Alcibiades: Secrecy, Private Initiative, and Disinformaton

For Alcibiades’ career is frequent, already in Thucydides, the use of the adverb krupha, the adverbial expression idiai and the lexicon of mechane. Krupha underlines that information is not verifiable, if not by who is directly involved. Idiai indicates that the action is "private", therefore "secret": also in this case, information is not verifiable. The underlining implies that there is risk of misinformation: perhaps the historian intends to signal his distance or warn of information’s scarce solidity. The mechane lexicon indicates the presence of manipulative intentions in Alcibiades' action, through the systematic use of disinformation.