The Life of Alcibiades Read online

  she drew. And since, as in this work, the texts are Greek ones, as are the

  names that will be cited frequently, I want to offer a glimpse of the au-

  thors I will reference and situate them in the context of Alcibiades’s life.

  First, among historians, in chronological order, we fi nd the following

  authors:

  Thucydides was about twenty years older than Alcibiades and had

  certainly met him. He wrote a history of the Peloponnesian War,

  and though he lived to the war’s end, his history stopped in 411.

  Alcibiades enters the work starting in book 5, and his involvement

  continues to the end, so from 420 to 411 BCE.

  Xenophon was younger. He wrote the sequel to the unfi nished his-

  tory of Thucydides: his work is called Hellenica . Alcibiades enters

  the story for the years 411 to 404. Xenophon also wrote about Al-

  cibiades in his memoir on Socrates, Memorabilia .

  With Diodorus Siculus we move forward several centuries. He was

  born around 90 BCE. He wrote a large work entitled Bibliotheca

  historica . Its importance for the story of Alcibiades comes from his

  use of Ephorus , a fourth-century BCE historian whose work has

  been lost.

  Plutarch lived in the fi rst century CE. He consulted numerous

  sources for his Parallel Lives . There exists a very valuable Life of

  Alcibiades i that is completed by the Life of Lysander (the Spartan who defeated Alcibiades).

  Cornelius Nepos , a Roman, also belongs to the fi rst century CE,

  and is the author of Lives of Famous Men . His testimony may oc-

  casionally be cited as a reference. Among the philosophers, be-

  sides Xenophon, Plato is quoted. Although he was considerably

  younger (by more than twenty years), he could still have known

  Alcibiades. He names him, or places him, in the scene of several di-

  alogues: principally the fi rst Alcibiades and the Symposium .

  Various disciples of Socrates, less well known, will be cited in chapter 12.

  Last, the following orators are mentioned:

  Andocides was a bit younger than Alcibiades. He is included primar-

  ily because he had an important role in the events that led to the

  i. Unless otherwise noted, this is the source for all references to the work of Plutarch.

  xvi Author’s

  Preface

  exile of Alcibiades. He relates the facts in his speech On His Return .

  An unauthenticated speech that bears on the ostracism in which Al-

  cibiades was implicated is called Against Alcibiades and is merely a

  school exercise and a series of more or less gratuitous charges. ii

  Isocrates was a master of rhetoric and author of speeches, never de-

  livered, offering political advice. He, too, might have known Alcib-

  iades. He was about fi fteen years younger. He wrote a speech on

  behalf of Alcibiades’s son, in which he praised the father.

  Lysias was a bit younger than Alcibiades but wrote only after the lat-

  ter’s death. His work includes two speeches: Against Alcibiades ,

  numbers 14 and 15. They attack the son of Alcibiades, and the fi rst

  of the two attacks the father. Questions about their authenticity

  have been raised, but some scholars accept them.

  Of all these authors, only the historians Diodorus, Plutarch, and Cor-

  nelius Nepos could not have known Alcibiades. But even they could have

  drawn, from the remains of all those texts, directly or indirectly, entirely

  authentic testimony of the time. iii

  Apart from these sources, I will not cite modern works on Alcibiades;

  they will, as needed, be referred to in the notes. But I want to mention at

  least the large book, very detailed, by Jean Hatzfeld, entitled Alcibiade

  and published in 1940 by the Presses Universitaires de France. Since that

  time, there have been various offerings in various languages. iv Those discussions usually concern matters of detail—when scholars aren’t clashing

  over the question of whether or not Alcibiades had a child with the wife

  of the king of Sparta, a type of question that is never easy to resolve even

  without the diffi culty of seeing through a veil of twenty-fi ve centuries!

  ii. In citations, it is customary to place square brackets around the name of the au-

  thor when the work is thought not to be his. Thus “[Andocides]” means “pseudo-

  Andocides,” i.e., a dialogue erroneously attributed to Andocides.

  iii. There are also a few documents on papyrus. The fragment of a biography of Al-

  cibiades (Grenfell and Hunt, 3, 411) does not contain anything new. But new fragments

  of Hellenica of Oxyrhynchus (a fourth-century work, by a historian writing a continu-ation of Thucydides) contain an account of the battle of Notium (Papyrus of Florence,

  C, published in 1949).

  iv. One of the best, and most reliable, is in English: Walter M. Ellis, Alcibiades

  (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 141. For a lively and novelistic adapta-

  tion, I would mention, in Greek, the book of A. Vlachos, My Master Alcibiades, which has been reprinted numerous times since 1990. There is also, in German, H. Bengtson,

  Griechische Staatsmänner (1983).

  Author’s

  Preface xvii

  There is more to be gained from the commentaries on the authors, start-

  ing with the great historical commentary on Thucydides, in English, in fi ve

  enormous volumes, published by Oxford from 1945 to 1981; the work

  was begun by A. W. Gomme and fi nished by A. Andrewes and K. Dover. v

  It is also useful for our understanding of the historical fi gure Alcibiades

  to return to those luminous literary texts that never grow old. These make

  the life of Alcibiades unforgettable and give it a context that relates to our

  own time.

  v. The same can be said for the annotated editions of other authors, to which, for

  someone like Alcibiades, one should always refer in a systematic way. This is also true

  for works about these authors.

  Chronology

  508 BCE

  Beginning of Athenian democracy.

  490–480

  Persian Wars, victory of Greece over the barbarians.

  480–430

  Expansion of the Athenian Empire.

  461

  Beginning of Pericles’s political power

  450

  Approximate date of Alcibiades’s birth; adoption by

  Pericles in 447.

  447–432

  Construction of the Parthenon.

  443–429

  Pericles as general (death in 429).

  431–404 Peloponnesian

  War.

  421

  Peace of Nicias.

  420

  Alcibiades enters public life.

  415–413 Sicilian

  expedition.

  415 (summer)

  Scandals involving the herms and mysteries; Alcibi-

  ades goes to Sparta to avoid prosecution.

  412 (summer)

  Alcibiades goes to Ionia with the Peloponnesian fl eet.

  xx Chronology

  411

  Political unrest in Athens. Athenian fl eet in Samos re-

  mains loyal to the democracy and welcomes Alcibi-

  ades (who had been at the court of Tissaphernes).

  411–410 (winter) Victory at Cyzicus.

  407

  Alcibiades returns to Athens.

  407–406

  Defeat at Notium; Alcibiad
es leaves Athens

  permanently.

  404

  Battle of Aegospotami; the war ends with Athens’ de-

  feat. Death of Alcibiades.

  399

  Trial and death of Socrates.

  The Life of Alcibiades

  1

  Richly Endowed

  Alcibiades needs no introduction: Plato has already provided that, on

  one unforgettable page. In the Symposium , he imagines a meeting of fa-

  mous men who, over dinner, are discussing love. There are a lot of peo-

  ple there. They are talking, listening, the dialogue progresses. But then,

  after some time, a new guest arrives, after all the others. This arrival is

  intentionally reserved for the end, when its impact is greatest; suddenly

  everything is livelier. A knock on the door, and the sound is accompa-

  nied by the noise of merrymaking and a fl ute player. Who is coming at

  this hour? It is Alcibiades, completely drunk and supported by the fl ute

  player.

  He stands at the door, “crowned with a bushy wreath of ivy and violets

  and wearing a great array of ribbons on his head.”

  Immediately he is welcomed and seated next to the host. On his other

  side is Socrates, whom he hasn’t seen at fi rst. A conversation ensues be-

  tween the ivy-crowned youth and the philosopher: the rest of the dialogue

  is entirely between these two.

  2 Chapter

  1

  Such is the appearance, both triumphal and disturbing, of this indi-

  vidual. It contains the seed of his great appeal as well as of his scandalous

  failings.

  They love him; they welcome him. Why? Who is he? Those at the ban-

  quet knew; but twenty-fi ve centuries later, we need to describe him. In a

  word, he has everything one could want.

  Beauty

  One quality is immediately apparent: Alcibiades is gorgeous, exception-

  ally so. All the sources speak of his beauty and describe all the love affairs

  in which he fi gures. This is the quality that Xenophon, in his Memora-

  bilia , points to fi rst, stating with characteristic naivete that “because of

  his beauty, Alcibiades was pursued by many well-known women.” 1 Peo-

  ple spoke of “the beautiful Alcibiades.” At the beginning of Plato’s Pro-

  tagoras , when Socrates is teased about his great admiration for Alcibiades

  and seems to be a bit confused, they asked: “What could have brought

  this about? Has anything happened between you and him? For surely you

  can’t have found anyone more beautiful, at least not in this city.” 2

  There was no one more beautiful than he. But there might be another

  kind of beauty besides physical beauty, and that is what Socrates meant

  when he said that he had met Protagoras, the wisest of all living men; it is

  a distinction he will make frequently. 3

  It should be remembered that at that time beauty was a virtue, widely

  recognized and celebrated. It was linked to other qualities of a moral na-

  ture that formed an ideal human condition, called in ancient Greek kalos

  kagathos. Beauty also attracted less virtuous admirers, and they were not

  secretive—such as those on many painted vases celebrating some young

  man by the single word beautiful . And at times, as was the custom, we

  fi nd an almost lyrical evocation of the frenzy inspired by the beauty of

  someone or other: we see it in the Symposium of Xenophon, where this

  theme occurs several times, in particular in the excitement aroused by

  1. Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2.24.

  2. The Benjamin Jowett translation, revised by Hayden Pelliccia, in Selected Dialogues of Plato (New York: Modern Library, 2000).

  3. Plato, Symposium 218–19.

  Richly

  Endowed 3

  young Critobulus, who extols his own beauty and that of his friend Clei-

  nias: “I would rather be blind to all things else than to Cleinias alone.” 4

  Young Cleinias was Alcibiades’s fi rst cousin.

  Returning to Alcibiades, we wish we could imagine his beauty, but

  we must be satisfi ed with the opinion of his contemporaries in assessing

  his perfection. They never precisely describe Alcibiades, and we have no

  image with any authenticity at all. We are told 5 that after his victories in

  the Olympic Games he had his portrait painted while receiving the crown;

  but the two paintings have been lost. There were various statues in which

  he is shown driving a chariot, but these were generally produced posthu-

  mousl y. We allow ourselves to imagine his countenance, a classic face,

  proud silhouette: that would be him.

  We do know that along with beauty, he had charm and the power

  of seduction. Plutarch marvels at this power very early in his biography:

  “As regards the beauty of Alcibiades, it is perhaps unnecessary to say

  aught, except that it fl owered out with each successive season of his bodily

  growth, and made him, alike in boyhood, youth and manhood, lovely and

  pleasant. The saying of Euripides, that ‘beauty's autumn, too, is beauti-

  ful,’ is not always true. But it was certainly the case with Alcibiades, as

  with few besides, because of his excellent natural parts. Even the lisp in

  his speech became him, they say, and made his talk persuasive and full of

  charm” (Plutarch, Alcibiades 1.3). 6

  He could cajole even those he had offended. In another important text

  by Plutarch, he is shown to have seduced a Persian satrap (governor) to

  do his bidding. 7

  He was of course conscious of his ability to seduce and took pleasure in

  it. One anecdote relates that when he was learning everything a well-bred

  young man needed to know, he refused to learn the fl ute: it would distort

  4. 4.12. See also 1.9, on the beauty of Autolycus, accompanied by modesty and reserve:

  “For in the fi rst place, just as the sudden glow of a light at night draws all eyes to itself, so now the beauty of Autolycus compelled everyone to look at him. And again, there was not one of the onlookers who did not feel his soul strangely stirred by the boy; some of them grew quieter than before, others even assumed some kind of a pose.”

  5. Athenaeus 12.534d. For the statues, see Pliny, Naturalis historia 24.80, 88; the detail is discussed elsewhere.

  6. Throughout the book, Plutarch passages are based on Robin Waterfi eld’s translation in Plutarch: Greek Lives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  7. See below, chapter 7.

  4 Chapter

  1

  his mouth and prevent him from using his voice. The impudent refusal of

  this beautiful boy became famous, and, according to legend, the fl ute was

  removed from the course of liberal studies.

  With a taste for the dramatic and for provocation, the handsome Al-

  cibiades would sometimes walk around the agora in a long, purple robe.

  He was a celebrity, the spoiled child of Athens, allowed to do whatever he

  pleased and admired for everything he did.

  Movie and television stars today are for us what Alcibiades was for

  Athens—with the difference that, in that small city, everyone encountered

  him, everyone knew him.

  Aristocracy

  They knew him for the very good reason that he was not just anyone—

  far from it.

  He came from an aristocratic family, a fact not to be ignored even in

&n
bsp; the egalitarian democracy that governed Athens at the time. Around the

  middle of the fi fth century BCE, powerful families were highly regarded

  and enjoyed considerable authority. Alcibiades came from the two largest

  of these families. His father, Cleinias, was from the Eupatrid family, whose

  lineage, according to legend, went all the way back to the hero Ajax; and

  one family member, also called Alcibiades, had been a political associate

  of Cleisthenes, the founder of Athenian democracy. In this way, Cleinias,

  through marriage, became part of the most famous family in Athens, the

  Alcmeonids. He married the daughter of one Megacles, a political fi gure

  important enough to have been ostracized, a measure that was intended

  to remove an individual who was attracting too much attention. And was

  that all? Oh no! This same Megacles, Alcibiades’s grandfather, had a sister

  who was Pericles’s mother, the very Pericles who was for so long the most

  important man in Athenian democracy and who gave his name to the

  century. 8 So many titles, such glory! Our own newspapers, so fond of the 8. Alcibiades’s genealogy is the subject of much discussion, and we will not go into the details of that here. For example, some scholars hold that Pericles was not Alcibiades’s uncle but rather his cousin (W. E. Thompson, 1970). See also P. Bicknell, who reconstructed the family tree in 1975 ( Museum Philologum Londiniense 1 (1975): 51–64). That Alcibiades belonged to both great families is not disputed.

  Richly

  Endowed 5

  fates of princesses and famous families, give us some idea of the awe that

  was attached to such a pedigree, even at the height of the democracy. In

  addition, such status constituted a valuable asset and useful preparation

  for political life.

  Moreover, for Alcibiades, the dazzling pedigree was not all: on the

  death of his father, in 447, while he was still a child, our Alcibiades was

  adopted by his guardian, none other than Pericles himself. There was no

  greater attainment than that.

  All these great names were like a brilliant halo around his head.

  Such promise! On all sides, there were men around him who were used

  to leading Athenian politics, who were themselves from the aristocracy,

  yet who had often taken the side of democracy. There could be no inheri-

  tance better suited to start a young man on a life of political engagement.

  And this heritage could be an advantage even outside Athens. Im-