He was the uncle and cohort of the famous general and statesman Alcibiades (III), whom he accompanied in domestic and foreign affairs.
The son of the famous Alcibiades' grandfather, brother of Cleinias, and perhaps the nephew of Aspasia,[1] Axiochus' lineage placed him within the elite and controversial Athenian family known as the Alcmaeonidae.
Both the historical record and Lysias' apocryphal "Funeral Oration" speech imply Axiochus' close association with Alcibiades.
As reported by Andocides[2] and attested to within the archaeological record,[1] Axiochus was indicted in 415 BCE along with Alcibiades in the profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries, a point of major domestic turmoil within the Peloponnesian War that preceded the calamitous Sicilian Expedition.
In his eponymous dialogue, Aeschines of Sphettus lambastes Axiochus' carousal with Alcibiades; the speech attributed to Lysias (the contents of which are presumed by scholars to be fictional)[1] describes a case of incestuous debauchery with his famous nephew through their co-marriages with both Medontis of Abydus and the daughter that resulted.