Alcibiades

The Athenian general whose brilliance was matched only by his ambition. Thucydides, who knew him, records the Athenians distrusting his private extravagance so much that they handed the Sicilian expedition to a man they had already decided was dangerous, and then recalled him mid-campaign.

He defected to Sparta and advised the Spartans to fortify Decelea against his own city. He then left Sparta for the Persian satrap Tissaphernes, and later returned to Athens to command it again. Thucydides does not moralise about this; he simply records that Alcibiades served whichever power could use him.

The scroll places him behind the mercenary companies that followed the dragon's destruction, selling protection to the cities not yet burned. No other surviving source records that arrangement. It is of a piece with everything Thucydides does record about him.