betrayal. Once in Sparta, he converted from a luxury loving Athenian into a prime example of Spartan minimalism ,brutality and sadomasochism.

Like any good Spartan politician he began wearing simple clothes and eating cold gruel and exercising in public with the other sadomasochistic Spartans. He advised the Spartans on a strategy that led to the complete defeat of Nicias and the slaughter and capture of the entire Athenian force. In fact Alcibiades had become one of the most respected and trusted Spartans in Sparta - until one morning in 412 B.C. when the Spartan king Agis II came home unexpectedly to speak to his queen and found Alcibiades jumping out of her bedroom window. Agis II put out a contract on Alcibiades, and the golden boy disappeared, next turning up in Persia, as an advisor at the court of the satrap Tissaphernes, who had been secretly funding the Spartan war effort against Athens. Alcibiades had just made his second betrayal.

Tissaphernes had been hoping to weaken the Athenians. But now he had begun to worry that the Spartans were getting too strong, which is exactly what he was told by his new political advisor, Alcibiades. On the Athenian's advice the Persians cut back their cash support for Sparta. At the same time Alcibiades put out peace feelers to his fellow Athenians. He convinced them that he could bring the Persians into the war on Athens’ side. Of course Tissaphernes had no intention of committing his forces until both Greek cities were exhausted. But by the time the Athenians realized this, according to the poet Aristophanes, they yearned for Alcibiades even while they hated him. This was to be Alcibiades’ third betrayal.

The Athenian generals made Alcibiades an Admiral, and he engineered an Athenian naval victory at Abydos, near the Hellespont, and burned the little village of Byzantium. After another Alcibiades victory the Spartans sent home a desperate note. “Our ships are lost. Mindarus (their commander) is dead. The men are starving. We do not know what to do.”

In 407 B.C. Alcibiades made his triumphal return to Athens itself, to cheering throngs and the return of his property, which had been seized when he had changed sides the first time and joined Sparta. All the charges still outstanding against him were dropped. But they were not forgotten.

His last betrayal had convinced the Persians to again fully fund the Spartan war effort. And in 406 B.C. Alcibiades sailed with 100 ships on a mission to assist Phocaea, which was under siege from Spartan forces. While making a scout, Alcibiades left 80 ships at anchor at Notium under his second in command. But while he was away the fool brought on an engagement with the Spartan fleet, and was soundly defeated. His enemies in Athens blamed Alcibiades for the disaster, and he was forced into exile once again, and this time it looked final.

By 404 B.C. Alcibiades was living in retirement with a mistress in Phyrgia, in what is today central Turkey, in a mountain cabin. In the dark of night assassins set the house on fire and murdered Alcibiades as he rushed out side. Says the Baldwin Project, “Thus perished, at less than fifty years of age, one of the most brilliant and able of all the Athenians.”

Some say it was the Spartans who killed him, and some that it was his Athenian enemies. And some say it was the brothers of a Persian woman he had seduced. If Alcibiades did not fit his uncle’s definition of a great leader, still he had been a successful politician for each of the three great powers of his time – Athens, Sparta and Persia. How could you not consider him the greatest politician of any age? Other than the unpleasant fact that he ended up being murdered, of course.

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