Even before the battle of Notium, it appears that complaints and dissatisfactions had been growing up in the armament against Alkibiadês. He had gone out with a splendid force, not inferior, in number of triremes and hoplites, to that which he had conducted against Sicily, and under large promises, both from himself and his friends, of achievements to come. Yet in a space of time which can hardly have been less than three months, not a single success had been accomplished; while on the other side there was to be reckoned the disappointment on the score of Persia, which had great effect on the temper of the armament, and which, though not his fault, was contrary to expectations which he had held out, the disgraceful plunder of Kymê, and the defeat at Notium. It was true that Alkibiadês had given peremptory orders to Antiochus not to fight, and that the battle had been hazarded in flagrant disobedience to his injunctions. But this circumstance only raised new matter for dissatisfaction of a graver character. If Antiochus had been disobedient,—if, besides disobedience, he had displayed a childish vanity and an utter neglect of all military precautions,—who was it that had chosen him for deputy; and that too against all Athenian precedent, putting the pilot, a paid officer of the ship, over the heads of the trierarchs who paid their pilots, and served at their own cost? It was Alkibiadês who placed Antiochus in this grave and responsible situation,—a personal favorite, an excellent convivial companion, but destitute of all qualities befitting a commander. And this turned attention on another point of the character of Alkibiadês, his habits of excessive self-indulgence and dissipation. The loud murmurs of the camp charged him with neglecting the interests of the service for enjoyments with jovial parties and Ionian women, and with admitting to his confidence those who best contributed to the amusement of these chosen hours.[230] [230] Plutarch. Alkib. c. 36. He recounts, in the tenth chapter of the same biography, an anecdote, describing the manner in which Antiochus first won the favor of Alkibiadês, then a young man, by catching a tame quail, which had escaped from his bosom.