A special despatch (or scytale) was sent out by the Spartan authorities to Lysander in Asia, enjoining him to procure that Alcibiades should be put to death. Accordingly Lysander communicated this order to Pharnabazus, within whose satrapy Alcibiades was residing, and requested that it might be put in execution. Pharnabazus therefore despatched his brother Magæus and his uncle Sisamithres, with a band of armed men, to assassinate Alcibiades in the Phrygian village where he was residing. These men, not daring to force their way into his house, surrounded it and set it on fire. Yet Alcibiades, having contrived to extinguish the flames, rushed out upon his assailants with a dagger in his right hand, and a cloak wrapped around his left to serve as a shield. None of them dared to come near him; but they poured upon him showers of darts and arrows until he perished, undefended as he was either by shield or by armour. A female companion with whom he lived--Timandra--wrapped up his body in garments of her own, and performed towards it all the last affectionate solemnities. [Illustration: A GREEK RELIGIOUS PROCESSION] Such was the deed which Cyrus and the Lacedæmonians did not scruple to enjoin, nor the uncle and brother of a Persian satrap to execute; and by which this celebrated Athenian perished before he had attained the age of fifty. Had he lived, we cannot doubt that he would again have played some conspicuous part--for neither his temper nor his abilities would have allowed him to remain in the shade--but whether to the advantage of Athens or not is more questionable. Certain it is that, taking his life throughout, the good which he did to her bore no proportion to the far greater evil. Of the disastrous Sicilian expedition, he was more the cause than any other individual; though that enterprise cannot properly be said to have been caused by any individual: it emanated rather from a national impulse. Having first, as a counsellor, contributed more than any other man to plunge the Athenians into this imprudent adventure, he next, as an exile, contributed more than any other man (except Nicias) to turn that adventure into ruin, and the consequences of it into still greater ruin. Without him, Gylippus would not have been sent to Syracuse, Decelea would not have been fortified, Chios and Miletus would not have revolted, the oligarchical conspiracy of the Four Hundred would not have been originated. Nor can it be said that his first three years of political action as Athenian leader, in a speculation peculiarly his own--the alliance with Argos, and the campaigns in Peloponnesus--proved in any way advantageous to his country. On the contrary, by playing an offensive game where he had hardly sufficient force for a defensive, he enabled the Lacedæmonians completely to recover their injured reputation and ascendency through the important victory of Mantinea. The period of his life really serviceable to his country, and really glorious to