The first we hear of Adeimantus is in Plato's Protagoras, where he is among those present at the house of Callias, son of Hipponicus, on a day in 433 to meet and talk with the visiting philosophers staying there.
He does not speak, but listens in with several other young men, including Alcibiades and the sons of Pericles, while Socrates and Protagoras have an extended discussion about sophists and their teaching.
Coming hard on the heels of this sacrilege, accusations were made against certain men for conducting mock celebrations of the Eleusinian Mysteries at various houses around the city.
According to Diodorus Sicilus:[Alcibiades], after greeting the crowds kindly, called a meeting of the Assembly, and, offering a long defence of his conduct, he brought the masses into such a state of goodwill that all agreed that the city had been to blame for the decrees issued against him.
Consequently they not only returned to him his property, which they had confiscated, but went further and cast into the sea the stelae on which were written his sentence and all the other acts passed against him; and they also voted that the Eumolpidae should revoke the curse they had pronounced against him at the time when men believed he had profaned the Mysteries.
[12] The Spartans and their allies were in a vindictive mood because of atrocities committed by Athenians in years past, and because of an Assembly vote to cut off the right hands of those they captured in war.
Conon, who had sailed to Cyprus and taken up residence in the court of Evagoras, one of the kings on the island, finally returned to Athens in that year, after having destroyed the Spartan fleet with an armada assembled by the Persians.
In the spring of 405, months before the battle, the comic poet Aristophanes lampooned him in Frogs:So now, farewell, Aeschylus—go, save our city with your noble thoughts, and educate our fools—we have so many.
If they don’t come soon, then, by Apollo, I’ll brand and cripple them, then ship them down at full speed underground with Adeimantus, Leucolophos's son.