Tides of War by Steven Pressfield

let me get you before a jury.” He gestured to the pack of worshipers who yet loitered, gawking from the margins of the terrace. “I’ll have these same idolaters howling for your blood.”
    The kinsmen laughed, seconded by the spectators, who could not but overhear this mock tirade of Euryptolemus.
    “I applaud your eloquence, cousin,” Alcibiades resumed. “But you’re mistaken. You misapprehend the character of man. No soul seeks to bemire itself in its own base fluids but to ascend on the wings of that
daimon
which animates it. Look there to the marines and infantry upon the embarkation quays. They are quickened not by bile or choler, but by heart’s blood. They seek glory, no less than Theseus or Achilles.”
    “Half of them are draft dodgers and you know it.”
    “Only for want of vision by their leaders.”
    “Cousin, the days of gods and heroes are over.”
    “Not to me. And not to them.”
    Again Alcibiades indicated the troops below. “You censure me, cousin, insisting that I must claim a vision beyond my own fame and glory, or the same for our nation. There is nothing beyond fame and glory! They are the holiest and most exalted aspirations of the soul, for they comprise the longing for immortality, for transcendence of all inhering limits, which passion animates even the immortal gods.
    “You impeach me further, Euro, of squandering my time with men of brilliance and splendid horses and hounds, rather than the commons which constitute our nation. But I have observed these same men, the ordinary and the middling-born, in the presence of such horses and dogs. They swarm, as bees to honey, about the great ones. Why? Is it not because they perceive in the nobility of these champions the intimation of that selfsame quality inchoate within their own breasts? Phrynichus has admonished,
    She is a wide bed
who holds both democracy and empire,
    but he, too, stands in error. Democracy must be empire. The appetite that freedom ignites in the individual must be given an object commensurate to its greatness.”
    Now it was Euro’s turn to rap the table. “And who, cousin, will light this flame?”
    “I will,” declared Alcibiades.
    He laughed. They both did.
    “Then here is the course you must steer, cousin.” Euryptolemus leaned forward, seized it seemed by heaven’s inspiration. “If your countrymen will not attend you, mistrustful of your youth, take your case to other courts and other councils. Commence abroad, with our rivals and allies. The chancellors of foreign states will learn soon of Pericles’ affliction. Who will lead Athens? they must ask. With whom must they treat to secure their nations’ weal?”
    Euryptolemus made his case swiftly and succinctly. Which foreign prince, hearing and seeing Alcibiades before him, could fail to recognize Athens’ future? To spurn this champion for his youth would be folly, and none would grasp this more surely than the keen and the visionary. Remarking what must come, they would see the wisdom of aligning with it early. Among foreign courts Alcibiades could gain a foothold; securing foreign allegiances, he could forge coalitions. Who else but he could accomplish this? The fame of his lineage would open doors in scores of states, and his self-attained repute as a warrior, not to mention a breeder and racer of horses (a noble vice, shared by lords of all nations), would serve him in all others.
    “You have split the stone, cousin!” Alcibiades declared. “I salute you.”
    The kinsmen consulted another hour, pursuing the mandates and implications of this policy. Its fundament was war. Peace was fatal to it.
    “What do you say, Pommo?” Alcibiades turned at length to me. “We haven’t caught a peep from you all night.”
    When I hesitated, he clapped my shoulder. “Politics bores our friend, Euro. He is a soldier. Tell us, then, Polemides. What does a soldier say?”
    Be yourself, was all I could tell him.
    “Yes.” He laughed. “But which