Alcibiades

by Plutarch

Alcibiades is a biography written by the ancient Greek historian Plutarch. The book chronicles the life and political career of Alcibiades, a prominent Athenian statesman and general who lived during the Peloponnesian War. Alcibiades was known for his charisma, intelligence, and military prowess, but also for his controversial personal life and political maneuvering.Plutarch's biography covers Alcibiades' childhood, education, and early political career, including his involvement in the Athenian expedition to Sicily. The book also explores Alcibiades' complex relationships with other Athenian leaders, including Pericles and Socrates.As Alcibiades rose to power, he became embroiled in a series of political scandals and controversies, including accusations of impiety and treason. Plutarch delves into these events in detail, providing insight into the political and social climate of ancient Athens.Despite his many successes, Alcibiades' career was ultimately cut short by his own actions. Plutarch describes his exile from Athens and his subsequent involvement in the politics of Sparta and Persia. The book concludes with Alcibiades' assassination in Phrygia.Overall, Alcibiades is a fascinating and detailed portrait of one of ancient Greece's most intriguing figures, offering readers a glimpse into the political and social complexities of the time.THIS 50 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE Plutarch's V12 Harvard Classics, by Plutarch . To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766181782.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Genres: Biography, Classics, History, Ancient, Politics, Nonfiction

50 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Plutarch (later named, upon becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus; AD 46–AD 120) was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist, known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia. He is classified as a Middle Platonist. Plutarch's surviving works were written in Greek, but intended for both Greek and Roman readers.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most modern readers are familiar with the famous and infamous Alcibiades through his appearance in Plato's Symposium. The philosopher/biographer Plutarch (AD 46- AD 120) wrote a splendid account of the life of Alcibiades. But being primarily a philosopher, Plutarch put great premium on strength of character and how one conducts oneself in the public arena. For me, this philosophic approach is most appealing. Like the ancient Greeks, I find the author's Alcibiades fascinating. Here are quotes from Plutarch along with my comments.

"The beauty of Alcibiades bloomed with him in all the ages of his life, in his infancy, in his youth, and in his manhood; and, in the peculiar character becoming to each of these periods, gave him, in every one of them, a grace and a charm." --------- Ah, to be such a splendid work of beauty at every single stage of your life. What a gift from the gods!

"His conduct displayed many great inconsistencies and variations not unnaturally, in accordance with the many and wonderful vicissitudes of his fortunes; but among the many strong passions of his real character, the one most prevailing of all was his ambition and desire of superiority." ---------- Oh my, Plutarch senses all could not turn out well for such a man.

"Alcibiades had a dog which cost him seventy minas (about $40,000 US dollars), and was a very large one and very handsome. His tail, which was his principal ornament, he caused to be cut off, and his acquaintance exclaiming at him for it, and telling him that all Athens was sorry for the dog, and cried out upon him for this action. Alcibiades laughed, and said, "Just what I wanted has happened, then. I wished the Athenians to talk about this, that they might not say something worse of me." ---------- To cut off your dog's tail -- how telling of someone's character! And Plutarch relates how later in his military career, Alcibiades ordered the killing of 3000 prisoners. No doubt with an equal disregard for the suffering he was creating. Sidebar: Here is a painting from the 1800s of Alcibiades with his beautiful dog before his tail was cut off (https://www.google.com/search?q=alcib...).

"We are to understand that Alcibiades had the highest capacity for inventing, for discerning what was the right thing to be said for any purpose, and on any occasion, but, aiming not only at saying what was required, but also at saying it well." --------- Not only physical beauty but to have the gift of rhetoric - what a combination! No wonder Alcibiades inspired a kind of hero-worship among the people of ancient Greece.

"He intermingled exorbitant luxury and wantonness in his eating and drinking and dissolute living; wore purple robes like a woman, which dragged after him as we went through the marketplace." ---------- Ha! So the golden boy with the golden tongue wasn't so golden on the inside. And, of course, to hurl the ultimate insult: their golden boy acting like a woman!

"The force of his eloquence, the grace of his person, his strength of body, joined with his great courage and knowledge in military affairs, prevailed upon the Athenians to endure patiently his excesses, to indulge many things to him, and according to their habit, to give the softest names to his faults, attributing them to youth and good nature." ---------- What a golden boy can get away with! Of course, we have counterparts in our modern world of spectator sports. But as long as the sports heroes can win for the team . . . well, boys will be boys.

"He captivated and won over everybody by his conformity to Spartan habits. People who saw him wearing his hair close cut, bathing in cold water, eating coarse meal, and dining on black broth, doubted, or rather could not believe, that he ever had a cook in his house. . . . For he had this peculiar talent and artifice for gaining men's affections, that he could at once comply with and really embrace and enter into their habits and ways of life, and change faster than the chameleon." ---------- Now to top it off, the golden boy could morph into the ideal man, depending on whatever city he happens to be in at the given moment. Plutarch realizes how such a man of vanity and self-aggrandizement is potentially dangerous, very dangerous.

And, of course, true to form, Alcibiades repeatedly changed sides to suit his own thirst for power and glory. First back and forth between Athens and Sparta and then Persia - but finally being a chameleon caught up with him. He was hunted down by order of his Greek enemies and assassinated, assassinated, that is, by barbarians - the ultimate low blow. Such is the fate of a man of flawed character.

Plutarch’s Lives are available on-line: http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu...

[David Sarkies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Athen's Showpony
24 Feb 2018 - Geelong

I'm somewhat tempted to compare Alcibiades to a certain orange haired American president, but I feel that in doing so it would not be fair on Alcibiades. However, while he may be quite popular among the Helenophiles (lovers of Ancient Greece), I'm not particularly sure if he was all that well liked among his contemporaries. Well, that probably goes without saying if we consider the later part of his life where he spent most of it in exile from Athens, and for part of that time he was even living with the Spartans. Plutarch pairs Alcibiades with Coriolanus, which is in part appropriate because both of them turned their back on their homeland and joined their enemies, despite having chalked up some great victories against them. However, the big difference is that Alcibiades was quite flamboyant, and also a brilliant orator.

I guess that is why a part of me wants to compare Alcibiades with a more modern, and quite detested, political figure. While I would hardly call the Trumpet flamboyant in the way that Alcibiades was, they are both quite loud, and while many would disagree, both are great orators. The thing with being a great orator is being able to control the narrative, and that was what the Trumpet managed to do throughout the 2016 election. The fact that when he announced his candidacy everybody thought it was a joke worked in his favour, and then everybody watched in horror has be pretty much destroyed his opponents one by one. For instance, by using the phrase 'crooked Hillary' he put the image in people's minds that she was crooked, and even if one hated the Trumpet, the image was still there.

This is why Alcibiades' enemies didn't make a move on him until he was outside of the city, namely because he couldn't control the narrative. In fact, this was when he was participating in the disastrous Sicilian expedition, and one of (though not the only) the reasons that it failed was because of the arrest warrant that was put out against him, which resulted in him tipping off the enemies of Athens. He also found himself in Sparta for a while, which was noted went quite against his character – Alcibiades, if anything, lived a very extravagant lifestyle, and this was not the lifestyle that one was going to get in Sparta. Yet, he would jump sides quite regularly, because when the Persians joined forces with the Spartans, and brought their navy to bare, it was time to go back to the Athenians.

There is an interesting thing here with regards to Acibiades' attitude towards democracy – he didn't believe that it worked. Well, I guess it didn't work when it didn't work in his favour. In fact, after one horrendous defeat, an oligarchy was installed, only to be overthrown shortly afterwards. I guess this equates with this idea of 'fake news', namely any news that appears in the media that doesn't support one's own position. Democracy is all well and good when it works in your favour, but when it doesn't then it is broken and we need to bring in another system – in a way nothing has changed in two and a half thousand years.

It seems there is much more to Alcibiades' life than even Plutarch was able to put into his rather long biography. He seemed to skip the story on how he defaced a bunch of Hermea, by breaking off one of the appendages (though it turns out that there is some debate as to whether he actually did that or nor, it is just that his enemies used it as a way to get back at him). He also failed to mention how Alcibiades managed to capture a whole contingent of Spartans completely by accident (despite him bragging to the assembly before hand that he would actually do it). I guess that is another thing that sets Alcibiades apart from the Trumpet – he actually was a pretty decent general, and didn't dodge the draft. Then again, back in those days there was no dodging the draft, namely because everybody was in the army (or the navy as the case may be).

I still can't get the picture of such a flamboyant character as Alcibiades living with the Spartans – it would sort of be like the Trumpet fleeing the United States because of various warrants being put out for his arrest, and political enemies on both sides of the aisle ganging up on him, and then he moving to North Korea to live because that is the only place he could go to get out of reach of the law. Oh, there is also the story of how Alcibiades was such a whore monger that his wife sued for divorce, which is pretty extreme when it comes to Ancient Athens considering that wives didn't have any rights, and the wealthy were whore mongers anyway. I guess it had much more to do with his character, and that in the end he was an absolute pain in the neck that nobody could stand (and I tend to fall into that category – Alcibiades certainly isn't one of my favourites, probably because of Plato's portrayal of him in the Symposium, which is of a drunken lout).

For those who are interested, I found a video on Youtube that gives a different perspective on this rather controversial, and colourful, figure of the ancient world.

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this Plutarch biography of the politician and general Alcibiades more interesting than many of the others, but confusing in regard to battles and alliances, and not all that helpful when it came to understanding the character of the man himself. Part of this is due, I think, to my lack of knowledge of the Peloponnesian War, but much of it comes from the paradoxical character of the man: handsome and admired by all, yet friend and lover to the homely philosopher Socrates; brave, intrepid in battle, devious and dishonest in negotiation,; beloved Athenian statesman and general, yet a traitor who fought for Sparta; vain and self-absorbed yet conspicuously generous; a persuasive speaker who spoke with a lisp.

The following passage communicates well the young Alcibiades’ effect upon the Athenian people:

But with all these [wise and prudent] words and deeds, and with all this sagacity and eloquence, he intermingled exorbitant luxury and wantonness in his eating and drinking and dissolute living; wore long purple robes like a woman, which dragged after him as he went through the market-place; caused the planks of his galley to be cut away, that so he might lie the softer, his bed not being placed on the boards, but hanging upon girths. His shield, again, which was richly gilded, had not the usual ensigns of the Athenians, but a Cupid, holding a thunderbolt in his hand, was painted upon it. The sight of all this made the people of good repute in the city feel disgust and abhorrence, and apprehension also, at his free-living, and his contempt of law, as things monstrous in themselves, and indicating designs of usurpation....

The truth is, his liberalities, his public shows, and other munificence to the people, which were such as nothing could exceed, the glory of his ancestors, the force of his eloquence, the grace of his person, his strength of body, joined with his great courage and knowledge in military affairs, prevailed upon the Athenians to endure patiently his excesses, to indulge many things to him, and, according to their habit, to give the softest names to his faults, attributing them to youth and good nature.

[Peter Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alcibiades by Plutarch

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...


Alcibiades had one of those energetic, charmed, overstuffed lives, like Theodore Roosevelt, who dispatched Dewey to Manilla Bay and still had time to ride up San Juan Hill. Alcibiades was everywhere in the latter stages of the Peloponnesian War, always being the great hope, always switching sides, and always letting his personal vices undermine his grabs for glory.

For heaven's sake, the man gets a write-up in Plato, Thucydides, and Plutarch.

I read this book as part of the Online Great Books program. I was surprised at the fairly even-handed treatment that Alcibiades gets, but then, I'm probably pro-Athens and I can't forgive Alcibiades for selling out to Sparta and Persian, and, then, trying to end Athenian democracy. To be fair, it was not like his enemies weren't going to have him judicially murdered for cutting off the "noses" (as Plutarch delicately puts it) of the statues of Hermes. Athens definitely was rough on generals who fell out of favor.

There was something about Alcibiades. Plutarch describes him as having an attractive pedigree, good looks, and a lisp to die for. We know Socrates fell under his sway. He was able to charm the Athenian people, Athenian oligarchs, Spartans and Persians equally. Of course, he had a propensity for self-destruction, sleeping with that Spartan's wife, telling that Persian one too many whoppers, that inevitably did him in.

Plutarch's text, as always, is turgid and overstuffed. If you are writing a biography of Alcibiades, and the next such biography might have to wait 1,800 years, go big or go home.

Plutarch normally is not one to project feelings or motivations onto his subjects, but he does occasionally. This one struck me as apt:

"The truth is, his liberalities, his public shows, and other munificence to the people, which were such as nothing could exceed, the glory of his ancestors, the force of his eloquence, the grace of his person, his strength of body, joined with his great courage and knowledge in military affairs, prevailed upon the Athenians to endure patiently his excesses, to indulge many things to him, and, according to their habit, to give the softest names to his faults, attributing them to youth and good nature.

Clough, Arthur Hugh. Plutarch’s Lives (Volumes I and II) (p. 406). Digireads.com. Kindle Edition.

Do we have such people today? Classicist Victor Davis Hanson was inclined during the Clinton administration to refer to that president as "our Alcibiades." The reference undoubtedly went over the heads of anyone who had not read their Plutarch.

[Sarah H · Rating 5 out of 5]

My friend's brother had the *nerve* to call Alcibiades a "fucker" at the center of "many clusterfucks." ???????? WuttT??? I was all, "Could I be wrong????? Is it possible that one could describe Alcibiades as a fucker??? I shall reread Plutarch for the 1,000th time and get to the bottom of this!" (TO BE CLEAR, he clearly meant fucker in a very negative sense! Not in a "one who delights in orgiastic fucking" sense, in which case I would have agreed!)

I can say with confidence that Alcibiades is indeed a lovable rascal!

Plutarch has all the best stories, but is clearly not as good a writer as Thucydides.

My copy of this came from a $1.00 bargain basement and is heavily used/marked up. The prior owner, Damian (if the name inscribed is to be believed), clearly wrote a paper on Alcibiades. His hot take (according to his margin notes) is that Alcibiades in manipulative. I would have gone with, "excellent at bending situations to his advantage." I personally love Damian's indignant, all caps note of "NOT SOCRATIC!" next to:
"In the midst of this display of statesmanship, eloquence, cleverness, and exalted ambition, Alcibiades lived a life of prodigious luxury, drunkenness, debauchery, and insolence."

There are about 10,000 choice quotes I could drop in here, but I am just going to put one that directly addresses my friend's brother's misguided assertion that Alcibiades was at the "center of many clusterfucks." In this passage, Alcibiades has just returned to Athens after his exile:
"But there were tears mingled with the people's joy as men remembered the misfortunes of the past and compared them to their present happiness, for they reflected that they would never have suffered the Sicilian disaster or any other of their terrible disappointments if only they had left Alcibiades in command of that expedition and kept him at the head of affairs."

I also just don't understand how anyone majors in anything other than Classics at college. What are you possibly doing that is better than reading about Alcibiades?

OK one more. Plutarch says, "As for Alcibiades' physical beauty, we need say no more than that it flowered at each season of his growth in turn, and lent him an extraordinary grace and charm, alike as a boy, a youth and a man." --> But then he does go on to say quite a bit more on the subject.

I'm going to read Life of Nicias next just for lulz.

Also, this is what I do on a Friday night now BECAUSE I AM STILL IN THE HOUSE.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

He was a stronger personality than Alexander.
------------------------------
I reread this every year and appreciate the political lessons more and more.
6/15/24
--------------------------
So bold and entertaining, he was the Charlie Sheen of his day.

[Igna GM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enserio que le pasaba a este compa.

[Bunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alcibiades precious baby boy 💕😍🥰

[Angelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

That man led a wild life.

[Sophia Ries · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm bored, I don't know why I read this

[Dagogo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Très bon ouvrage sur un personnage haut en couleur ! Au vu de la narration usée par Plutarque, on croirait presque lire un roman historique, tant la vie de ce fameux Alcibiade est des plus rocambolesques et digne d'un film d'aventure.

[Noah W · Rating 4 out of 5]

ok king