Alcibiades and Athens: A Study in Literary Presentation (Oxford Classical Monographs)

The aim of the Oxford Classical Monographs series (which replaces the Oxford Classical and Philosophical Monographs) is to publish books based on the best theses on Greek and Latin literature, ancient history, and ancient philosophy examined by the Faculty Board of Literae Humaniores.

Alcibiades and Athens A Study in Literary Presentation

DAVID GRIBBLE

CLARENDON PRESS . O X F O R D 

Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford   Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © David Gribble  The moral rights of the author have been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press. Within the UK, exceptions are allowed in respect of any fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act , or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms and in other countries should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Alcibiades and Athens: a study in literary presentation David Gribble. (Oxford Classical monographs) Revision of the author’s thesis (Ph. D.)—Oxford, . Includes bibliographical references and index. . Greek literature—Greece—Athens—History and criticism. . Literature and history—Greece—Athens. . Athens (Greece)—In literature. . Alcibiades—In literature. . Statesmen in literature. . Generals in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PA.G  .9—dc ‒ ISBN ‒‒‒ 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by Hope Services (Abingdon) Ltd. Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., Guildford & King’s Lynn

To my parents

Preface

The year is  . Alcibiades, flushed with his unprecedented success at the Olympics and newly appointed to the leadership of the Sicilian expedition, occupies a position of unparalleled influence in the city. He dominates Athens politically and commands the respect and adulation of her citizens. Yet within the space of a year he is to be found guilty of an attempt to overthrow the religious and political order of the city, execrated by the city’s priests, and expelled from the civic community, irrevocably (or so it seemed). It is this moment—the Athenian year / , when Alcibiades is at his most loved but also his most feared—that is the focus of the most important ancient depictions of Alcibiades: Thucydides, . , [Andocides] , and Plato’s Symposium. More than any other, this moment exposes the fundamental ambiguity in the city’s reaction to Alcibiades which is the key to understanding the man and his career. Alcibiades had come to be seen as a figure (familiar from cult and epic) who could not be incorporated within the civic community, whose power and massive ambition were so theatening to the city precisely because they were so very attractive to its citizens. Alcibiades had become deeply ambivalent: at once inside the city and outside it; its saviour, but also its greatest threat; its darling, but at the same time its enemy. This paradoxical reaction to an extreme character exposes a wider tension in Athenian civic ideology between dedication to the civic and attraction to the individualistic, between the values of the democracy and the domination of the élite. It is common today in discussions of ancient Athens to stress collective ideology—and rightly so. This study, however, focuses on another, perhaps complementary strand, one already exposed by the German scholars Berve and Bruns: the fascination with the powerful individual. It is not the aim of this book to add to the literature on Alcibiades’ life—here there is Hatzfeld’s excellent biography and

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Preface

the recent works of Ellis and de Romilly. There is no attempt to reopen questions relating to Alcibiades’ political and military career, or his historical significance. Rather, the aim is to trace the extraordinary reaction excited by Alcibiades in contemporaries and in contemporary texts. I hope that the book will be a contribution to the study of Athenian ideology, and to that of the depiction of individuals in Greek literature and rhetoric, and that it will shed light on historical characterization—the development of literary versions of a historical figure. In view of the aims of the book, the main focus remains the classical city—but the later Alcibiades tradition, culminating in the biography of Plutarch, is not neglected (Chapter  and Conclusion). This book is a revised version of my  Oxford D.Phil. thesis, with the addition of some new material, in particular Chapter . In its preparation I have incurred many debts, which it is a pleasure to record. The first and greatest is to my tutor, supervisor, and mentor Christopher Pelling, whose constant advice and support has been essential to this project at every stage, and whose academic example has influenced me to an extent that will be obvious in many places. I have also benefited tremendously from the wise guidance and many specific suggestions of Donald Russell, my cosupervisor and faculty-appointed adviser in preparing the book. My other co-supervisor, Richard Rutherford, gave me valuable help on Plato, and my two examiners Christopher Gill and Simon Hornblower also provided important comments and suggestions, as did Robin Osborne on Chapter . I am most grateful as well to the others who have read and commented on earlier versions of the material contained in this book: Lucinda Coventry, Professor D. Metzler, Robin Osborne, Christianne Sourvinou-Inwood, Jeremy Trevett, and Nelly Tsouyopoulos. From others again I have benefited from valuable discussion: George Forrest, Professor P. Funke, Tom Harrison, Arnd Kerkhecker, Robin Lane Fox, Niall Livingstone, Judith Mossman, and Oswyn Murray. I have always tried to respond to the suggestions of these wise advisers, but inevitably there will be occasions when they have not been able to set me on the right path. The work could not even have been started without financial assistance from the Leverhulme Fund and from Merton College, Oxford. I extend to them my heartfelt thanks for their generous support.

Preface

ix

Every effort has been made to transliterate frequently-used Greek terms, except where the linguistic nature of the discussion or the grammatical complexity of the word-endings made it appropriate to retain the original Greek. D.G. London 

Contents

Abbreviations

xii

Introduction





Élite Individual and Democratic City





Rhetorical Works Appendix : Lost Speeches Appendix : [Andocides] , Against Alcibiades

  



Thucydides





Plato and the Socratics Appendix: The Authenticity of the First Alcibiades

 

Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades



Bibliography



Index Locorum



General Index



Abbreviations

APF Baiter–Sauppe CAH v DK FGH Fortenbaugh HCT

K.-A. Kock LSJ ML PMG RG TGF Wehrli West

J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families (Oxford, ). J. G. Baiter and H. Sauppe, Oratores Attici,  vols. (Zurich, ). D. Lewis, et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, v (Cambridge, ). H. Diels, and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker,  vols. (Berlin, –). F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin and Leiden, –). W. W. Fortenbaugh, Theophrastus of Ephesus,  vols. (Leiden, New York, and Cologne, ). A. W. Gomme, A. Andrewes, and K. J. Dover, A Historical Commentary to Thucydides,  vols. (Oxford, –). R. Kassel, and A. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci (Berlin and New York, – ). T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta,  vols. (Leipzig, –). A. G. Lidell, R. Scott, and H. S. Jones (eds.), A Greek–English Lexicon (Oxford, ). R. Meiggs and D. Lewis, A Collection of Greek Historical Inscriptions (Oxford, ). D. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford, ). C. Walz, Rhetores Graeci (Tübingen, –). A. Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, with suppl. by B. Snell (Hildesheim, ). F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles (Basel and Stuttgart, – ). M. L. West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci ,  vols. (Oxford, ).

Introduction

.      On no account rear a lion in the city, But if one is reared, then humour his ways. (Aristophanes, Frogs –)

The response of Aristophanes’ Aeschylus to the burning question, ‘What is to be done about Alcibiades?’ defines a problem faced not only by Athens in the years between  and  , but, in various forms, by Greeks throughout the history of the city-state. It is the problem of the great individual, who, for reasons which I will consider in more detail later in this Introduction, cannot be accommodated within the city in the normal way. Aeschylus sees Alcibiades as a lion,1 a fiercely proud and powerful creature arousing admiration, but also a savage figure of nature rather than culture,2 unacceptable and dangerous when released ‘in the city’. Nevertheless, the lion does not come upon the city from outside: he is reared in the city, a civic phenomenon, nurtured on the honour accorded him by the citizens. Once reared, he can be met by appeasement as Aeschylus advises, but the acceptance of his superior status looks like a surrender of the democratic polis to the powerful individual, reversing the normal subordination of the individual to the civic and political sphere;3 indeed, the lion is 1 Aeschylus’ cryptic advice is cast in the terms of the imagery of the Agamemnon, where the lion in the city is Paris: Aesch. Ag. –; cf. Eur. Supp. –. On the image of Alcibiades as a lion, cf. Plut. Alc. . –; Cornford (: –). Cornford’s own comment () is itself a good illustration of the schema of the great individual: ‘There are in European history perhaps a dozen born heroes whom posterity will never reduce to common proportions . . . they are put beyond the reach of criticism.’ 2 Achilles too is (‘wild’—Il. . ), and the Sophoclean hero is often compared to a wild beast: Knox (: –). 3 Cf. [And.] . , where Alcibiades is said to ‘think it right not that he should obey the laws of the city, but that you should submit himself to his ways’.



Introduction

traditionally a symbol of royal and tyrannical power.4 But if the citizens choose to confront or reject him, there is the danger that the lion will vent his wrath on the city (as Alcibiades did in his exile) and use his personal power (dunamis) against it, with disastrous effect. The question of how to deal with such a figure is thus irresolvable.5 In the last ten years of the Peloponnesian War the constant ambivalence and indecision which characterized the Athenian attitude towards Alcibiades crucially undermined Athenian policy (cf. Thuc. . ). As Dionysus puts it (Frogs ) the city ‘longs for him, hates him, but wants to have him’. The superlative individual, whose greatness put him in another category to the normal run of people, and who could not be expected to subject himself to the normal rules of the community, is a characteristic figure of Greek thought and society. ‘These were men who by the awesome force of their personality, the greatness of their achievement, their suffering, and in most cases their passionate anger, seemed in life to exceed the proportions of ordinary humanity . . . ’6 This idea of the ‘great individual’ can be traced back to a time before the polis, to the heroes of myth such as Achilles, whose heroism is distinguished by a massive sense of personal worth capable of turning into a vengeful wrath against his fellows. The schema is reflected on the Athenian tragic stage by heroes like Ajax or Medea. The extreme self-regard demonstrated by these figures threatens to turn into madness on the one side and divinity on the other, putting them outside not only the community but also the normal human condition. Moreover, it is crucial to these figures that their ‘difference’ from others be illustrated through a disastrous confrontation with family, fellows, society: their wonderful and frightening pride is only properly released or revealed when threatened or challenged. For their sort of heroism, conflict with the community is almost an inevitable concomitant. 4 Lions associated with tyrants: Hdt. .  (Hipparchus), .  (Cypselus); cf. also Aristoph. Knights . Pericles too, whose power was also often portrayed (in a different way) as in tension with the equality expected of a democracy, was compared in a dream to a lion (Hdt. . . ). Callicles in the Gorgias compares the taming of the powerful phusis by society to the taming of lions (e–). 5 Cf. Eur. frag.  TGF: ‘Never expel a man who has the confidence of the demos, | Nor raise him up more than is good. This is not safe: | You might see a brilliant tyrant appear from the city.’ 6 Knox’s description (: ) of the Greek hero.

Introduction



In Greek religion, heroization and cultic honours were often associated with figures who, like athletic victors or superlatively successful military leaders upon whom the fate of whole cities had depended (Lysander, Brasidas7), had put themselves on another level through the status they had achieved. Especially significant is a group of athletic victors whose rejection by the city turned them into agents of vengeance after their death, a bane to their communities until appeased by cultic honours.8 Here, the ambivalence of the great individual is particularly clear: the quality in these figures which makes them worthy of cult is defined not just by their tremendous self-regard and status (acquired or signalled by their victories), but by their violent, unpredictable temperaments,9 and the harm they are capable of doing the community.10 The honouring of one who has brought disaster on the community, and may do so again, is not just a matter of simple prudence: it is precisely this capacity to harm which defines the individual’s status above and apart from others and inspires admiration and reverence. Alcibiades too was an Olympic victor on a tremendous scale. The course of his career (honour–rejection–wrath–attempt at reintegration) parallels that of the heroes of myth or cult, and might well have inspired a cult had the political environment been receptive. But cults of outstanding individuals, rare throughout Greece at this time,11 were especially repugnant to Athenian democratic ideology. The cult of Alcibiades, the quasi-metaphysical admiration for his power and status, remained at a metaphorical level only, reflected in literature12 but not in religion. Nevertheless, on the fringes of the Greek world, in Asia Minor, there was some cultic recognition of Alcibiades’ great status. A statue of Alcibiades was erected in the temple of Hera at Samos during his lifetime,13 and, long after his death, sacrifices were instituted at the site of his death in Phrygia by the emperor Hadrian.14 Plut. Lys. ; Thuc. . . Fontenrose (); Kurke (: –). 9 Cf. the temperament displayed by Medea: Eur. Med.  ff. 10 Cf. Knox (: –). 11 Farnell (: –). 12 Bruns (: –). 13 Paus. . .. This temple was later associated with the cult of Lysander (cf. Schaefer (–: –): whereas the Samian democrats had merely flattered Alcibiades by erecting statues of him, the oligarchs made Lysander an object of cult. Cf. also Hatzfeld (:  n. ). 14 Ath. . e. The story (Pliny, NH . ; Plut. Numa ) that the Romans, in obedience to a Delphic oracle during the Samnite wars, erected on the Capitol a 7 8



Introduction

Outside cult, a similar schema of superlative individualism is traceable in the historical relationship between powerful individual and city. The greatest individuals of the fifth century, with whose names the most famous victories were associated, Miltiades, Themistocles, Pausanias, Alcibiades and Lysander, were all at some stage charged by their communities with an uncivic or megalomaniac desire for power and (except for Lysander) banned, fined, or put to death. Thucydides’ digression on Cylon, Pausanias, and Themistocles in Book  (–) brings together three such individuals, who, though different in many respects, combined outstanding status in the city and disastrous confrontation with it. Cylon, ‘well-born and powerful [ ]’, an Olympic victor and the son-in-law of the tyrant of Megara, was the author of an attempt in the seventh century to make himself tyrant over Athens. His suppression and impious execution by the Alcmaeonid-led city officials brought down the ‘curse of the goddess’ on the city. Later, a statue of Cylon, just as much an attempt at appeasement as a mark of honour, was erected on the Acropolis.15 Pausanias, overcome by the honour accorded him because of his victory at Plataea, was ‘unable to live in the normal way’, establishing a Persian-style court around himself (Thuc. . ). On the inscription added to the Persian spoils taken at Plataea, Pausanias placed his own name in the position of glory that should have been occupied by Greek cities. The paranomia (non-conformity to the accepted laws and conventions) and the dianoia or mind-set which this behaviour suggested made it easy to believe allegations that he was intriguing with the Persians in an attempt to become master of Greece (Thuc. . ). His death (starved by the authorities in a temple) sent the ‘curse of Tainarus’ on the Spartans (Thuc. . –). Themistocles, with whose name the victory at Salamis was most associated, was ostracized from the city, and then, like Pausanias, accused of Medizing and recalled for trial (Thuc. . –). As with the charges made against Alcibiades over the Herms and Mysteries affair, which also led to exile, the guilt of Themistocles was in some doubt, but the magnitude of his status, and the tremendous philo-

statue of Pythagoras and one of Alcibiades, suggests that Alcibiades was credited with some sort of numinous power. 15 Paus. . . .

Introduction



timia (desire for honour) he displayed,16 made the Athenians ready to see in him a figure who was ‘incapable of being ruled’.17 The massive and uncontrollable access of honour and status experienced by all these figures is said to have led them to think of themselves as on a different level from their fellow citizens. After his Olympic victory, Thucydides’ Alcibiades claims that his tremendous sense of himself justifies a position of inequality in the city (µ µ —. . ). The philotimia of such figures is so tremendous that it cannot be satiated by the status already enjoyed. They burn to actualize their superiority by acquiring a sort of power not provided for by the constitutions of their cities, above all a tyranny. The accusation of aiming at tyranny, which was levelled at Alcibiades,18 may seem to us more like a schema for projecting anti-civic tendencies, a reflection of the community’s fear of great figures,19 or of its phthonos (envy), than a reflection of the real designs of the individual concerned. But it is important to remember that figures of such status had, as a matter of historical fact, like Cylon, conceived a desire to make themselves tyrant over Greek cities, and many had succeeded in this aim: Peisistratus accomplished the feat on three occasions. The city-threatening great individual may appear to descend upon the city from outside. And yet the great status which made these figures so dangerous is of course accorded to them by the citizens. The great individual who threatens the community is a creation of the polis itself. When Solon says (Poem W) ‘It is from the cloud that the great force of snow or hail comes . . . and it is from µ ] that the city is destroyed, and the great men [ people in its folly falls into slavery to a single ruler’, he is highlighting the key role of the citizens themselves in creating, or ‘rearing’ the great individual and the tyrant. Likewise [Andocides] in the Against Alcibiades blames the Athenians themselves (§ ) for allowing Alcibiades’ power and prestige to reach such alarming proportions: ‘you yourselves are responsible . . . because of the admiration you show for those who openly behave in an outrageous way’. As we shall see in Chapter , the rhetorical strategy of Isoc.  relies on arousing the jury’s admiration of Alcibiades by depicting him as a figure of outstanding status, capable of seizing a 16 17 19

Plut. Them. . : ‘in philotimia, he surpassed all others’; cf. Them. , , . 18 Thuc. . ; cf. Isoc. . . Cf. Plut. Them. .. Cf. Seager ().



Introduction

tyranny, but unwilling to do so. Such attitudes can be seen as a political reflection of the intense admiration for the great individual in cult and myth. Admiration and fear are inextricably linked: it is the status of the great individual which causes him so to be feared and hated, a paradox summed up in the erotic imagery of Dionysus’ picture of the Athenian attitude to Alcibiades: ‘they long for him, they hate him, but they want to have him’. So the danger posed by the great individual is very much a matter of attitudes and mentalité. But it also has its origins in the concrete realities of power-relations. The dunamis of historical great individuals, like Militiades or Peisistratus, whom Berve () styles fürstliche Herren or Einzelmenschen, was related to their control of resources in land, money, and manpower which might be used in the service of the city, but also against it. This power and these resources often came from sources outside the city, such as xenia-relations with foreign dynasts (like Theagenes the tyrant of Megara, who supplied Cylon with mercenaries for his attempt to make himself tyrant over Athens20), or even personal fiefdoms in the barbarian fringe of the Greek world, such as those controlled by Miltiades and Peisistratus, and later Alcibiades himself, in the Hellespont area.21 Control of such external power-bases enabled the individual to live literally and figuratively outside the city, or ‘alongside’ it as Berve22 puts it, and put him in a position to threaten the city. Relations with powerful foreign dynasts suspended the individual between the world of the city and an interpersonal international network of power and diplomacy. The unofficial, non-civic dunamis exercised by these figures, existing side by side with the official and collective authority of the city, may even be seen as a type of power which undermines the very principle of the polis.23 This is most obvious in the case of an actual tyranny, where the vesting of real power in an individual mocks the polis’ insistence on the freedom and equality of the citizens and the rule of law. Such a figure is anathema not just to the demos, but also to the aristocratic élite from which the great individual normally springs. Hence in Athens the overthrow of the Peisistratid tyranny was brought about by a coalition of aristocratic dynasts and the 21 Berve (: –; cf. : –). Thuc. . . (: ). 23 For Berve () the influence of these individuals was such that one cannot even speak of the polis so long as they existed: contrast Ehrenberg (). 20 22

Introduction



demos, and one of the ideals of the subsequent political arrangements instituted by Cleisthenes, himself a leading representative of the aristocratic élite, was a politeia purged of the unorthodox influence of powerful individuals. The city as a whole thus arms itself against the élite individual,24 a process which will be considered further in Chapter . I have outlined a pattern relating to the relationship between superlative individual and community comprising three levels: (i) a schema of thought and myth, (ii) a syndrome of attitudes, and (iii) a type of historical power-relations. Each level is essential to the figure whom I am calling the ‘great individual’, who is just as much a sociological and historical as a literary and religious phenomenon. In the remainder of this Introduction, I will first clarify some points regarding the methodology of my use of the term ‘individual’, then attempt to define the distinguishing features of the great individual more closely, before finally sketching some of the major themes of the succeeding chapters. .   What do we mean when we talk about ‘the individual’? The terms ‘individual’, ‘individuality’, and ‘individualism’ have come to carry a great variety of significances.25 In order to clarify the discussion of this book, I would like to single out three:26 . The empowered, confident, assertive individual, possessing the power to make moral choice, and endowed with status: the citizen. Contrast the repressed and powerless person, the subject. . The differentiated or ‘individuated’ individual, distinguished by a distinct blend of characteristics which make him or her like no other. Contrast the generic, the member of the mass. . The psychologically independent individual, aware of the possession of an inalienable inner life.27 A given society or text (I will also be applying this schema to literature) might be distinguished by one sort of individuality but not Berve (: ). Cf. Gill (: –); and in general Lukes (). Cf. the schemata of Foucault (: –); and Vernant (:  ff.). Cf. also the table of conceptions of the person set out by Gill (: –). 27 In classical Greece this third category of individual is much less important than the first two, and it will not figure in the discussions of this book. 24 25 26



Introduction

another, for example, early Christianity by type , but not type ; the Homeric poems by type , but not type , and so on, making it impossible to write a unitary history of the individual.28 Moreover, types of individuality are a function of the thinking and powerrelations of a given society or text as a whole, so the individual cannot be studied in isolation as a separate phenomenon. Inherent in the term ‘individual’ is a conceptual contrast between the individual and society, together with an implicit praise for an ‘integrated independence’ of the former from the latter. The term suggests a figure whose independence is still contained within society (indeed, without society, there would be nothing to contrast the individual with). Nevertheless, one could imagine an individualism practised to such an extent that the individual and/or the society perceived it as putting the individual in some sense outside society. For example, varieties of type  individualism, such as extreme religious mysticism, might lead to an ascetic renunciation of society.29 Recently it has been powerfully and convincingly argued30 that the concept of the individual, with its inherent contrast between individual and state (or society), was developed for looking at modern capitalist nation-states, and is not a particularly helpful tool for analysing Greek society. There is no Greek term capable of translating ‘individual’ or ‘individuality’ (though I will consider some related terms below): the experience of the Greek citizen is compounded from various social relationships centring on the polis,31 so that it would not normally occur to him to think in terms of opposing concepts of polis and individual. When Aristotle does distinguish (Pol. a) between polis and individual,32 it is only to claim that the individual is to the polis what the hand is to the body, a part, rendered meaningless unless associated with the whole.33 A human being who is apolis, city-less, has in some sense ceased to be a human being, either a beast or a god, (though Aristotle does consider a 28 Attempts to do so lead to the plotting of the rise of the individual at every timeperiod from archaic Greece to the th c.: cf. Pelling’s introduction to Pelling (a: pp. v–viii). 29 Cf. Dumont’s concept of the ‘individu hors du monde’, cited by Vernant (: ). 30 Gill (: –; cf. : –). 31 Gill (: ). Cf. Murray (: ). 32 For which he uses the word (‘each one’): Pol. a–. 33 Cf. Burckhardt (: –). See further on the individual in Greek society: Strasburger ().

Introduction



schema for the individual outside the city, as we will see below). These considerations make it necessary, I believe, to defend, or at least clarify, a concept of the ‘great individual’ which depends to some extent on a contrast between such a figure and society. First, I understand the ‘great individual’ to be a phenomenon purely of the ‘type ’ variety, as defined above: there is no suggestion of a claim to be ‘unique’, only ‘superlative’. Thus when Ajax claims that Troy has never seen a man of his like, he is not claiming to be qualitatively unlike any other, but instead more magnificent, prouder, more powerful than others.34 He possesses the qualities others possess, only more so, even if his superlative display of these qualities is seen as so remarkable as to put him into a different category. Contrast Alcibiades’ claim for the individuality of Socrates in Plato’s Symposium, which draws on the figure of the great individual, but is marked by strong ‘type ’ elements.35 We can think of the great individual as possessing a particularly strong variety of type  individualism, to the extent that he must be put in another category, becoming no longer consistent with society, but in some sense ‘outside’ it. Secondly, the contrast and conflict between the great individual and society is one of status, not of values. By status, I mean that quality which, in a Greek city, distinguishes the citizen from the non-citizen, and amongst citizens separates, for example, hoplite from non-hoplite, and aristocrat from non-aristocrat. 36 The great individual does not challenge society, except in a purely practical sense: his superlative status and uncompromising attitude threaten to turn in a destructive direction, thus posing a dilemma as to what is to be done with him (as in the dilemma posed by Alcibiades in Frogs). Indeed, since he superlatively demonstrates the values of honour and status awarded reciprocally as a reward for achievement, such a figure could better be thought of as reinforcing those values than calling them into question.37 His separation from, or Soph. Ajax –. Contrast Knox (: –). Symp. cd: after seeking unsucessfully for a figure with whom Socrates can be compared in his full individuality, Alcibiades declares ‘he is like no other person, neither of those of old nor those around today’. This passage is discussed further in Ch.  below. 36 Cf. Finley (:  ff.). 37 Cf. Vernant (, ) and Reeve () on Achilles, and the subtle discussion of the significance of the stance taken by Homer’s Achilles and Sophocles’ Ajax by Gill (: – and :  ff.). 34 35



Introduction

conflict with, society is related to the allocation of status, which society is unwilling or unable to grant in the quantities he urgently demands. Moreover, his call for the ‘emancipation’ of the individual relates only to one individual: himself. Achilles’ speech to the embassy in Iliad  could only have been spoken by a figure of Achilles’ status and sense of self-worth, under the provocation he has received from Agamemnon: it is not to be read as the blueprint for a general individualism, a call for a liberation from social values of reciprocity. Paradoxically, the great individual is, if anything, a symbol of the validity of status reciprocity. He represents the exception that proves the rule, the extreme case of status reciprocity which validates the whole system. In this closely defined sense, it is legitimate to talk in terms of a ‘great individual’, and of that figure’s individuality and individualism. Even though such a figure does not expound or represent a general societal individualism, his contrast and conflict with the community, which is the proof, or inevitable result of the magnitude of his status and sense of self-worth, is nevertheless central. When Ajax claims that Troy has never seen someone like him, or when people say about Alcibiades ‘there has never been someone like him’ ([And.] . ) it is appropriate to speak of such figures in terms of individualism and the individual. In the absence of a standardized Greek term to describe such a figure38 and his attitude,39 it is also convenient. Having suggested that the great individual is to be seen as a strong or deviant variety of type  individualism, I would like to explore this idea in terms of a tension between two characteristic Greek ideals, which we could see in terms of attitudes to ‘the individual’, in the type  sense. The first is the ideal of the Greek citizen, exercising control over himself and his body on the one hand (sophrosune), and over his inferiors (women, slaves, non-Greeks) on the other,40 subject to nothing except the laws, and to no one except the official and temporary archontes of the city. The citizen is thus empowered and equipped with status, in accordance with the type  form of indi38 Though note Solon’s µ philosophers and Isocrates’ term 39 Though note the term µ lopsuchia, discussed below. 40 Cf. Foucault (: –).

(Poem W); and the µ of the , both discussed below. (cf. Thuc. . . ), and Aristotle’s mega-

Introduction



viduality. Indeed, some of the qualities we might wish to include in a concept of individualism are reflected in the eleutheria ascribed to the Greek citizen: an aggressive concept of freedom concentrating on choice and power. As far as political life is concerned, all citizens are regarded as possessing this self-sufficiency in equal measure, i.e. Greek citizen society, even when not democratic, is of the ‘egalitarian’ rather than the ‘hierarchical’ type.41 Greek citizens were equal as far as their political participation was concerned, whatever great differences there might be amongst them in terms of wealth and birth. Political activity, participation in the polis in its widest sense, was articulated by a series of communal activities (religious, military, decision-making) in which all citizens participated as equals. The individual is constituted by such social activity, his individuality being a function of his participation in the polis, to such an extent that (as we have seen), it is legitimate to ask whether such a society could usefully be seen in terms of a distinction between individual and society at all. A second important pattern of Greek type  individualism, however, is the ideal of personal competitive excellence demonstrated, for example, by the leading warriors in the Iliad, who pursue the goal of ‘always being the best, and standing out over others’.42 The return for, and reflection of, such excellence is tim¯e (honour), and the competitive desire to excel is philotimia (love of honour). Philotimia is a value only available to a privileged subsection of the citizen body with the necessary wealth, training, and birth-status to pursue it (even though the polis, especially the democratic polis, opened up this value to some extent to the citizen group as a whole). Unlike the citizen individualism discussed above, this type of individualism is founded on the differences between citizens, and is inspired by the desire to increase one’s status vis-à-vis both the community and one’s competitors for honour, to be unequal: Glaukos, why is it that you and I are honoured before others with pride of place, the choice meats and the filled wine cups in Lykia, and all the men look on us as if we were immortals? . . . . . . . . . . 41 Vernant (: –): the citizen in Greek society is (in Dumont’s terms) homo aequalis rather than homo hierarchichus. 42 µµ , the advice given to Glaucus by his father before he sent him off to Troy (Il. . ).



Introduction Therefore it is our duty in the forefront of the Lykians to take our stand, and bear our part of the blazing battle, so that a man of the close-armoured Lykians may say of us: Indeed these are no ignoble men who are lords of Lykia. (Homer, Iliad . –, trans. Lattimore)

As this passage illustrates, philotimia may be consistent with the communal principle, stable and fully aware of its reliance on the community, and thus a praiseworthy quality, emphasizing stability. But in a civic context it may also connote an aggressive competitiveness which sets no bounds to the pursuit of honour, leading to forms of behaviour which bring instability to the community, or even to the desire to dominate it. Thus, like our ‘individualism’, philotimia incorporates both a communal and an uncommunal sense. In the great individual, the quest for excellence and the desire for honour is developed to a superlative and dangerous degree. For a hero like Achilles or Ajax, the pursuit and possession of honour is a raison d’être: without it life is no longer worth living. Tim¯e is seen more as a means to immortality through everlasting fame, than a means to, or justification of, status in the community. There is a sense in which the tim¯e sought by these figures has become cut off from its origins in social relations, so that Achilles, for example, can talk of ‘honour from Zeus’.43 Achilles, semi-divine in birth, and willing to trade longevity for honour, has access (through his goddess mother, but also though his own brilliance) to a divine honour which is in a sense distinguishable from community honour. As a character, he seems designed to illustrate a type of philotimia which is in another category, not of a communal sort. The hero’s conflict with the community can be seen as a way of demonstrating this radical, superlative philotimia. It is being cut off from what he sees as the honour legitimately due to him which releases and reveals the full extent of his sense of self-worth. Indeed, conflict with the community is itself a sign of a self-sense which is so massive that it cannot easily be incorporated into normal human reciprocal systems. The tragedy which results from such a conflict, for example when Achilles withdraws from the fighting, is given its special appeal by the tension the audience experiences between admiration for a figure whose intense valuation of honour assimilates him to the 43

Il. . .

Introduction



divine, and horror at the terrible suffering that the hero’s actions unleash. Conflict with the community is thus a sign of the great individual, and perhaps even an inevitable concomitant: for how could a truly great individual ever be contained within the community of equals? Such a figure becomes, in a sense, an individual outside society, a status illustrated by Achilles’ withdrawal, Ajax’s suicide, Medea’s apotheosis. The anti-communal attitude and behaviour displayed by such a figure is a sign of what I think we can legitimately call a superb individualism. .       A good starting-point for a closer examination of the key qualities of the great individual is the philosophical phusis (nature) in Plato’s Republic: ‘from such phuseis come those who have done the greatest harm to cities and to individuals, as well as those who have done the greatest good, if they happen to incline in this direction. An insignificant nature [ µ ] never undertakes any action of significance in respect either to cities or to individuals’ (Rep. b–). This great nature, predestined to undertake great action for the benefit or detriment of his city, becomes something of a topos in moral writing.44 Despite the strongly moral and communal context of these writings, this figure is seen as possessed of a greatness which, though it may result in good or bad, is in itself amoral. Such an account of the great individual locates his greatness firmly in inherited brilliance. Education, moral choice, and other subsequent influences are important only for determining the direction of the greatness, not for ascertaining whether or not he will become great. The inherent greatness of such a phusis is reflected in certain external qualities: beauty, wealth, physical strength, good birth (Rep. c–). Thus Alcibiades (who has often been associated with Plato’s philosophical phusis45) is presented by Socrates (in the Platonic first Alcibiades, –) with a list of his superlative natural gifts: ‘your advantages are great: you lack nothing, starting from your body and finishing with your soul’. 44 Cf. Xen. Mem. . . ; Plato, Grg. e–a; Cic. de Offic. . . , . . ; Plut. Them. . . 45 Cf. Ch.  below.



Introduction

These qualities, in particular his beauty,46 signal Alcibiades as one destined by nature to greatness. In a similar way the beauty of Evagoras as a youth was taken, according to Isocrates, as a sign of a great phusis: looking at him, the rulers of the day thought it ‘impossible for such a man to satisfy his phusis with the role of a private individual’. Later, the ‘megalopsuchia and unsurpassable phusis’ of Evagoras would arouse the fear even of the Persian king.47 The idea that there exist great ‘natures’ which can be satisfied only with a superlative position is also fundamental to Callicles’ arguments about the rule of the stronger in Plato’s Gorgias (e–c). In this case the inherently anti-communal tendency of the great phusis is brutally clear: the figure described by Callicles is not only destined to achieve greatness but actually possesses the natural right to overthrow the communities which seek to restrict him. The analysis in amoral terms, the admiration of the power of the figure irrespective of the effect of his actions, are unashamedly exaggerated, to the point where it is actually the thrilling capacity of the great phusis to overthrow the unnatural limitations imposed by the community which is his most distinguishing feature. Characteristically, the ‘greatness’ or ‘powerfulness’ of such a figure is expressed in terms whose vagueness is exposed by Socrates’ questioning (b–e). A second key quality of the great individual is a massive sense of personal worth, an aggressive pride, or phronema, observable above all in the heroes of epic and tragedy. ‘You can cringe and fawn, those are not my ways,’ Antigone tells Ismene.48 Ajax claimed that Troy had never seen a man like him, and is described as ‘not thinking according to mortal limits’ ( ’ ).49 In the first Alcibiades, the phronema of the young Alcibiades is founded on an acute awareness of his inherited advantages (–). He considers himself to be ‘the inferior of no man in no respect’. His awareness of his dunamis and wealth produce an attitude described as ‘great thinking’ (µ —c). Thucydides’ Alcibiades too, defending himself against attacks on the massive scale of his Olympic expenditure, claims the right ‘thinking greatly 46 Constantly emphasized in the texts: Ath. b–f; Antisth. frag.  Caizzi; Plut. Alc. . , .  etc. 47 Isoc. . , . Likewise, the superlative qualities of Plato’s philosophical phusis are evident even when he is still a boy. 48 Soph. Antig. . 49 Soph. Ajax , ; cf. Knox (: ).



Introduction

[µ ], to be not equal’ (. . ): in other words, the magnitude of his sense of himself, and the great actions he achieves as a result, both justify and prove his superiority within the city. This justified sense of personal greatness is what Aristotle is concerned with in his discussion of megalopsuchia (‘greatness of soul’) in the Nicomachean Ethics (a–a). Aristotle too uses vague terminology revolving around magnitude to describe this figure, claiming (b): ‘megalopsuchia consists in greatness [µ ]’. As the analysis progresses, this ‘greatness’ is revealed to be a superlative quality: the megalopsuchos pursues the greatest of all external goods, the prize for the finest achievements, the one we offer to the gods, namely honour (b–). He is worthy not just of great honour, but of the greatest honour (b–). The examples Aristotle elsewhere50 gives of megalopsuchoi are already familiar—Achilles, Ajax, and Alcibiades himself—men whose common characteristic is their inability to suffer insult or dishonour. Indeed, the megalopsuchos could be taken for another version of the great individual, were not Aristotle so careful to insist that he is fully integrated into a moral scheme.51 The megalopsuchos displays the sort of greatness which puts him on another level in the field of moral behaviour: he is a great individual suited to the Ethics. Characteristically, Aristotle’s discussion is founded on the assumption that there exist people who are inherently so great (and virtuous) as to justify such an extraordinary estimation of themselves. Aristotle’s conception of megalopsuchia is also apparently informed by the idea that thinking greatly about oneself is itself a kind of greatness. This superlative sense of self-worth is also a characteristic of the philosophical phusis of the Republic. Here, however, such an attitude, because it is founded on the common opinion of society rather than philosophy and truth, is seen as misdirected and empty. The philosophical soul is surrounded by flatterers who want to use him for their own purposes, so that he is ‘filled with boundless ambition, thinking himself capable of running the affairs of Greece and the barbarians besides’, and becomes ‘high and mighty [ ] and filled with an inane phronema’ (Rep. c). It is not that such a great nature is not justified in having a great opinion of himself, but rather that his phronema is misguided and unphilosophical. One 50 51

Post. An. . , b. The megalopsuchos must be virtuous (

): b–.



Introduction

recalls Xenophon’s portrait (Mem. . . –) of the corruption of Alcibiades: pursued and flattered by great women and powerful men, and honoured by the demos, he neglects moral askesis. Such descriptions may offer a real insight into how, in the Greek polis, a rich, powerful, and aristocratic figure could develop a phronema of uncommunal proportions. As we have seen, the massive phronema of the great individual is most clearly revealed when the hero finds himself thwarted or feels himself slighted, so that he is induced to wreak a terrible revenge on those he regards as responsible, a revenge whose effects may embrace others, or the whole community. Thus Alcibiades, stung by what he sees as his humiliation by the Spartans over the signing of the Peace of Nicias, devoted himself to ruining their policies by manipulating Athenian foreign policy (Thuc. . –). When exiled by his enemies in  , according to Isocrates, he ‘was not cowed by the size of the city, but elected to make war on it’, throwing the whole Greek world into confusion52 in an attempt to force a return to the city and take revenge on those who had exiled him.53 Similarly, Evagoras, in Isocrates’ encomium of him (Isoc. . –), displayed such ‘greatness of character’ (megalophrosune) when exiled that he determined not only to force a return to his city and overthrow his enemies, but to make himself tyrant over it. The ‘passionate self-esteem’ displayed by these figures is not just a contingent quality of heroic status, but somehow essential to it: it is this which motivates their deeds and this which arouses admiration. One aspect of ‘thinking greatly’ is massive ambition, the aiming at unparalleled achievement. Isocrates relates how Alcibiades entered seven teams in the chariot race of the Olympics in  , achieving first, second, and third places, a performance not only outclassing previous competitors, but also (it is claimed) one that would be unsurpassable by future competitors as well.54 Elected to the command of the Sicilian expedition he planned to conquer not just Syracuse, but Sicily and even Carthage (Thuc. . . ). The Socrates of the Platonic first Alcibiades (–) goes even further, attributing to Alcibiades a desire to make himself master not only Isoc. . –. Thucydides takes it for granted that the aim of Alcibiades in his exile was to force a return to Athens (. . ), and revenge himself on his enemies (cf. Thuc. . . ; . . ; . . ). One of these enemies, Androcles, was to pay for his actions against Alcibiades with his life (Thuc. . . ). 54 Isoc. . ; cf. Thuc. . .  (first, second, and fourth places). 52 53

Introduction



over all of Greece, but Asia as well, accepting only Cyrus and Xerxes as appropriate rivals. Of course, there is an important distinction to be made between the dangerous and hybristic desire for what is unattainable, and the realizable ambitions of the truly great man (hence Aristotle’s megalopsuchia, when not supported by real greatness, is mere vainglory). Writing to Philip to urge him to attempt the conquest of Asia (Ep. . ), Isocrates admits that ‘insatiability’ ( ) is normally an ugly quality, ‘but to desire a great and fine reputation and never to be satiated is appropriate for those who greatly differ from others’. In his address to Philip, he writes: ‘those who think greatly [ µ ] and those who are distinguished from others [ ] should not undertake the sort of actions which just anyone might perform, but those which no one else would undertake except someone with a phusis and a dunamis like yours.’ (Isoc. . ).55 The desire for tyrannical power is normally seen as evidence of a dangerous insatiability, but it is presented as a legitimate goal for Evagoras in the special circumstances of encomium.56 In the superlative phusis described by Callicles, insatiability is seen as a valid and necessary quality.57 Thirdly, the great individual is distinguished by superlative status. One might analyse this as the possession of normal forms of status, deriving from birth, political office, military command, and athletic victory, in a supreme degree. But the analysis so far would suggest that these types of status are to be seen as contingent rather than defining qualities of the great individual, as typical of his status, but not sufficient to single him out. Rather, the status of the great individual is a more intangible quality, located outside the normal allocation of honour by society. That is why he remains great when rejected by society or dishonoured: why, in fact, it is often then that his greatness first becomes evident. Partly for this reason, it is possible that his greatness will not be recognized in his own lifetime, but will be seen only by subsequent generations:58 55 Cf. Aristotle’s megalopsuchos who refrains from competitive activity, ‘unless the honour or the feat is a great one’ (EN b–; cf. Cic. de Offic. . . ). Thus Alcibiades disdained the athletic competitions at the Olympic games as too common, and would only compete in the chariot-race (Isoc. . ). 56 Isoc. . , calling tyranny ‘of all mortal and divine goods the greatest, loftiest, and most competed for’. 57 Plato, Grg. e–c. 58 Cf. Lefkowitz (: –), and the texts cited there.



Introduction

this is the claim Alcibiades makes for himself in Thucydides (. . ). The status of the great individual is in another category: as Isocrates puts it he ‘differs’ ( ) from others or ‘surpasses’ them ( ),59 or as Aristotle says of the megalopsuchos and Thucydides of Alcibiades (. . ), he has the quality of ‘magnitude’ (µ ). This is the sort of status which draws its possessor towards the divine, like the Homeric hero, who is ‘godlike’ or ‘honoured like a god’.60 The claim that an individual is godlike is not one that is likely to be made in the context of the classical Greek polis. But Isocrates, encouraging Philip to invade the Persian empire (Isoc. . ), writes that when he has conquered the barbarians, ‘there will be nothing left except to become a god’; and in his encomium of Evagoras there are clear hints that we are dealing with a figure who is in some sense more than mortal,61 though Isocrates is careful to avoid the actual claim of divinity. How does such a figure stand with regard to the polis? The superlative and uncommunal individualism of a heroic great individual like Achilles, which is displayed in literature and in a prepolis context, damages the Achaeans but does not pose a threat to the concept of the community (though it does challenge the authority of Agamemnon). In the polis, however, the pursuit of a greatman individualism which puts the individual into a different category from the rest of the citizens is clearly a threat to the concept of political equality which is the very basis of polis life. The threat is, of course, particularly urgent in the democratic polis. The figure who is, or is perceived as, unwilling to accept equality with the citizens must be rejected, despite, or rather because of, the admiration he arouses in the citizens. He is subjected to new civic discourses capable of condemning anti-communal individualism, such as the discourses of Medizing and tyranny applied to Pausanias or to Alcibiades which will be explored more fully in Chapter . As we have seen, Aristotle saw individuals as by nature part of a polis. In these terms, the individual apart from the city, the apolis, is an impossibility: he would be either a beast or a god (Pol. Isoc. . –, . , ; Ep. . , . . Godlike: Il. . , . , . ,  etc. Honoured like a god: Il. . –, , . . Cf. the assimilation of the Sophoclean hero to the divine: Knox (: –). 61 Isoc. .  (portents at birth),  (his followers follow him ‘like a god’), – (after his death his arete and his eudaimonia suggest he has become immortal). 59 60

Introduction



a). But later in the Politics, in the context of a discussion of the qualifications for political participation, Aristotle considers the case of a figure who is in a sense apolis, not incorporable in the polis: If there is some one person who differs [ ] to such an extent in respect of his surpassing possession [ ] of arete [‘excellence’, ‘virtue’], or more than one, but not capable of providing the complement of the city, so that their arete and political capability [ µ ] are not to be compared with theirs (or ‘his’, if we are dealing with just one), they can no longer be allotted a share in the city. To consider such figures worthy of equality [ ] will be unjust to them, so unequal are they in arete and political capability. For such a figure could reasonably be regarded as a god among men. This shows that legislation is by necessity only for those who are equal in birth62 and capability. But there is no law applicable to such figures: for they themselves are law. Indeed, it would be ridiculous for anyone to try to make laws for them. They could perhaps reply as the lion did in the story of Antisthenes, when the hares were making speeches and demanding that everyone be on a level of equality [the lion replied: ‘show us your claws and teeth’]. It is for this sort of reason that democratic cities establish ostracism. Democracies appear to pursue equality more than any other form of constitution, so that those who seem to stand out in dunamis because of wealth or extensive friendship networks, or some other political strength, were ostracized and removed from the city for fixed periods. In myth, the Argonauts are said to have left Heracles behind for a similar reason: the Argo was not prepared to carry him with the others, because he greatly surpassed [ ] the other members of the crew. (Ar. Pol. a–)

Once again we find the figure of a great individual, who must be classed in a different category from others. As the lion in the city, he is too fiercely powerful to be incorporated into a political community, or simply too excessive in magnitude, as in Aristotle’s joke about the Argo. His greatness sets him outside the political, and assimilates him to the divine. But here, as in the Ethics, Aristotle is defining his own version of the great individual, this time a superlative possessor of political virtue adapted to the Politics, one who corresponds to the best constitution as defined by Aristotle. Whereas in inferior or deviant constitutions such as democracies or tyrannies the great individual stands out from the citizens in wealth or friendship links, in the best constitution the great individual is superlative in possession of 62

: perhaps ‘in type’.



Introduction

those qualities which qualify a person for participation in the best constitution, namely arete and political capability.63 (Excelling in arete as he does, the figure described by Aristotle thus looks rather like the megalopsuchos as defined in the Ethics.) Whereas in inferior constitutions such a figure is simply expelled or eliminated, in the best constitution, Aristotle speculates, ‘men would not say that such a figure should be exiled or removed; but not that they should rule over him either. That would be like claiming to rule over Zeus in the allocation of offices. All that is left is what seems to be determined by nature, that all gladly submit to such a figure’s rule, so that they would be like permanent kings in the cities’ (Ar. Pol. b–). By this stage, Aristotle’s discussion looks like an ingenious way of approaching Plato’s Guardians or Philosopher King,64 by regarding them as problematic cases of the superlative possession of that quality which qualifies one for participation in the best constitution. Aristotle leaves open the question of whether such a figure could exist, but if he does, Aristotle seems to suggest, he could be understood by means of the terms of analysis used in the Politics. Granted that there exist superlative individuals, Aristotle argues, it would follow that there should exist an individual superlative in arete. In addition, as well as responding to Plato, the figure discussed by Aristotle (like many of the figures introduced by Aristotle in the Politics—barbarians, slaves, women) helps to define the boundaries of the political, and especially the question of who is qualified to take part in the polis, the question under discussion at this point of the work. Yet the recognition of the part played by Aristotle’s superlative individual in his wider argument does not reduce him to the status of a theoretical construct, divorced from reality.65 The categories on which the discussion is founded remain valid: given the points already established, the posited case should be capable of existing (even if it never has). Yet again the argument proceeds on the basis of the acceptance of the concept of a superlative individual. Aristotle suggests that the community’s fear of a super-individual, who cannot be incorporated within the polis, is reflected in the b–; cf. b–a. Cf. Saunders (: ). Aristotle’s claim that his great individual would be like a god among men’ is compared to Plato, Politicus b. 65 Cf. Robinson (: –). 63 64

Introduction



institution of ostracism.66 His theory is given some support by the fact that the introduction of ostracism in Athens coincided with the overthrowing of the Peisistratid tyranny, and was associated with the reforms of Cleisthenes, one of the aims of which was to curtail the power of the powerful individuals whose dunamis had threatened the political life of the city in the sixth century.67 The theory that the object of ostracism is the removal of powerful and dangerous individuals who cannot be brought to book in the normal way is also the position of [And.] , whose invective against Alcibiades is also a theoretical disquisition on the purpose of ostracism (see Chapter  below). This speech turns on Alcibiades the civic discourse directed against tyrants, while demanding his removal from the city through ostracism. Thus, in [And.]  at least, the discourse against tyranny and the institution of ostracism are parallel and corresponding political phenomena. According to [And.] .  ostracism is directed at ‘those who are greater than the archontes and the laws: since it is impossible to get justice from such figures in private [the law-maker] instituted this communal vengeance for those who are wronged.’ Here, ostracism is directed against a figure, who, in his rejection of the basis of political life, is a civic pariah who must be expelled. Indeed, ostracism is suggestive of the ritual of the scapegoat (pharmakos):68 in an annually occuring procedure one man is selected and removed from the city as despised and accursed, an uncitizen. The writing-down of the candidate’s name on an ostrakon (sometimes accompanied by a text of insult), and its depositing, resembles a collective, civically organised defixio. Here the uncivic individual is, in Aristotle’s imagery, more a beast than a god. It is in keeping with this pattern of the depiction of the anticivic individual when, as the culmination of his invective against Alcibiades, the speaker of Lys.  (§§ –) asks the jury to see Alcibiades and his family as authors of the worst sorts of personal and civic vice, and to treat them as the ancestral enemies of the city. Yet as we noted earlier, it is also characteristic of [And.]  to display an oblique admiration for the great individual, so that the 66 Cf. Thuc. . . . This idea is taken up in later texts dealing with ostracism: Plut. Them. . , Arist. . –. 67 For ostracism as weapon of the demos against powerful individuals, see Berve (: , ). 68 Cf. Vernant and Vidal-Naquet (: –).



Introduction

speech itself actually exemplifies the sort of attitudes it claims to be combating, and which it claims ostracism is combating. Having aired the claim that ‘there has never been such a person as Alcibiades’, the speaker responds (§ ), ‘but I myself think that the city will suffer the greatest evils at his hands, and that in the future he will be held responsible for events of such an order that no one will remember his previous crimes’. But this capacity to harm to the city is in a sense the ultimate demonstration of dunamis, the sign of the great individual. The institution of ostracism too, which does not seek to condemn, but only to expel, can be seen as a reaction not to immorality but to greatness, a strategy developed to combat a threat rather than to punish.69 In this sense it is a sort of honour, like the honour won in more conventional elections, a popular poll to decide who is the greatest/most dangerous person in the city. To be ostracized, as Alcibiades almost was, is a fate worthy of the great individual.70 Thus the rhetorical depiction of Alcibiades, and his status as ostracism victim, assimilate him to the polarized schemata of anticivic individualism, of the individual ‘outside the city’. Like Sophocles’ Oedipus he becomes now the godlike saviour of the city, revered by its citizens, now its pariah, whose pollution must be driven out .71 But ostracism and invective are not the only perspectives from which the great individual may be viewed. Both Aristotle in the Politics and Aeschylus in Aristophanes’ Frogs advocated accepting the presence of the great individual in the city and submitting to his ways. While expulsion from the city may be the characteristic fate for such a problematic figure, these texts imply that he may also work in co-operation with the city, and in a sense be (temporarily, imperfectly) integrated within it. In his encomium of Evagoras Isocrates credits the tyrant with a political creativity which brought new walls, triremes, and territory to the city, as well as tremendous achievements in culture and education. ‘It is not possible for cities Plut. Arist. . . Contrast the ostracized Hyperbolus, ‘a wretched man, ostracized not because of fear of his dunamis or axioma, but because of his baseness which was a disgrace to the city’ (Thuc. . . ). Cf. also Plato Comicus, frag.  K.–A. 71 Cf. Vernant’s discussion (: –) of Sophocles’ Oedipus. Lefkowitz (:  ff.) notes similar patterns of heroization and ignominy in the biographies of Greek poets. Cf. Knox on the polar presentation of the Sophoclean hero as beast or god (: –). 69 70

Introduction



to achieve such advances’, he claims, ‘unless they are administered by a character such as that displayed by Evagoras’ (Isoc. . ). Isoc.  presents a ‘democratic encomium’ of Alcibiades, which while attributing to Alcibiades a status and an ambition which is hardly consistent with participation in the city on a level of political equality, sees him as an ancestral friend of the demos, and credits him with the constant desire to preserve or reinstate the democracy, reconcile the citizens, and restore the city’s walls. Alcibiades himself in Thucydides (. –), though unwilling to accept a position of equality in the city, claims that his personal glory and achievements contribute to an impression of the strength of the city, and asks the Athenians to make use of his great qualities in the city’s service, to conquer Sicily and rule Greece. The great phusis imagined by Plato’s Socrates as the raw material for the Guardians was seen as capable of doing his city not only the greatest harm, but also the greatest good. Plato may have had in mind the great figures of the fifth century, credited with the salvation of Greece from the Persians, but then accused of plotting against their cities and expelled. The power and unorthodoxy of such figures, which made them unacceptable as citizens, were at the same time of inestimable value to the city. Indeed, Alcibiades and the other great individuals of the classical Greek city can be seen as posing a problem that was to occupy the city-states not only of Greece but also of Rome and Renaissance Italy: that of the uncontrollable power of the ambitious, ruthless, politically creative individual.72 .    The aim of this book is not to survey the whole Alcibiades tradition, but to focus on the presentation of Alcibiades in a group of texts with a distinctive relationship to democratic Athens. Many of these texts were composed, or achieved their final form, in the s  in the immediate aftermath of Alcibiades’ death. Others, though composed somewhat later, still resonate with the debates set in motion in these years. All of them are concerned in some way with the figure of the great individual discussed above, and the problem he poses for the city. They also share other themes and preoccupations, especially the reaction to the disastrous experience of the last generation of the fifth century: war, loss of empire, and stasis. 72

See Mason ().



Introduction

Chapter  does not focus on any one text, but draws on all the works of oratory, historiography, and philosophy discussed in the subsequent chapters, as well as on comedy, to build up a picture of the schemata which determined the way Alcibiades was seen by contemporaries, and the discourses of the anti-civic individual directed against him. The discussion here is thus more historically oriented than in subsequent chapters: the terms of analysis shift from the ‘great individual’ to the ‘élite individual’, a term designed to reflect the historical conflict between the city and those powerful aristocratic individuals who occupied an uneasy position of great status in the democratic city. The chapter’s emphasis on Alcibiades’ actual behaviour and the reaction this aroused establishes a historical background for the more literary analysis of the succeeding chapters. Chapter  studies the way in which rhetoric polarizes the presentation of Alcibiades, locating the fortunes of the city with the individual who is capable of either saving or ruining it, the great individual. The discussion will also consider the role of the Alcibiades debate, pursued in the courtroom and through written speeches, as a focus for personal, political, and ideological debates of key importance to the city in the s . Finally, the chapter considers the relationship of these speeches to the origins of declamation and the development of literary forms for presenting the individual. Thucydides’ presentation of Alcibiades (Chapter ) is a reaction of a quite different sort. Though it is useful, indeed essential, to see Thucydides’ Alcibiades against the background of the Alcibiades debate illustrated by the speeches, and although the History traces the relationship between the great individual and the city, what emerges is a balanced picture of Alcibiades as talented but personally flawed. Thucydides, though he depicts the effect of the fascination exerted by Alcibiades, is not himself under its spell. The depiction of Alcibiades is inextricably linked to his relationship with the Athenians, a relationship which failed because of the illegitimate pursuit of private interests by both parties. The presentation of Alcibiades is thus linked to wider themes: Athenian political failure and its effect on the outcome of the whole war. The chapter argues against the idea that it is useful to see the presentation of Alcibiades as a compositional problem, i.e. in terms of various, imperfectly integrated authorial reactions to him, articulated by a growing appreciation of his status as a Great Man.

Introduction



The key to the interest of the Socratics (most of whose treatments of Alcibiades are lost) in Alcibiades was of course his connection with Socrates. As I argue in Chapter , exploiting this connection in their dialogues enabled the Socratics to give their philosophy an authentic political context, by linking it to the debates about the experience of the fifth century and the position of the great individual in the city with which Alcibiades’ name was associated. The allegation that Socrates corrupted Alcibiades, the charge made by society against philosophy, is not just refuted but turned on its head: it is society which corrupts Alcibiades and others like him, while the philosopher mounts a rearguard action to direct the power of the great individual in a beneficial direction, through philosophy. Thus the figure of the great individual is appropriated by Plato for philosophy, and made the focus of his critique of society. At the start, this project was envisaged as a mainly literary investigation focusing primarily on individuation (type  individualism above).73 As the research progressed, however, it became increasingly clear that the presentation of Alcibiades could not be separated from his significance for the city, that literary analysis had to be related to historical or anthropological analysis, and that what made Alcibiades ‘unique’ was not his specific blend of characteristics, his personality, but his outstanding status and sense of himself. The apparently distinctive traits of Alcibiades in comedy, for example, dissolve, on closer analysis, into categories of the analysis of pleasure and the position of the individual in the city (cf. Chapter ), and even the Alcibiades of Plato’s Symposium, with his distinctive speech and behaviour, cannot be understood without an appreciation of his moral, political, and philosophical significance. Terms such as the ‘charm of Alcibiades’ personality’ are inappropriate for analysing Alcibiades in the civic and civic-oriented texts in which he is presented. Nevertheless, there is still scope for discussion of individuation in the depictions of Alcibiades studied in this book. Thucydides reduces Alcibiades to human terms, so that his intense ambition 73 The Greeks were familiar with the idea that each individual displayed a particular, individuated blend of characteristics: see Archilochus, W; [Hippocrates] Epidemics . ; Philemon, , frag.  Kock; and cf. Winkler (: –); for the concept in Roman thought, Rudd (:  ff.). On individuation in Greek literature, see the essays collected in Pelling (a).



Introduction

and obsession with status can be seen as human qualities, producing political failure. It makes sense to talk of Thucydides’ historical characterization, which balances the particular qualities of Alcibiades, Nicias, Cleon, the Athenians themselves, in a study of the decline of political life in Athens. Here too, however, these qualities are seen as failings, and individuation (type ) is closely related to a form of politically harmful individualism.74 The Socratics too, despite their adherence to the schema of the great phusis, see Alcibiades as a character shaped by a certain development (his experience in the city) and process of decision (whether to follow civic ambition or philosophy), i.e. by a combination of environment and moral choice. Alcibiades is individuated, even though his individual character is seen as formed by and in the city, and of momentous significance for it (it is no accident that the Symposium is set just before the Sicilian expedition and the Herms and Mysteries affair). The presentations of both Thucydides and Plato are developed though the use of ‘revealing speech’, which rather than aiming at a version of the subject grossly distorted towards a rhetorical end, expose the speaker’s character. Yet even in this method of characterization, character emerges through public speech: even here character cannot be separated from its communal and civic relevance. The later, non-Athenian, Alcibiades tradition will not be treated in this book, except in passing. The little that can be reconstructed of the Hellenistic tradition is considered in Chapter ; the Alcibiades speeches of later declamation are touched on in Chapter ; and the Conclusion will consider Plutarch’s artful combination of most of the genres and themes considered in this book in his Life of Alcibiades. The later tradition sees the emergence of other schemata for analysing Alcibiades: that of the polutropos (the manysided, adaptable character),75 and the kolax (the ‘flatterer’, who alters his behaviour in order to adapt himself to those with whom he is associating). Such depictions are largely negative, founded on a distaste for deception and a belief that the admirable man, the political leader, should be straightforward, not complex or shifting. In classical depictions of Alcibiades such schemata are hard to trace. This may be because the classical Greeks did not feel any particular concern about the deceptive and flexible character. 74 75

Cf. Pelling (a: ). On this figure, see Vernant and Detienne ().

Introduction



Despite Achilles’ sentiment that ‘hateful to me as the gates of Hades is the man who says one thing, but hides another in his heart’,76 Odysseus is not a problematic character in the way that Achilles is: his distinctive qualities can be more unequivocally admired. Thus Thucydides clearly admires Themistocles’ Odysseuslike twists and turns to escape his pursuers, his ability to learn the Persian tongue and Persian ‘ways’, and his ability to appear clever, seeing them as a sign of an admirable political intuition and creativity (. –). His description of Alcibiades’ deception of the Spartan ambassadors (. –) is apparently told in the same spirit as his description of Themistocles’ deception of the Spartans over the building of Athens’ walls (. –), an insider version of a clever piece of political strategy. In the fifth and fouth centuries suspicion and fear of a Themistocles or an Alcibiades centred on their resemblance to Achilles rather than Odysseus. It is only for later moralists and political theorists that the deceitful gap between interior and exterior can be seen as just as politically repugnant as uncontrolled ambition,77 the qualities of the fox just as unacceptable in a civic context as those of the lion.78 Nevertheless, the seeds of Alcibiades as kolax are already to be found in Thucydides and Plato. Thucydides’ Alcibiades is characterized by an ability to manipulate an audience by telling it what it wants to hear, be it Athenian, Spartan, or Persian, and by a corresponding lack of political allegiance to any one group or set of values. We are not far away from that locus which is so formative for the later picture of Alcibiades, the story of his ability to adapt his ways to the various cities and people with whom he came into contact.79 The lack of moral fixity, the inability to ‘agree with himself’ or to choose between philosophy and political ambition, demonstrated by Plato’s Alcibiades, is a related trait, which adds inner confusion to deceitfulness in the development of a picture of an unstable and fluctuating Alcibiades. These themes of individuation and adaptibility will come more into focus as the analysis of the book progresses, and we step 76 Il. . –. The context is Achilles’ rejection of Odysseus’ supplication to accept Agamemnon’s gifts and rejoin the fighting, and the barb is primarily aimed at Odysseus. 77 Cf. Cic. de Offic. . . , . 78 Cf. Mason (), who associates this distrust of deceit with a ‘Stoic’ ideal of the city. 79 Ath. . b; Nepos, Alc. ; Plut. Alc. . , Mor. e; Aelian, VH . .



Introduction

slightly back from the urgent question of Alcibiades’ position in the city characteristic of rhetoric, towards the wider concerns of history and philosophy. We begin, however, with an analysis of Alcibiades which locates him at the heart of the discourses of the democratic city.

 Élite Individual and Democratic City

The subject of this chapter is not the story of Alcibiades’ life, the details of which can be found in one of the many biographies of Alcibiades,1 but the way he lived his life (his bios, as it is often put in Greek)—or at least the way this lifestyle is presented in the surviving texts. This distinction is vital: the relationship between the discourses of rhetoric, comedy—even historiography—and lived reality is evidently exceedingly complex: to unravel these discourses is not the same as to discover the reality behind them, though it may be a first step to doing so.2 I will argue that the key to understanding the presentation of Alcibiades lies in civic discourses about the relationship between individual and city, discourses which portrayed him as the sort of figure who could not be incorporated in the city, as ‘outside’ the city. Unlike the following chapters, which concentrate on specific authors or genres of presentation, this one will cover the full gamut of writings about Alcibiades in order to build up a general picture of how the texts present his relationship to the city. Although the public details of Alcibiades’ life, the battles both political and military, are recorded in a variety of surviving histories, Alcibiades’ bios, the way he lived and presented himself, is largely ignored by ancient political-military historiography. For this material we must go to a tradition which, for the most part, is later in origin and far less reliable. This tradition does not provide us with a single version of Alcibiades, but with layers of developing images, building on and transforming the picture transmitted from the late fifth and early fourth centuries. We must begin, therefore, 1 Hatzfeld (), still the best account, is now supplemented by the works of Ellis () and de Romilly (). On Alcibiades’ historical significance see McGregor () and Bloedow (). 2 See the comments of Edwards (: –); and the introduction to Davidson ().



Élite Individual and Democratic City

by sifting out the classical discourses from the later accretions of the tradition. .    After describing Alcibiades’ return to Athens in  , Plutarch notes: Duris of Samos,3 claiming to be a descendant of Alcibiades, adds that Chrysogonus the victor at the Pythian games piped the tune for the rowers, and Callipides the tragic actor called the stroke, both of them wearing their ungirt tunic and robes and and the rest of their competition dress, and that the admiral’s ship drew into the harbours with a purple sail hoisted, as though they were out on a komos after a drinking session. But these details do not appear in the accounts of Theopompus or Ephorus or Xenophon, nor is it likely that Alcibiades would show such carefree disrespect of Athenian opinion, returning home as he was from exile and after such tribulations. (Plut. Alc. . )4

The fact that the tradition surrounding Alcibiades contained material which was clearly reckless invention was thus already recognised by Plutarch. Modern accounts of Alcibiades, at the point where they move beyond the political and military, face essentially the same problem as that encountered by Plutarch: the necessity of analysing a mass of stories and anecdotes whose relationship to the real conditions of the fifth century is more or less uncertain, even in the rare cases where stories can be traced to some earlier source. Plutarch did not feel hampered by his awareness of the dubious elements in the tradition from using stories just as implausible or unreliable as that reported by Duris, in order to construct his portrait of Alcibiades. Many modern accounts adopt essentially the same strategy: rejecting a few of the stories as implausible, and noting the uncertain nature of the rest, they nevertheless use them as the basis for a reconstruction of Alcibiades’ private life and character.

3 On Duris (FGH ), an early Hellenistic writer and tyrant of Samos, see Stadter (: pp. lxxvi—lxxvii). 4 Duris, FGH , frag. . For a fuller version of the fragment (without citation of source) see Ath. cd. Plutarch uses criticism of Duris as a way of enhancing the impression of the reliability of his own account: Duris is used in a similar way at Plut. Per. .

Élite Individual and Democratic City



An attempt to understand the history of the tradition of Alcibiades stories as they were transmitted to Plutarch5 is an essential preliminary to any reconstruction of Alcibiades’ behaviour. We can divide the tradition for convenience into three main chronological stages, each stage decreasingly true to the fifth-century Alcibiades: first, the fifth and earlier fourth century; second, the later fourth century; and third, the Hellenistic ‘anecdotal’ period. The analysis will involve two related histories: the history of changing perceptions of the significance of Alcibiades and his actions, and the history of types of Greek writing about the individual. The tradition surrounding Alcibiades contained more personal detail than that for any other fifth-century political figure (cf. Plut. Alc. . ). This is partly a result of the importance of Alcibiades’ non-public life for his public political career, a connection which will become clearer as this chapter progresses. The wealth of material can also be traced to the intense controversy which surrounded Alcibiades’ career, generating the trials and exchange of written speeches of the s  (see Chapter  below), and on the other hand an oral tradition of stories which informed, and was informed by, the literary tradition. The central place accorded Alcibiades in the writings of the Socratics can also be traced to the controversy of the s , as I will argue in Chapter  below. The basis of the tradition surrounding Alcibiades was thus laid in a burst of political and literary activity at the beginning of the fourth century. In the oratory of the assembly or courtroom, praise or blame of non-public behaviour was used to build up a picture in the jury’s minds of the subject as a good or a bad citizen. The subject’s bios, his ‘way of life’, was interpreted politically, as evidence of his civic attitude.6 In [And.]  stories about Alcibiades’ treatment of relatives and fellow citizens, or the extravagance of his display at the Olympic games, are used to develop a picture of him as a paranomic anti-citizen, who puts himself outside the laws of the city and treats his fellow citizens with contempt, a type of behaviour which, if unchecked, may lead to tyranny. The depiction recalls that of Meidias in the Against Meidias of Demosthenes. In 5 On the Alcibiades tradition in general, see Russell (a); M. L. Gernet (: –); Perrin (). On the development of the tradition around Themistocles, a parallel case, see Frost (). 6 For this sense of bios in oratory, cf. [And.] . ; Aesch. . . : Lys. . , . , ; Dem. . , .



Élite Individual and Democratic City

addition, allegations of Alcibiades’ uncontrollable financial extravagance, and his lust after the pleasures of the body, were deployed (for example in Lys. ) to suggest a man who was incapable of restraining himself in the political sphere (compare the Against Timarchus of Aeschines). Comedy too contributed to the picture of Alcibiades’ attitude to pleasure, satirizing the aristocratic effeteness of his bios, his clothes, gait, and voice, and in particular his sexual extravagance. Although the comic poets of Alcibiades’ day were apparently more attracted by the comic potential of a ‘demagogic’ descent into the political gutter than by the dissolution of the well born, Alcibiades does not seem to have been spared by comedy.7 Stories attest to an epic confrontation between Alcibiades and the comic poet Eupolis resembling that between Aristophanes and Cleon.8 Thucydides, on the other hand, and following him, Xenophon, generally excluded ‘private’ material from serious political historiography (though the depiction of Alcibiades is something of an exception, as we shall see). These historians helped to establish an early contrast between a subject’s political career, the stuff of serious historiography, and his personal story and ‘private’ life, which were left to other, less austere genres.9 The first stage of the tradition is characterized by a powerful polarization: Alcibiades is depicted either as the supreme citizen, or as a dangerous threat to the community. By the later half of the fourth century, on the other hand (the second stage of the tradition) Alcibiades has ceased to be a live issue, and a polarized picture develops into an ambivalent one. In Demosthenes’ Against Meidias, Alcibiades is still a figure whose hybris made him a threat 7 De Ste Croix (: –) claims that Alcibiades appears much less in Aristophanes than is warranted by his political prominence. This impression may be partly accidental: no surviving comedy dates from the time of Alcibiades’ political prominence. Moreover, Alcibiades seems to have been far more prominent in the works of other comic poets. Note Libanius, frag.  , (XI p.  Förster): ‘What play does not contain him? Which of Eupolis? Which of Aristophanes? It is through him that comedy has achieved its fame: yet even the comic poets have tired of writing about him.’ According to a later tradition, Alcibiades was so incensed by his treatment in comedy that he initiated a decree banning comic poets from mentioning individuals by name: see Halliwell (: –). For the theory that Alcibiades is covertly represented in certain comedies and tragedies, see the essays of Michael Vickers, now collected in Vickers (). 8 See the testimonia in K.–A. to Eupolis’ Baptae; and in Eupolis’ Kolakes, testimonium viii and frag.  K.–A. 9 Cf. Xen. HG . . ; Momigliano (: –).

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to the community, but at the same time one whose birth and supreme public achievement to a certain extent justify his claim to a position of superiority in the city. We are told [

] that there was in Athens during its golden age [ µ ] a man named Alcibiades. Just consider what public services he had to his credit and of what kind they were, and how your ancestors dealt with him when he thought fit to be unpleasant and insolent . . . Yet what insolence did Alcibiades commit that was as serious as what Meidias has now been proved to have committed? He struck Taureas, a choregos, in the face. All right, but that was one choregos striking another, and not in contravention of this law, which had not yet been passed. He imprisoned Agatharchus the painter; they say [ ] he did this too. Yes, but it was because he caught him in some transgression, they say [ ]; that was not even reprehensible. (Dem. . –)10

Alcibiades symbolizes the great days of Athens, not only in representing, through his spectacular achievements, the height of Athenian power and vigour, but also in illustrating the strength of the political will of the fifth-century demos, which was prepared to banish him on two occasions despite his achievements. As well as showing the beginnings of the characteristic ambivalence of Alcibiades, the Against Meidias suggests the formation of a repertoire of well-known stories about him. Demosthenes’ repeated use of and identifies the episodes he recounts as stories from a popular tradition about a famous figure—as anecdotes.11 The anecdote, generated and transmitted both orally and in written works, is the central medium for the transmission of the vulgate tradition surrounding famous figures in the ancient world.12 Demosthenes’ treatment of Alcibiades’ hybris as the sign of a character capable of inspiring wonder and awe, and the development of a set of stories capable of illustrating this quality, are also typical of [And.] , despite its prima-facie purpose of attacking Alcibiades.13 Like Dem. , [And.]  appears to date from a time when the great individual Alcibiades no longer posed a threat to the Trans. slightly adapted from Macdowell (: –). Cf. Bruns (: ). 12 Cf. Saller (: –); Fairweather (: –); Stadter (: pp. lxxxiv–lxxxv); and Frost (: ) (on the tradition of Themistocles anecdotes). Fairweather (: ) uses the term ‘traditional narrative’ to describe the unofficial oral and written traditions surrounding famous figures. 13 Bruns (: –). 10 11

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community, so that alarm was allowed to give way to admiration. On these and other grounds, I argue elsewhere14 that this speech was composed in the early Hellenistic period (and at any rate after  ), drawing, like Dem.  on a ready formed store of anecdotes,15 but still exploiting them to depict an individual with a certain sort of significance for the city. The interest of Demosthenes and the author of [And.]  in Alcibiades is a reflection of a wider fourth-century fascination with the great days of the Athenian empire.16 Another, very different example of this reaction was the historiography of Theopompus, who in his excursus on the Athenian ‘demagogues’ in Book  of the Philippica,17 developed a decay theory of Athenian political leadership which had already been suggested by Thucydides (. ).18 No surviving fragments of this excursus relate to Alcibiades. This is perhaps surprising, given Theopompus’ obsession with the personal lives of individuals, especially their pursuit of pleasure in sex and wine,19 and seeing that (as I will argue in Chapter ) Thucydides certainly intended Alcibiades to be included amongst the post-Periclean leaders whose private philotimia and consequent ‘handing over of affairs to the demos’ so damaged the state. But Theopompus’ concept of demagogy was apparently rather different from that of Thucydides: it focused on the use of public revenues in order to curry favour with the demos.20 If expenditure was taken as the criterion for being a demagogue, it was not clear where Alcibiades stood. Despite his famed ability to manipulate the Athenians rhetorically,21 his stance of superiority over the demos and his ‘aristocratic’ expenditure on chariot competitions did not fit the classic demagogic pattern. Ath. Pol.  sketches a history of the leadership of the Athenian democracy which pairs leaders of the notables with leaders of the demos: Cleon is paired with Nicias, and Cleophon with Theramenes, but Alcibiades is left out of the picture altogether. Alcibiades did not easily fit into such neat schematizaGribble (). On [And.]  see also Ch.  below. Two of the stories in Demosthenes are also found in [And.] , though, significantly, with variation of detail: the Taureas episode (Dem. . , cf. [And.] . ), and the Agatharchus episode (Dem. . , cf. [And.] . ). 16 Also reflected in the earlier Platonic dialogues, especially the Gorgias (see Ch.  below), and, in another sense, in Thucydides. Cf. Bruns (: –). 17 Frags. in FGH , –. 18 See Connor (); Lane Fox (). 19 See Connor (: –). 20 Schmitt-Pantel (: –). 21 Alcibiades’ speaking ability is praised by Demosthenes (. ), Theophrastus (frag.  Wehrli), and even by his enemy the speaker of Lys. . . 14 15

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tions of political life. Indeed, in the Poetics Aristotle was to cite Alcibiades’ career as the prime example of the contingent in historiography (‘what Alcibiades did and what happened to him’).22 Even today, ancient historians find it difficult to locate Alcibiades in their models of fifth-century political development:23 his impeccable aristocratic birth and use of traditional aristocratic forms of display like horse-rearing seem to set him apart from a generation of ‘new politicians’ relying on a more direct, more democratic popular appeal. According to Nepos (Alc. ), Theopompus actually ‘greatly praised’ Alcibiades. If this were true, it would be a favourable treatment apparently unparalleled in Theopompus.24 But in the same passage Nepos also claims that Thucydides greatly praised Alcibiades, and Thucydides’ treatment is actually far from unambiguously complimentary. Moreover, as evidence of Theopompus’ favourable treatment of Alcibiades, Nepos cites a topos which was to become central to the depiction of Alcibiades: Alcibiades, though denigrated by most, has been extolled in the highest terms by three historians of the most serious type: Thucydides . . . Theopompus . . . and Timaeus. Indeed, though these [latter] two are the most slanderous of historians, for some reason in the case of Alcibiades alone they agree in producing a favourable assessment. They attribute to him the things which I have written above, and further, they add this: Born in Athens, the most magnificent of cities, Alcibiades surpassed everyone in the magnificence and dignity of his lifestyle. When, following his exile from Athens, he came to Thebes, he adapted himself to the way of life there to such an extent that no one could equal him in hard work and physical strength, for the Boeotians are all devoted rather to physical strength than mental agility. Amongst the Spartans, whose custom it is to count endurance as the greatest virtue, he dedicated himself to hardihood to such an extent that he surpassed all the Spartans in the frugality of his diet and lifestyle. He stayed with the Thracians, men dedicated to drinking and sexual pleasure, and he surpassed them too in the pursuit of these things. He went to live with the Persians, among whom the most praised qualities were hunting bravely and living luxuriously: so thoroughly did Alcibiades This passage (Poet. , a –b ) is discussed in Ch.  below. According to Plutarch (Alc. . ), in spite of all his advantages of birth, wealth, etc., Alcibiades preferred to base his influence with the demos solely on the charm of his speech. This leads Connor (: ) to conclude that Alcibiades had ‘mastered the new politics’. In other respects, Alcibiades looks more like one of Connor’s ‘old’ politicians (cf. Connor : , ). 24 Lane Fox (: ). 22 23

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imitate their habits, that the Persians themselves greatly admired the way he mastered them. As a result, whatever peoples he was among, Alcibiades was able to see to it that he achieved a leading role and was held in great affection. (Nepos, Alc. )

Apart from the specific negative points (the ‘barbarian’ pursuit of pleasure in wine, sex, and luxury) the direction of such an analysis in Theopompus (if he is Nepos’ source for this topos) can hardly have been favourable. Changing one’s ways to suit those with whom one associates is the mark of the kolax, or flatterer, a figure closely related to the demagogue.25 Nepos’ citation of this story as an illustration of the marvellous adaptability of Alcibiades is an example of the slippage of significance which enables the same material to support significantly different versions of Alcibiades.26 The Socratics, some of whom had had first-hand experience of Alcibiades, kept up the interest in his bios from another perspective. Their dialogues made it possible to see Alcibiades as a moral agent, practising moral choice and undergoing moral development or degeneration, always in the context of the city. In addition Socratic works retailed a variety of personal details about Alcibiades, whether real or invented. As it suited the Socratics to depict him as a young man in protreptic conversation with Socrates, many of these relate to Alcibiades’ childhood and youth. It was Socratic authors who preserved the name of Alcibiades’ nurse and tutor, the details whose survival so impressed Plutarch (Alc. . ). A wealth of material about Alcibiades and his bios was thus preserved in comedy, oratory, and Socratic writings by the time Hellenistic authors began to catalogue and preserve classical Greek culture. This material became a quarry of stories for later generations of Hellenistic moralist writers interested in Alcibiades’ bios in a somewhat different sense, as a moral bios of character rather than a political way of life lived in the city.27 The building-block of their depictions was the anecdote, a self-contained story with illustrative 25 Plut. Mor. e and e (where the locus is cited in the context of a discussion of the kolax Alcibiades, who is called ‘the foremost among demagogues’). Cf. Russell (: –). 26 See Saller (: –) on change and variation in anecdotes. Russell (a) discusses the significance of variations of detail in Alcibiades anecdotes. 27 On the sense of bios in Hellenistic literature, see Leo (: , –); Wilamowitz (a: —‘das Leben, wie es die Menschen treiben, in seinen gewöhnlichen conventionellen Formen, durch Bedürfnisse, Sitten, Mode bedingt’).

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value, especially of an aspect of moral character.28 This is the third stage of the Alcibiades tradition, and the one we are least informed about. We may suppose, however, that three main types of text were important in Hellenistic writing about Alcibiades. The first, about which we know the least, is pure scholarship, for example learned commentaries on works which portrayed Alcibiades, and handbooks of those satirized in comedy.29 The second is rhetoric. In later antiquity, Alcibiades was a favoured topic of declamation.30 The classic topic was Alcibiades accused of aiming at tyranny, a scenario which set the excitement of the superb and hybristic Alcibiades against the background of classical Athens at the height of her power. [And.]  is apparently an early example of an Alcibiades declamation, located somewhere between the published speeches of the s  and the much later exercises of the declaimers. If so, it is an example of a period in the history of rhetoric which is otherwise almost totally lost. Thirdly, it also seems that there was in the Hellenistic period writing which directly addressed the topic of Alcibiades’ bios, though to label this ‘biography’ is to open up the complex question of the existence and nature of Hellenistic political biography.31 Hellenistic authors collected anecdotes and used them to illustrate types of bios (contemplative, active, sensual).32 It is clear that there was writing of some sort specifically about the bios of political figures too, whether or not there was ever an attempt to structure this sort of material around the historical career of the subject in the form of a ‘biography’. To what extent is it possible to reconstruct the Hellenistic depiction of Alcibiades? We can start by observing that the Lives of Alcibiades of both Nepos and Plutarch are shaped by a similar categorization or concept of Alcibiades’ bios.33 Alcibiades is seen as having an anomalous and dissimulating character, what Nepos (Alc. . ) calls his ‘diversa natura’ and ‘dissimilitudo’, and Plutarch his anomalia (Alc. . ) and ‘ability to adapt himself in his 28 On Peripatetic and Hellenistic collections of anecdotes, see Momigliano (:  ff.). 29 Cf. Russell (: ). 30 See Ch. , below. 31 On this question see Steidle (); Geiger () reviewed by Moles (). 32 Momigliano (:  ff.); Wehrli (). 33 In Nepos this material frames the short life, appearing at the beginning and the end. In Plutarch, it is more subtly integrated, at key points in the development of the story.

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habits [epitedeumata] and way of life [diaita]’ (Alc. . ).34 Both authors focus their discussion of Alcibiades’ anomalia on the story of his ability to suit his character to those with whom he came into contact, the topos associated above with Theopompus. Since this schema is so well reflected in the Lives of both Nepos and Plutarch, its origin must be traced to earlier writing—probably Hellenistic— about Alcibiades’ bios.35 The schema may have begun as a strategy for reconciling the diverse, sometimes polarized depictions of the various Alcibiades anecdotes assembled from classical authors (the glorious Olympic display at Athens, the stories of Ionian debauchery, the hobnobbing with Persians, the demagoguery). These diverse pictures are reconciled by seeing Alcibiades as the man who was able to practise various bioi. The treatment of Plutarch and Nepos appears to give a valuable indication of the way Alcibiades was treated in Hellenistic writing. Further evidence comes from the long discussion of Alcibiades at Athenaeus, . b–e, which begins: ‘Writing about the beautiful Alcibiades, Satyrus says . . . ’. The material which follows is rather summary in form, and contains a variety of citations from other authors. Wilamowitz claimed36 that it represents material from Satyrus.37 If this were true, it would constitute the longest surviving Hellenistic treatment of the bios of Alcibiades, and indeed of any fifth-century political figure. Unfortunately, however, Wilamowitz probably overestimated the extent of the quotation 34 In fact there are two slightly different concepts at work here: on the one hand the man who combines great deeds with enervating luxury, and on the other the kolax, who adapts his behaviour to please or win over others (cf. Russell : ). 35 Russell (: –). 36 (b: ). Wilamowitz attributed the text down to the end of the Pherecrates citation in b to Satyrus. The account of Alcibiades’ adultery with Timandra which follows this citation is from Duris (cf. Plut. Ages. ), and so is the account of Alcibiades’ return to Athens (cf. Plut. Alc. ), and Duris is named explicitly at e. It is not likely that the Duris material was cited in Satyrus: the two authors are too close to each other in date, and Satyrus appears to have treated the Timandra episode in a different way to Duris (Ath. e, which, along with f—a, was also traced by Wilamowitz to Satyrus’ discussion of Alcibiades: see below). For Wilamowitz, the Pherecrates citation thus established the maximum extent of the text quoted from Satyrus. 37 Papyrus fragments of Satyrus’ Life of Euripides (P. Oxy. : cf. Gallo ) show that it was a dialogue. Whether or not Satyrus’ work on Alcibiades was also in dialogue form, it is evident that if the material in Athenaeus were from Satyrus, it would have to be in some way abridged or selected, e.g. through the epitome of Satyrus composed by Heracleides Lembos in the nd c.  (D.L. . , . , . ). Cf. Uxkull-Gyllenband (:  n. ).

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from Satyrus: it was not generally Athenaeus’ method to rely slavishly on one source at a time.38 Nevertheless, the passage of Athenaeus is still evidence of Satyrus’ approach to Alcibiades in his writing about him. Satyrus, an author of the third century , was credited with lives—bioi—not only of poets and philosophers, but also of political figures (Demosthenes, Dionysius the Younger, Philip of Macedon).39 These lives, or at least some of them, were apparently organized thematically around a sort of title-word.40 In Alcibiades’ case, the word kalos, ‘beautiful’, may have provided the leitmotif: ‘writing about the beautiful Alcibiades, Satyrus says . . . ’. In Athenaeus’ presentation of Alcibiades, beauty is virtually a term of moral analysis: it describes a vain desire to appear beautiful, even at inappropriate times. Even while serving as a general, Alcibiades still wanted to be kalos (e). In paintings of himself with female figures representing pan-Hellenic games, he appeared ‘more beautiful than the women’ (ibid.). So Alcibiades’ ‘beauty’ is closely related to a feminizing effeteness: he is ‘admired not only by men, but also by women’ (c). Satyrus’ version (Ath. b) of the topos of Alcibiades’ ability to adapt himself to the ways of his immediate associates is used this time to underline Alcibiades’ ‘Ionian’ luxury: ‘in Ionia, he was more luxurious than the Ionians’ (in Nepos’ version of the story, there is no mention of a visit to Ionia). Alcibiades’ death41 may also have been depicted in a way designed to illustrate this sort of effete and luxurious bios:42 accompanied as always by two hetairai, he is given burial by the fabulous Theodote. 38

Tronson (); Pelling (forthcoming b). [Plut.] Mor. a (Demosthenes—the story is not here explicitly attributed to a bios); Ath. . c (Dionysius); Ath. . d (Philip). On Satyrus (FHG iii. –), see West (); Lefkowitz (); Geiger (: –). 40 Cf. Barbu (: —‘un titre spécial qui annoncait la qualité maitresse du personage’); Geiger (: ). In this case, one must also bear in mind the possibility that Athenaeus’ adaptation of the text to fit his immediate aims (the illustration of truphe) has distorted the original discussion of Satyrus. 41 Accounts of the hero’s death were apparently an aspect of bios which particularly interested Satyrus: Barbu (: ). On literary depictions of Alcibiades’ death see Perrin (). 42 Ath. de. This passage is also linked by Wilamowitz (b: ) to Satyrus. It too begins ‘and the beautiful Alcibiades . . . ’, and contains a story from Lysias about the debauchery of Alcibiades and Axiochus in Abydus which is also found in the passage earlier in Book  (f—a). Wilamowitz also traced three further stories in Book  (Ath. f—a), dealing once again with Alcibiades’ ‘Ionian’ luxury, to Satyrus. 39

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The material in Athenaeus, b–e is not presented in a way which we would call ‘biographical’:43 there is no evidence of an attempt to trace the subject’s life chronologically, and no discussion of his public and political role. Rather it is the discussion of a certain way of life, distinguished by a predilection for luxury and dissolute living, and associated with a feminizing desire always to appear beautiful. The distinction between bios and biography is here quite clear. We can start to see how Hellenistic writers organized and oriented the material they collected about Alcibiades, marshalling citations from classical comedy and rhetoric to support rather unclassical depictions of moral character: the man obsessed with superb personal appearance and outrageous self-presentation, even at the cost of outraging standards of taste and decorum; the Hellenistic and Roman stereotype of the man of action, like Mark Antony, who nevertheless pursues a life of luxury;44 and the man who can be either luxurious or hard-living, in order to make himself pleasing to others. In all these depictions, there is a concentration on a particularly effete form of truphe (luxury and ostentation), practised in a way which is careless of public opinion and accepted taste, or, it may be, deliberately intended to outrage it. Just as the Alcibiades of Athenaeus-Satyrus appears on campaign, like Paris, dressed as a dandy, the Alcibiades in the story of Duris turns his triumphant return to Athens into an outrageous display of truphe (‘as though he was out on a komos’, as Plutarch puts it). As the focus shifts from a civic perception of bios to a moralizing and even sensationalizing depiction, the fifth-century behaviour-patterns which the anecdotes originally illustrated are distorted, and new stories are invented corresponding to the new schema of depiction. Alcibiades has the deck of his trireme cut away, so that he can lie in comfort;45 he carries a shield emblazoned with the figure of Eros.46 The carrying of the shield suggests the shameless display of its owner’s dedication to beauty, luxury, and sex, and the intrusion of the private world of pleasure into the masculine hard-living of a Cf. Russell (:  n. ); Steidle (: ). On this type see Griffin (: ); Rudd (: –); Pelling (b: –). 45 Plut. Alc. . . 46 Plut. Alc. . –; Ath. d. The iconography can be paralleled (van Blanckenhagen (); Boardman (: no. ) ), and the story may have been inspired by a real work of art. Russell (: ) suspects a comic source. 43 44

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military campaign. Even the serious and public is annexed to a life of frivolous luxury. A dramatic illustration of the transformation of anecdotal material as a result of being transposed from its original civic context is the story of the gifts of food and other commodities given by allied cities to Athens to support Alcibiades’ entertainment of festivalgoers at Olympia.47 In [And.] , the cities’ gifts suggest the paying of Persian-style obeisance to Alcibiades and underline his rejection of civic and co-operative values.48 In Athenaeus-Satyrus, the story of the gifts provided by the cities, ‘whom Alcibiades used as though they were his maidservants . . . whenever he set out on journeys’, serves merely as another illustration of Alcibiades’ general extravagance. The association with the Olympic games is lost, so that the story is torn from the religious and civic context which gave it its original meaning.49 The symbolic quality of the action is also lost, leaving yet another baroque display of luxurious living. Such a figure might arouse disgust among more modest men, but does not look particularly dangerous to the city. This is not the Alcibiades who, through ‘the excessive quality revealed in his paranomia towards his own body’ aroused in the Athenians the fear that he was aiming at tyranny (Thuc. . . ). Alcibiades’ characteristic hybris, which excited in his contemporaries and the author of [And.]  a fear for the safety of the political order, is reduced in these later texts to an almost endearing carelessness of public opinion and convention, a mischievous but essentially harmless delight in scandal (as in the story of Alcibiades cutting off the tail of his dog50). His fellow citizens typically react to his escapades not with a mixture of admiration and fear as in Thucydides, but with a kind of affectionate indulgence,51 like the lover whose cups Alcibiades stole, who could only remark that he should be thankful that 48 See futher §  below. [And.] . ; Ath. d; cf. Plut. Alc. . . Cf. Russell (: , ). In what is apparently a similar development, the story in [And.] .  that Alcibiades used the city’s processional vessels in order to upstage the city at Olympia is twisted in Plut. Alc. .  into the story that he got hold of the vessels and used them ‘for his daily life [ ]’. 50 Plut. Alc. : the ruining of a particularly expensive dog is a conspicuous display of the destruction of wealth, and thus illustrates truphe, but of a rather unalarming sort. 51 ‘They bore him well, and always found the mildest of descriptions for his misdeeds, calling them tomfoolery and philotimiai’ (Plut. Alc. . ). Cf. the story of the Athenians running to catch Alcibiades’ quail (Plut. Alc. . –). 47 49

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Alcibiades had only taken half his cups, not all of them.52 Alcibiades becomes the figure of the man ‘to whom, because of his greatness, everything was allowed’.53 Anecdotes which once illustrated an alarming hybris receive a sort of apologetic coda, which disarms or defuses the hybristic character of the action: Alcibiades strikes Hipponicus, but later makes it good by offering his body to Hipponicus’ castigation.54 He imprisons Agatharchus, but then allows him to go, after paying him for his work.55 He strikes Taureas at the choral competition, but out of philotimia to win the prize.56 The essential quality of such hybristic actions, the hostility they reveal towards the democratic city and its laws, and the dangerous confusion of public and private spheres, is lost. Other features of the tradition can be traced to this third, Hellenistic stage. More details of Alcibiades’ erotic exploits, disappointingly few of which had been preserved in the tradition, were invented, and his name was associated with famous hetairai,57 and with famous artistic figures, as in the Duris story of his return to Athens, where Chrysogonus pipes the tune and Callippides beats time.58 Stories of his childhood, building on and supplementing those of the Socratics, were also provided. Apart from Satyrus and Duris, we do not know who might have been responsible for the inventions and adaptions which thus shifted the emphasis of the tradition.59 Indeed, a straightforward Quellenforschung is not the appropriate tool for such a fluid and various tradition, which still included important oral elements, and which, by altering the 53 Bruns (: –). Ath. . ef; cf. Plut. Alc. . –. Plut. Alc. . –. The excusing of Alcibiades because he acted out of philotimia perhaps derives from Dem. . . 55 Plut. Alc. . . This story already has a different apologetic twist at Dem. .  (cf. the scholiast ad loc.). Cf. Russell (: ). For another account of the origin of the variations in these stories, see M. L. Gernet (: –). 56 Plut. Alc. . . 57 Timandra (or Damasandra) and Theodote (Ath. c, e). The association with Medontis (Ath. e, a) may be of older date. On Alcibiades’ hetairai see Littman (); on the genre of the doings and sayings of courtesans, Griffin (: ). 58 Further examples: Alcibiades is painted by Aglaophon (Ath. d), or Aristophon (Plut. Alc. . ); he helps the mime-artist Hegemon of Thasos by deleting a charge made against him (Ath. bc); a victory ode for his Olympic victories is attributed to Euripides (PMG –). He forces Agatharchus to paint his house, a charge which can be traced to Dem. . 59 In general, on the transformation and invention of anecdotes, cf. SchmittPantel (: –); Saller (: –); Momigliano (:  ff.). 52 54

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details or the orientation of an anecdote, could so transform its significance. It has become evident that the ‘truth’ of an Alcibiades anecdote does not consist in the historical-factual material it contains, but rather in the behaviour-patterns it is designed to illustrate and the attitudes to which it is designed to appeal. Its interpretation and understanding is dependent on determining the context in which it was told.60 In this sense the interpretation of an anecdotal tradition like that surrounding Alcibiades resembles that of an oral tradition:61 the same or a similar story supports a wide variety of significances, which shift over time. This survey of the changing significances attributed to the actions of Alcibiades has exposed the importance, in building up a picture of Alcibiades’ position in democratic Athens, of isolating and focusing on the oldest elements of the tradition. Anecdotal material from the later tradition can be used (if at all) only in order to support an image already established by contemporary or nearcontemporary texts. .        Even if we are careful to exclude such later images, we still cannot hope simply to get direct access to the actual behaviour of Alcibiades via the texts. The images of Alcibiades they present are filtered through discourses relating to the relationship between the élite individual and the city. Before proceeding to discuss the presentation of Alcibiades, therefore, it will be helpful to sketch the essential characteristics of this relationship. I have chosen to talk here not in terms of a distinction between mass and élite, but rather of a relationship between ‘élite individual’ and city.62 This sort of division seems to me not only more helpful in analysing texts relating to Alcibiades, but also truer to fifth-century ways of talking about political behaviour. It helps to focus on the élite member as he appears before the people, as

Cf. Saller (: –). Though the written elements of an anecdotal tradition make it more stable. 62 This choice of terms and focus of the discussion are thus closer to Berve () (cf. his term Einzelmensch), or to his pupil Schaefer, or to the work of Leslie Kurke, than to Seager () or Ober (). 60 61

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leader, as adviser, as spender of resources, as ‘performer’63 in contexts which involve a contrast between the individual ‘leading man’ and the demos. In such contexts, the division between élite individual and community is not one of class but, in the terms favoured by Finley,64 of status. Status is the quality which separates the élite leader from the demos in political terms, giving him the authority to speak and be listened to. Within the city, status must be kept firmly under control, lest the power of the individual threaten the fundamental political equality of the polis. In the fifth century, despite the rise of other sources of status, such as assembly oratory,65 the most important source was arguably still ‘aristocratic’ birth, i.e. membership of one of those families which could trace their descent back to a hero, and which had occupied positions of prominence in the city for many generations. Status founded on birth was axioma (‘standing’), the quality which helped give Pericles his supreme position in the state (Thuc. . . ), and which is used to describe Alcibiades’ position in the city before   (Thuc. . . , . . ). The political life of sixth- and early fifth-century Athens had been distinguished by leading men whose private power (dunamis) could threaten or overwhelm the city,66 and whose unbridled competition for influence threatened to destabilize it. Following the Cleisthenic revolution, however, and throughout the fifth century, the relationship between élite individual and the demos, and the position of the élite individual in the city, were in a constant process of renegotiation. The élite indivdual’s power and influence were seen ever more clearly to stem from the polis as a whole, from the demos, rather than from the individual, who relied on private dunamis67 acquired through unofficial and personal sources such as 63 For the metaphor of theatrical performance as an illustration, or metaphor for the appearance of the élite individual before the demos, see Ober (: –); Wilson (: –); and the contributions of Ober–Strauss, and Redfield, in Winkler and Zeitlin (: – and – respectively). 64 (:  ff.). On status in th-c. rhetoric, see Ober (: –). Although status is related to other categories of social differentiation, such as birth and wealth, such categories do not themselves constitute the status which separates the élite individual from the others. 65 On shifts in souces of influence in the th c., see Davies (; : –). 66 Cf. Berve (:  ff.). 67 Berve (:  ff.). The idea that private dunamis might be stronger than the law remained a theme even in th-c. oratory: Dem. . ; Lys. . , .

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the influence of cult, or hidden networks of friends, or extra-civic contacts, or wealth.68 Élite individuals whose private influence seemed dangerously excessive, or whose attitude seemed uncivic, were now liable to be attacked by a new civic rhetoric which branded them as a threat to the laws and constitution and as enemies of the demos and (thus) the polis,69 or (the logical conclusion of such a stance) as a tyrant,70 the figure who replaces the civic with his own private dunasteia. On an institutional level, such figures were now exposed to the threat of ostracism, the sanction of the city against élite individuals who threatened it,71 either because their power seemed to have taken on a dangerous personal character, or because their excessive competition for public office threatened to destabilize public policy. Ostracism was thus above all the weapon of the community against the too-powerful individual. The city also guarded against the dangerous influence of élite individuals in its public presentations, banning the naming of individuals who might replace the city in honour, not only in the Funeral Oration,72 but also in art and sculpture.73 The anxiety that the individual might supplant the city was especially marked in official monuments of victory: here in particular any hint of the appropriation by individuals of the city’s military glory was especially likely to be associated with a desire for tyrannical power over it.74 This was part of a wider democratization of élite values: what had previously been an ethos for élite individuals was increasingly made available to the Athenian demos as a whole, and the distinguishing features of aristocratic status became instead marks of citizen status.75 The Funeral Oration celebrates classically élite values 68 On the democracy’s ability to restrict the traditional influence of private sources of influence in public policy, see Humphreys (: ch. ). 69 Seager (:  ff.). 70 Seager (; : –). 71 Cf. Berve (: ). On ostracism and its purposes, see Ober (: –), and the bibliography cited there. 72 Cf. Thomas (: –). The last extant example of the Funeral Oration does, however, name the general Leosthenes (Hyp. . , , etc.). 73 Cf. Aesch. .  on the Stoa Poikile. From an élite viewpoint, measures of self-protection like ostracism and the prohibition of naming were inevitably seen as the jealousy of the demos against men of oustanding merit (Old Oligarch, . , . ; Isoc. . , . ; cf. Thuc. . . ; Plut. Nic. , Arist. , Them. ) and assimilated to the schema of phthonos. 74 Cf. Thuc. . ; Dem. . –; and Aesch. .  (on the Herms erected by the victorious generals after the victory at the Strymon, a mark of extraordinary honour permitted by the demos only on condition that their names were not mentioned). Cf. Burckhardt (: –). 75 Ober (:  ff.).

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(noble birth, competitive excellence, a fine death in battle) as the values of the whole city.76 Thus the institutions, values, and discourses of democratic Athens emphasized the necessity of guarding against the toopowerful individual. But this did not mean that the differentiation between the élite individual and others had been abolished. On the contrary, it was still essential for a political leader to emphasize the ‘distance’ which separated him from the demos, by displaying symbols of his élite status: birth, wealth, public achievement, and élite lifestyle. To approach the demos audience too closely was to risk being branded as a demagogue, which represented a schema for suggesting an inappropriate lack of distance, calling into question a leader’s qualification to advise the demos. Even in the fourth century, Demosthenes and Aeschines played up their birth, upbringing, and lifestyle as a means of establishing their separation from the mass.77 At the same time, they continued to project their loyalty to, empathy with, and even similarity to, their demos audience. The result was a complex double game of difference within similarity,78 a tension which was the necessary concomitant of the survival of the élite individual within a democratic city. Given this complex tension, there can be no simple formula for defining the proper distance between élite individual and demos, or an acceptable strategy of self-presentation. Even Pericles, who, at the height of his power, appeared more than anyone to maintain an acceptable balance between distance from and solidarity with the demos, was exposed to the discourses of demagogy and tyranny.79 We must be careful not to read such invective discourses, designed to denigrate an opponent, as straightforward normative discourses, defining an acceptable sphere of behaviour. Alcibiades came to be seen as an individual whose behaviour and attitude threatened the city. But we should not forget that Alcibiades generated intense admiration as well as condemnation. While we can study contemporary terms of analysis for the behaviour of the élite individual in the democratic city, we cannot hope to establish a simple code of 76 Plato’s Funeral Oration in the Menexenus goes so far as to label Athens’ political system an ‘aristocracy’ (c). Cf. Loraux (: –,  ff., and ch. ); Will (:  ff.). 77 Ober (: –). A corresponding rhetoric branded their opponents as of low or foreign birth, or low social status: pp. –. 78 Cf. Ober (: –, –); Wilson (). 79 Tyrannical: Plut. Per. ; cf. Thuc. . . ; demagogic: Plut. Per. .

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proper behaviour for the political leader in democratic Athens, which Alcibiades transgressed. In the remainder of this section, I want to focus on three areas of the behaviour of the élite individual where the tension between distance from the demos and solidarity with it was played out: conspicuous spending, personal contacts with those outside the city, and private luxury spending. These remarks will then form the background for the analysis of Alcibiades’ position in the city in Section . Expenditure on areas established by tradition had always been the central tactic of the élite individual for maintaining and expanding honour, influence, and ‘symbolic capital’.80 There were two key aspects to such expenditure: the acquisition of honour in competition with other individuals of similar rank; and the acquisition of status in the eyes of the city, or some subsection of it, by a conspicuous display which could be read as a gift from the individual to the group. This second element is observable even in the traditionally aristocratic practice of athletic competition at the pan-Hellenic festivals, for the city of the victor was announced together with his name, and on his return he dedicated his victory crown to the city.81 In the traditional pattern of élite expenditure, wealth and the honour it could bring, were thus seen as possessions of the élite individual, his to bestow on the community in return for gratitude and status. The system of liturgies developed by the fifth-century democracy, on the other hand, attempted to bring élite spending under the control of the city, by making conspicuous spending a duty and a legal necessity and regulating the manner of spending and the occasions on which the money was to be spent.82 The supervision of spending made it appear less as a gift and more as a service, or a tax: one even finds the sentiment that the money was in a sense the property of the demos, entrusted to the individual for safekeeping.83 Because the individual appeared in a role assigned to him by the state, the prominence involved in the performance of this role was civic and public, not the personal prominence of the 80 Cf. Bourdieu (: –). The concept is illustrated by Cimon’s claim that he made money only to spend it, and he spent it only to gain honour (Plut. Cim. ). 81 Cf. Kurke (: –). 82 Cf. Finley (: –); Schmitt-Pantel (: –, –). 83 Dem. . –; Thuc. . . .

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individual outside and above the city. At the same time, institutionalization of competitive expenditure reduced the danger that competition between the spenders would go out of control. The renegotiation of the relationship between élite individual and community implied by the growth of the liturgical system can be traced in the development of the meaning of the word philotimia in a civic context.84 Normally signifying a particularly aristocratic competitive mode of behaviour, this term came to be applied to spending undertaken for the good of the community in a democratic spirit. This shift involves a transformation of the citizens from the group before whom such competition is undertaken to the group for whom it is undertaken. The redefined civic philotimia also connoted the regulation of the élite competitive impulse, the diversion of a potentially unrestrained struggle capable of doing the city serious harm into a controlled exercise of benefit to the city. Thus the city defined a type of individualism which did not threaten it, which reinforced rather than undermined the principles of community and democratic equality, and which contributed to the well-being of the state rather than destabilizing it. But outside the city, the pan-Hellenic games provided a continuing forum for spending of a more traditional sort: not just the expenditure on training and equipping needed to take part,85 but also the expense involved in the whole appearance of the competitor at the games: the splendour of his equipment and accommodation, the scale of his sacrifices, and the magnificence of his feasting of the festival-goers.86 This sort of spending was the preserve of the aristocrat of birth.87 If it resulted in victory, it could bring the individual tremendous honour and status88 in the home city, which

84 Whitehead (); Seager (: –); on the use of ‘aristocratic’ terms to create a vocabulary of democratic approbation, cf. Whitehead (). 85 The chariot-race, which carried the most honour, was also the competition which was most clearly a contest of expenditure; it was this that was decisive for success, rather than mere physical effort: cf. Isoc. . –. 86 Cf. Plut. Them. . –; Thuc. . . ; [And.] . –; Ath. e. 87 Gernet (: ). Themistocles’ spending at the Olympics aroused scorn because of his low birth (Plut. Them. . ), showing that ‘la victoire et la générosité sont . . . encore affaires de naissance’ (Schmitt-Pantel : ). Cf. Ar. Eud. Eth. b, –. 88 The honour granted to an Olympic victor was proverbial (cf. Thuc. . . ) and was symbolized by a triumphal procession, a position at the public table, privileged seating at the festivals: see Kurke (:  n. ).

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might be decisive for the pursuit of political office.89 In the early fifth century, the high point of the pan-Hellenic games, Miltiades, Cimon, and Themistocles engaged in spending at pan-Hellenic competitions designed to support their political ambitions. But the status conferred by athletic victory, which stemmed from outside the city, and might be of massive proportions, could be a dangerous wild-card in the game of honour played out between élite individuals in the city. As Leslie Kurke shows, victory in crown games might carry with it not just tim¯e (honour) but also kudos, a more unpredictable talismanic power, which the city might seek to incorporate, for example by placing the victor in positions of military command,90 or through other sorts of public honour. Failure to integrate the successful athlete could have disastrous consequences, as illustrated by the baneful figure of the heroized athlete. Rejected by the civic community, the athletic victor seeks revenge for his dishonour, often from beyond the grave, until his recognition in cult re-establishes the rightful balance of honour.91 In Athens, the Olympic victor Cylon attempted to set himself up as tyrant: his death at the hands of the city brought the curse of the goddess down upon it.92 Again, the fate of the elder Cimon provides another illustration of the dangerously unpredictable political effects of athletic victory: having the name of Peisistratus announced by the herald at his second Olympic victory allowed him to be reconciled with the tyrants, but his third victory brought about a dangerous status which led to his death at their hands.93 It was perhaps the extra-civic character of athletic spending and the difficulty of controlling the status it brought which was responsible for the decline of competition at the pan-Hellenic games as a way of pursuing the leadership of the demos in Athens. As far as we can tell, no Athenian leaders of the second half of the fifth century mounted a conspicuous theoria at the pan-Hellenic games.94 It is perhaps no coincidence that ostracism, an institution associated 89 Davies (:  ff.); Rhodes (: –); Kyle (: –); Thomas (: ). 90 Kurke (: –; : –; :  ff.). The Spartans placed Olympic victors next to the king in battle (Plut. QC . . ; Lyc. . ), and a city might ceremoniously tear down a part of its city walls to admit the returning athlete, then rebuild them (Plut. QC . . ; Suet. Nero ). Milo, an Olympic victor, went into battle wearing his Olympic crowns, and was said to have been responsible for the subsequent victory (D.S. . . –). 91 Fontenrose (; Kurke : –). 92 Thuc. . . . 93 Hdt. . . –. 94 Cf. Kyle (: –).

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with the removal of individuals of dangerous status from the community, also declined dramatically in the latter half of the century. Its return was (arguably, if the ostracism of Hyperbolus is placed in  ) associated with the spectacular attempt of Alcibiades to use pan-Hellenic competition and display to boost his bid for political dominance. The city could also object to the athletic spending of the élite individual on the grounds that it bypassed the city’s official system for the allocation of honour. It was an élite display with no obvious benefit for the city. Xenophanes, setting himself up against the ideology of the victory ode, voices the objections of the city, complaining95 that athletic victory neither ‘fattens the coffers of the city’, nor demonstrates the good citizenship of the athletes.96 The second source of status I wish to consider is the élite individual’s network of contacts outside the city, centring on the relationship of xenia (inheritable guest-friendship) and on extra-civic marriage. Though the city could make use of such contacts as a tool of its international relations, it also feared them as a potential alternative focus of loyalty for the élite individual, and a source of extracivic status.97 Through a law debarring the offspring of marriages contracted outside the city from Athenian citizenship, the city effectively abolished one form of such extra-civic links.98 The leading proponent of this measure was Pericles, whose family had before this time been conspicuous in its pursuit of links outside the city (Pericles himself would later secure a personal exemption from the law for his children by the Milesian Aspasia). Later, Pericles was involved in another episode illustrating the tension created by the maintenance of extra-civic links and a similar attempt to resolve it. In  , faced with the danger that the Spartan king Archidamus, his guest-friend, would exempt his land from ravaging during an invasion of Attica, Pericles publicly declared that he would surrender his land to the city should it be spared from devastation, telling the assembly ‘that Archidamus was his guestfriend, but not to the extent of harming the city’.99 The actions of Pericles suggest the attempt to find a strategy for reconciling outXenophanes, W. Cf. Bowra (). Lyc. Leoc. . – echoes these objections in an Athenian context (cf. Dem. . ). On civic objections to athletic competition see Kyle (: –). 97 Herman (: –); Humphreys (: –). 98 Plut. Per.  (with Stadter () ad loc.); [Ar.] Ath. Pol. . . Cf. Humphreys (: ). 99 Thuc. . . 95 96

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side contacts with the demand for commitment to and solidarity with the city. Here again, the élite individual remains distinct from the demos, but is acutely aware of its reaction and quick to demonstrate an attitude of loyalty. The final aspect of the behaviour of the élite individual that I want to focus on is private expenditure and its use to support an ‘aristocratic’ lifestyle, distinct from that of normal citizens. By the fifth century an aristocratic lifestyle included the following elements:100 (i) the careful cultivation of a personal appearance101 which emphasized a separation from the world of menial work (long hair, long clothing of costly material), and aimed at a personal beauty which would physically reflect superior status (the phrase (‘beautiful and good’) was used to denote an aristocrat102); (ii) the symposium and the elaborate ritual and cultivation of manners which accompanied it, which emphasized the superiority and solidarity of the drinking-group, and provided for the expression of superior education in music, poetry, and conversation and for controlled competitive display of honour and status; and (iii) the cultivated pursuit of love, especially of boys. The practice of a distinct aristocratic lifestyle in the city had ideological implications. Thucydides in the Archeologia says: Because of their taste for a luxurious way of life [diaita] it is not long since the elder members of the wealthy families at Athens stopped wearing linen tunics and binding their hair behind their head in a bunch with golden grasshoppers . . . It was the Spartans who first adopted a moderate type of dress more like the current fashion, and in other respects too, the wealthier citizens practised a style of life [diaita] which was much like that of the many. (Thuc. . . –)

Diaita was also the technical term for the Spartan system of regulation of private life and expenditure, which was partly a system of sumptuary control designed to ensure that the citizens were Equals, homoioi. The development of a distinct appearance and lifestyle thus represents an attempt to establish a distinct status within the city. Xenophanes criticizes the aristocracy of his native Colophon: ‘Having learnt useless forms of luxury [habrosunai] 100 On aristocratic lifestyle see Donlan (: ch. ;) Murray (: –). Another distinctively aristocratic form of expenditure, agonal competition, has already been considered above 101 Including the training of the body for athletics: cf. Donlan (: ). 102 Cf. Dover (: –).

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from the Lydians, while they were still free from hateful tyranny, they used to go into the agora wearing cloaks of all-over purple, not less than a thousand all told, boastful, delighting in their glorious locks, drenched in the smell of elaborate perfumes’ (Xenophanes, frag. W). With the addition of the adjective ‘useless’, this critique characterizes the carefully cultivated luxury (habrosune) so prized by the Colophonian aristocrats as a practice not only without value for the city, but even dangerous to it (it is associated with the descent of the city into tyranny). In this text, aristocratic practice is presented as somehow barbarian (cf. ‘learned from the Lydians’), and feminine (the perfumes, long hair, long cloaks). The Colophonians’ lifestyle suggests a threat to the code of rigorous self-control and obedience to law and convention which was seen as the basis of civic life. But such a lifestyle was also intended to set its practitioner apart from the rest of the city, and the reactions it excited may not have been completely unexpected or unwelcome. A delight in dissoluteness is a sign not just of superior wealth and status, but also of elevation above traditional civic morality,103 and a lack of restraint in the pursuit of such a lifestyle carries not just moral, but also political implications. It suggests a revolt against the dominant civic culture. On the other hand, such a stance may be admired as the sign of a man who does not feel compelled to live a conventional life, but (to some extent) lives as he pleases. This fundamental tension with regard to aristocratic lifestyle will prove to be central to the reaction to Alcibiades. The practice of an aristocratic lifestyle was apparently no less prevalent in Athens than in less democratic cities.104 Scenes from comedy like the opening scene of Clouds, where Strepsiades laments the ruinous expense of the aristocratic lifestyle practised by his son, or the final scene in Wasps, where Bdelycleon tries without success to initiate his father in the manners of the symposium, illus103 The series of Anacreontic cups from the first half of the th c. depicts komastic men in virtual transvestite mode: turbaned, dressed in long, female garments and holding parasols, all feminine symbols in the language of iconography (cf. FrontisiDucroux and Lissarrague () ). Such a display suggests a deliberate attempt to test or break the boundaries, to court a marginal world, at the frontiers of normally accepted behaviour. 104 Donlan (:  ff.). Noting that ‘in societies that emphasize equality it is even more imperative for those who would be prominent to project an image of uniqueness that is unambiguous’ (p. ), Donlan claims that admiration for a distinctively aristocratic lifestyle was especially pronounced at Athens.

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trate the distinction between ‘our’ life and ‘theirs’. Aristocratic lifestyle could also arouse resentment. The chorus of hippeis in Aristophanes’ Knights ask the audience not to begrudge them their long hair (an aristocratic symbol), while outside comedy the hippeus Mantitheus asks a democratic jury to judge good citizens on the basis of their conduct rather than their clothing and their long hair.105 In fourth-century oratory, allegations of an excessive pursuit of an aristocratic lifestyle are used to stigmatize opponents with an undemocratic attitude of superiority.106 From a civic point of view, money spent on private luxury was money not spent on the city through the liturgical system and eisphorai.107 Moreover, practised in a way that was, or could be portrayed as, excessive, it suggested a contempt for the demos and for the laws and conventions of the city, and was easily associated with hybris. In Demosthenes, Meidias’ luxurious lifestyle is linked to his deliberately insulting conduct towards others (hybris), and shows his contempt for normal men. While serving on campaign Meidias took with him a silver mule-chair and elaborate symposium equipment (‘at least, that’s what we hoplites heard’). He would walk through the agora accompanied by three or four slaves talking loudly about his symposia.108 Meidias’ conduct was so outrageous that it could be said that ‘the city cannot contain him’.109 The law against hybris which provided for redress against such insulting treatment (such as the physical violence inflicted on passers-by by the revelling symposium group) was a democratic measure inspired by a fear of overbearing aristocratic behaviour.110 Excess in the pursuit of private pleasure was thought to show an uncontrollable desire for power at the public and civic level. According to Aeschines, Timarchus’ lack of self-control in the pursuit of pleasure, especially the disgusting pleasure of the kinaidos, made him unfit to take part in a democracy, and perhaps even a threat to it.111 The allegation of aiming at tyranny, a state seen as the absence of control over desires both physical and political, 105 Aristoph. Knights ; Lys. . –. Cf. Donlan (: –), noting that the verb µ (‘to have long hair’) also meant to put on airs, adopt a position of superiority. 106 Ober (: –); Kurke (: –). 107 Thus Aeschines claims that Timarchus squandered on luxurious vices a patrimony which might have been used to fund liturgies for the city (Aesch. . –). 108 Dem. . –. 109 Dem. . . 110 Cf. Fisher (: ch. ). 111 Aesch. . –, , –.

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might be applied to the élite individual not just when he was excessively overbearing, but also when he was pursuing an excessively luxurious lifestyle. In the parody of Aristophanes’ Wasps the purchase of a rather expensive fish, or paying a prostitute for a somewhat expensive sexual position, is said to lead to allegations of aiming at tyranny.112 In Athens spending and lifestyle were closely watched for evidence of the subject’s attitude towards the city. On the other hand, a conspicuous lifestyle played a central role in distinguishing and dignifying the élite member. An admirer of aristocratic politicians in Eupolis’ Demes longs for leaders, whom the citizens respected ‘as though they were gods’, distinguished not just by aristocratic birth, but also by aristocratic symbols (the gymnasium and palaestra) which reinforced this status.113 Given this ambivalent attitude towards aristocratic lifestyle, the difficult task of the politician in his self-presentation was somehow to combine a way of life that illustrated élite status with adherence to democratic values.114 Pericles was said to have been at the centre of an élite artistic and intellectual circle, but it was also said that he carefully restricted his private life, refusing all invitations to dinner.115 But the tension between the need for a lifestyle that was distinctive and even unconventional116 and the demand to display one’s democratic allegiance in the way one lived produced a variety of responses. In democratic Athens, there were as many political styles as there were individual leaders.117 The pursuit of a distinctive lifestyle, the maintenance of extracivic contacts, and the practice of conspicuous spending are all areas where behaviour aimed at establishing a position of superiority within the city could easily be construed as behaviour suggesting a position above or outside the city. The search for a Aristoph. Wasps – with Davidson (:  ff.). Eupolis, frag.  K.–A.; cf. Eupolis, frag.  K.–A.; Aristoph. Knights –, Frogs –. Such passages should not, of course, be taken as expressing the simple message of the playwright (Goldhill : –), but it is reasonable to take them as representing an attitude which was widespread. 114 Cf. Wilson (: ): ‘a public image at once emphatically democratic, yet with attributes which could never be shared by the demos’. 115 For Pericles’ refusal of invitations, see Plut. Per. . . Cf. Connor (: –); Humphreys (: ). On Pericles’ intellectual and artistic circle, cf. Plut. Per. . –. ; . –. . 116 Cf. Donlan (: ): ‘the need to rise above the mass, to exhibit qualities of flamboyance and unconventionality’. 117 Schmitt-Pantel (: ). 112 113

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distinctive and supreme status could lead to the élite individual being branded as a tyrant and ostracized, or sentenced to exile or death in a democratic court. These tensions are particularly evident in the career of Alcibiades. .     In the remainder of this chapter I want to focus on four key issues central to Alcibiades’ relationship with the city: his betrayal of Athens; his theoria at the Olympics of  ; his behaviour with regard to the pleasures of the body; and his contacts with powerful individuals outside the city. The discussion will place much emphasis on Thucydides’ dense and careful analysis of Alcibiades’ significance for the city at . , expanding and glossing it whenever possible with other, usually contemporary texts. Thucydides’ comments at .  are located at the pivotal moment of Alcibiades’ career: after his victory in the Olympics and the proposal of the Sicilian expedition, when Alcibiades’ alarming influence was at its height, but before his decisive expulsion from the city by the curses of the priests of Eleusis,118 which initiated that part of his career lived more or less outside the city. The year /  is also the moment chosen by the author of [And.]  for his invective against Alcibiades. It is this period, where Alcibiades was at the height of his dangerous influence, but still within the city, that the conflict between great individual and city is at its most thrilling, both for the orator and the historian. .. Self-values and civic values: Alcibiades’ betrayal of Athens Alcibiades is famous above all as one of the great traitors of the ancient world, but his action against the city is often misunderstood. I shall argue that the tension which led to Alcibiades’ split with the city was between purely personal and civic values,119 not between élite and democratic ideology, and that the alarm felt by the city towards Alcibiades was based on fears centred not on his loyalty, but rather on his overreaching ambition. 118 ‘Decisive’, since even when Alcibiades returned to the city in   it was to some extent as a private dynast. 119 Davies (: ) speaks of an ‘acutely unstable combination of ego-defined with society-defined ambitions’.

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Central to Alcibiades’ ‘self-values’ was his sense of the position of status he derived from membership of families of ancient lineage, what Thucydides calls µ (‘standing deriving from ancestors’) (. . , . . ).120 Ancestors come up again and again in presentations of Alcibiades, for example in the speech of Alcibiades’ son in Isoc. : ‘My father belonged on his father’s side to the Eupatrids, whose nobility can easily be recognized from their very name, and on his mother’s to the Alcmaeonids, who left a tremendous memorial to their wealth, for Alcmaeon was the first Athenian citizen to win at Olympia with a team of horses’ (Isoc. . ). The speech presents this ancestry as a tradition of ancestral honour which the normal Athenian could never hope to approach.121 Particularly important here is the matrilinear link with the Alcmaeonids.122 The earliest known member of Alcibiades’ family on his father’s side had been, at best, a marginal figure in the overthrow of the Peisistratid tyanny in   (Isoc. . ). Even this is likely to be a convenient fabrication—as bogus as the claim that Alcibiades’ father’s family was ‘of the Eupatrids’.123 The Alcmaeonids, on the other hand, were perhaps the most conspicuous of all Athenian aristocratic families.124 The marriage of Alcibiades’ father Cleinias to the daugher of Megacles, son of Hippocrates, and the stress placed on this link by Alcibiades and his son, suggest a desire to maximize their claim to aristocratic status. Moreover, it was through the Alcmaeonids that Alcibiades acquired his relationship with Pericles125 (a relationship surely 120 For the possible effects of such status on the psychology of the possessor, cf. Thuc. . .  on Pausanias: ‘being held even before this in axioma by the Greeks . . . he was elated and was unable to live in the established manner’. 121 Cf. Lys. . , where it is asked why ‘they’ (Alcibiades and his family) should be spared because of their genos while ‘we’ are not able to appeal to the great and glorious deeds of our ancestors. 122 On the genealogy of Alcibiades see APF –; Bicknell (). 123 It now seems clear that there was no th-c. genos of Eupatrids, and that Alcibiades belonged to the genos Salaminioi (APF –). The term Eupatrid, which once signalled the Athenian aristocratic caste, was apparently later generally applied (Ath. Pol. . ) to the aristocrats who opposed the Peisistratid tyranny (cf. Thomas : ). 124 Thus in Aristoph. Clouds (– with Dover  ad loc.), it is Alcmaeonid names that are used to suggest the aristocratic status of Strepsiades’ wife. On the Alcmaeonids, cf. Hdt. . –, . –; APF  ff. 125 Alcibiades’ maternal grandfather Megacles was the brother of Pericles’ mother, Agariste. Bicknell () suggests an additional relationship through Pericles’ partner Aspasia, the daughter of Axiochus of Miletus (Axiochus was also the name of Alcibiades’ uncle).

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central to Alcibiades’ axioma, though never mentioned by Thucydides). This link had already been cultivated by Cleinias when he made Pericles the guardian of his son.126 The impression that Alcibiades and his family were particularly anxious to stress their aristocratic status is strengthened by Alcibiades’ marriage to the daughter of Hipponicus, ‘the richest man in Greece and inferior to none of the citizens in birth’ (Isoc. . ). Alcibiades’ unparalleled effort at the   Olympics may well have been inspired by a desire to crown the family achievement in chariot competition initiated by his maternal ancestor Alcmaeon:127 another illustration of the extent to which Alcibiades’ self-values were bound up in ancestral tradition. Defending his Olympic performance in Thucydides’ Sicilian debate, Alcibiades says: ‘As for the things which have made me such a subject of controversy, these bring honour both to my ancestors and myself, and also benefit to our fatherland’ (Thuc. . . ). The remark illustrates the tension in Alcibiades’ behaviour between the pursuit of honour on his own behalf and that of his ancestors (personal philotimia, what we might call egotistic goals), and his role as servant of the city (the civic philotimia praised in oratory and inscriptions). The prioritization implied by this example (ancestors and self first, city second) might extend to the formulation of political goals, as in Alcibiades’ speech at Sparta: We [i.e. my ancestors and I] have always been at odds with tyrants, and whatever is opposed to arbitrary power is called democracy. That is why the leadership of the plethos remained in our hands. . . . We were the leaders of the state as a whole, believing that it was right to assist in preserving the constitution under which the city was the greatest and the most free, and the one which had been handed down to us. (Thuc. . . , . )

In this conception, the city is regarded as an arena for the pursuit of honour for Alcibiades and his family. Its democratic constitution is seen as a system created by and dependent on the support of his family. The tension between personal-familial and civic is Cf. APF . Schaefer (: –), emphasizes the importance of family tradition in determining the behaviour of Athenian aristocrats. Alcibiades’ family on both sides had a tradition of chariot-racing: his Alcmaeonid uncle Megacles V had been Olympic victor in   (APF ); and his maternal grandfather Megacles IV (APF , ) and paternal great-grandfather Alcibiades I (APF ) had also been victors in the games. Alcibiades may also have emulated his great-grandfather Cleinias I in possessing his own trireme and equipping it for the city (Hdt. . ; Thuc. . . ). 126 127

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particularly clear from Thucydides’ two formal introductions of Alcibiades. In the first (. ) it is claimed that Alcibiades’ attempts to overthrow the Peace of Nicias were founded on an attempt to requite a slight against his personal honour (the Spartans had ignored the ancestral proxenia enjoyed by his family with Sparta). In the second (. ), the prime motives for his Sicilian policy are said to be a desire for a spectacular personal command, and the need to overcome financial embarrassment. When it comes to an outright conflict of priorities, Alcibiades may be prepared to put personal and family goals even above the good of the city. In exile, he helped the enemies of the city to harm it—the action which he is attempting to justify in his speech to the Spartans. Yet the anti-democratic viewpoint he goes on to reveal in this speech, which sees democracy as ‘acknowledged madness’, is part of a defensive stance designed to appeal to his Spartan audience, and cannot be taken simply as (Thucydides’ portrayal of ) Alcibiades’ attitude to the city’s constitution.128 Moreover, personal or family and civic goals may be compatible.129 Thucydides is at pains to stress that despite his undoubted personal agenda, Alcibiades believed that both his Argive policy and his Sicilian policy were also the best policy for the city.130 In the speech at Sparta, Alcibiades portrays his family’s political role as preserving the constitution which was best for the city, and presents a version of democracy (‘whatever is opposed to tyranny’) which is acceptable from an aristocratic point of view. The opposition to tyranny so important to the democracy is actually an Alcmaeonid family tradition131 (‘we were 128 Alcibiades’ later reference to ‘the corrupt democracy which exiled me’ (Thuc. . . ) is likewise designed to appeal to the oligarchs to whom this remark is addressed, and is based on a calculation that the democracy would not recall him, whereas these oligarchs would. Thus Phrynichus’ claim in the next chapter (. . ) that Alcibiades did not care what sort of government Athens had, so long as it was one that would recall him, is endorsed by Thucydides (‘as was in fact the case’). 129 Contrast Cartledge (: ), who sees Alcibiades’ line about the ‘acknowledged madness’ of the democracy (Thuc. . ) as evidence for a class-based political morality which freed him from obligation to the democratic state. Alcibiades may not have felt any powerful sense of allegiance to the democracy, but what he resented above all was the personal humiliation and loss of honour involved in his exile. The key tension is between the pursuit of personal goals and those of the city, not between allegiance to the demos and allegiance to the élite class. 130 . .  cf. . .  (Alcibiades really believed the expedition would lead to Athenian control of the western Mediterranean). 131 Cf. Thomas (: ch. , and –), on the tendency of the family traditions of the great Athenian houses to be developed in a democratic direction. Note that

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always opposed to tyrants’), and this helps bridge the gap between the priorities of the élite individual and his family and those of the city, as well as (in this case) appealing to the anti-tyrannical ideology of a Spartan audience. The Athenians were apparently not particularly concerned with the danger that Alcibiades’ pursuit of family and personal goals might be inconsistent with the good of the city. Indeed, as Thucydides stresses, ‘axioma from his ancestors’ was central to Alcibiades’ status in the city.132 Athenians familiar with tensions between the personal claims of philotimia and the claims of the city found it possible to take Alcibiades back even after his collaboration with the city’s enemies. This collaboration is usually discussed in terms of treason and patriotism, but the issue is in fact more complicated, for it took place after Alcibiades had already been exiled from the city, an event which loosened his ties of duty to the polis and committed him to making good the humiliation through vengeance on his enemies and forcing a return to the city.133 Alcibiades’ actions against the city are not undertaken in a treasonous spirit, but in order to win a return to Athens.134 Likewise, the Athenians would probably have found the confusion of personal goals with foreign policy in the Argive and Sicilian policies less disturbing than we do. In both cases Alcibiades was able to combine personal and public priorities. As his speech to the Spartans suggests, the loyalty of Alcibiades and his family was secured by the fact that the city was their chief source of honour, status, and power.135 What the Athenians found so alarming about Alcibiades was not so much misplaced personal goals which might lead to disloyalty to the city (‘treason and patriotism’), or a lack of ideological commitment to the city, but an excessive and dangerous ambition which the speaker of Isoc.  is careful to claim a tradition of opposition to tyrants on his father’s side, even if this is invented. 132 Cf. [Plato] Alc. I a. 133 The question of Alcibiades’ treason is discussed more fully in Ch.  below, § . 134 Thuc. . . : ‘He knew that if he did not destroy the city, the time would come when he might persuade the Athenians to recall him from exile.’ His speech at Sparta assumes that his actions are directed at a return to Athens (. . : , ). 135 Cf. the arguments of Alcibiades’ supporters at Xen. HG . . : why would Alcibiades desire revolution when he already got all the honour he could possibly want from the demos?

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might lead to an attempt to dominate it. This they perceived in, for example, his competition in the Olympic chariot-race (where he entered more teams and achieved greater success than any previous competitor136) and the startling ambition of the military ventures he championed. Thucydides claims that in proposing the Sicilian expedition Alcibiades aimed at the conquest not just of Syracuse, but also of Sicily and Carthage, and the Peloponnese. (The Platonic first Alcibiades, going a step further, claims Alcibiades’ ambition is satiable only by the conquest of the whole known world.137) It was this alarming aspect of Alcibiades’ behaviour and speech which led his fellow citizens to see in him the figure of the tyrant, and culminated, according to Thucydides, in his exile. Thucydides calls this ‘the megethos [literally ‘magnitude’] which revealed itself . . . in the spirit [dianoia] with which he undertook every single one of his actions’. The intensity of his ambition had something uncontrollable about it, an almost superhuman quality, expressed by Thucydides in the image of alarming size. The speech of Alcibiades which follows this analysis by Thucydides (. –) is designed to reveal this prodigious dianoia. Vaunting his Olympic victories, Alcibiades claims that they give him the right to put himself on a superior level to his fellow citizens (µ ). He portrays himself as one of those great natures envied in their lifetime, but elevated to supreme status after their deaths. Such a speech, placing all its emphasis on the superior status of the élite individual, and none on similarity to or solidarity with the demos, shatters the subtle tension of difference and similarity which we saw above as central to the pose of the élite leader before the demos. Alcibiades’ speech and the attitude it reveals recall Thucydides’ description of the behaviour of Pausanias the regent. Elated by the axioma accorded him by the Greeks after his victory at Plataea, he was ‘incapable of controlling his dianoia’ (Thuc. . . ), and adopted a way of life which suggested that he was ‘unwilling to accept a position of equality in the existing state of affairs’ (Thuc. . . ). His inscribing of his own name rather than the city’s on the Persian spoils after Plataea was seen by the Spartans as evidence of the same dianoia (. . ). Pausanias’ behaviour is an example of a syndrome of excessive self-valuation, which cannot be satisfied 136

Isoc. . .

137

Alc. I e–c.

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by the limits imposed by the polis. So in Thuc. . –, the problem is not just the Athenian perception of Alcibiades as potential tyrant: his speech and actions are those of someone who, like Pausanias, really believed that he had achieved a greatness which put him in a different category from his fellows. Schemata of perception thus cannot be separated from schemata of behaviour: the Athenians saw in Alcibiades a real and familiar figure, one who, elated by youth,138 status, and success, had developed an attitude to himself and the city which made it difficult for him to live any more in a communal way. Pausanias’ intoxication with his honour and status was also closely associated with the adoption of barbarian power-symbols: he began to wear Persian clothes and adopt Persian manners, treating those around him with barbarian contempt (Thuc. . . ). His paranomia and imitation of things Persian was another sign of his unwillingness to live on a level of equality with others (. . ). Later sources139 claimed that Alcibiades ‘imitated the Medizing of Pausanias, and in order to win the favour of Pharnabazus put on the Persian mantle and learned the Persian language, just like Themistocles’. It was natural that Alcibiades’ name should be linked to those of the great Medizers, Pausanias and Themistocles, whose adoption of barbarian practices of luxury and power signified their rejection of civic practice and their cities’ rejection of them. .. Spending and splendour: ‘the impression of power’ In Thucydides’ Sicilian debate, where politics and state policy are closely linked to discussion of athletics, competing versions of Alcibiades’ civic attitude are founded on different accounts of the significance of his spending. [Nicias:] ‘If there is someone here, who, delighted to be chosen as leader, encourages you to undertake the expedition, looking only to his own 138 Alcibiades’ youth (he was probably only  when he achieved the strategia for the first time, and less than  when appointed to the Sicilian command) is crucial to the perception of him as the hybristic youngster buoyed up by wealth, birth, and the adulation of the people. Cf. the comments of Thucydides’ Nicias (. . ), to some extent endorsed by Thucydides himself (. ; and the use of µ in . .  and . .  picks up Nicias’ µ at . . ). Cf. also Cornford (: –). The youth of Athens were apparently overrepresented in Alcibiades’ following (Thuc. . . ). 139 Ath. e, apparently from Duris. Duris saw Alcibiades as an example of a wider group of tyrant-Medizers: Dionysius, Alexander, Demetrius.

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advantage (someone, moreover, who is still rather young to be in a position of leadership) so that he can be admired for his horse-breeding, and so that he can support its great expense by getting some benefit from the command, do not accept a situation where this person maintains his personal splendour [ µ ] by putting the city at risk. Remember that such men wrong the public cause at the same time as they use up their personal resources.’ (Thuc. . . –) [Alcibiades:] As for the things which have made me such a subject of controversy, these bring honour both to my ancestors and myself, and also benefit to our fatherland. The magnificence of my participation140 at the Olympics caused the Greeks, who had formerly hoped that our city had been worn down by war, to believe that she was even more powerful than she really is. I entered seven chariots, more than any other private citizen before me, and I was victor in the race as well as coming second and fourth, and I arranged everything else on a scale corresponding to my victory. As a matter of convention such deeds bring honour, but in practice they produce at the same time the suggestion of power [dunamis]. Or again, within the city, it is natural that the splendour [ µ µ ] with which I carry off choregiai or whatever else should arouse the envy [phthonos] of the citizens, but to foreigners this too gives the impression of strength. (Thuc. . . –)

Nicias sees a certain sort of spending as characteristic of a certain sort of politician, one who makes the city’s public interest subsidiary to his own private ambitions. Interweaving phrases which deal with Alcibiades’ championing of the Sicilian expedition with phrases which deal with his Olympic expenditure, he attempts to read off Alcibiades’ political attitude from his spending behaviour. Just as Alcibiades’ enormous spending on the games brings glory to himself and no perceptible advantage to the city (compare the criticisms of Xenophanes cited above), so his quest for the command in Sicily, Nicias alleges, will benefit only Alcibiades while endangering the city. Implicit in Alcibiades’ speech, on the other hand, is the argument that one who is a victor in the Olympics is likely to be a victor in Sicily: Alcibiades’ victory in the games makes Athens look powerful in the eyes of her enemies. Athletic success and power over enemies, Alcibiades argues, are closely related. The first section of Alcibiades’ speech, dealing with his Olympic performance, is thus a most effective preamble to his discussion of the Sicilian expedition. 140 means simply taking part at the Olympics: it is not the case that Alcibiades was the city’s official ambassador to the games, as is sometimes said.

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Alcibiades’ defence of his Olympic spending is along the traditional lines of the victory ode and other non-civic texts,141 but there are elements here which tend to confirm Nicias’ picture of the subordination of the civic to the individual: foreigners are to perceive the city’s strength in Alcibiades’ personal achievements; Alcibiades’ uncompromising presentation makes honour and power seem to flow directly from the individual to the city. In addition to his avowed aim of enhancing the reputation of himself and his ancestors, there is no doubt that the appalling expenditure involved in Alcibiades’ competition and appearance at the Olympics of   was directly associated with his political ambitions.142 Taking advantage of the first Olympic games in sixteen years at which Athenians could easily compete,143 the unparalleled and unrepeatable display was intended as a massive boost to Alcibiades’ status at a crucial time in his political career. The talismanic power associated with the crown victor would be an unbeatable qualification for the command of the Sicilian expedition. Alcibiades’ employment, on so massive a scale, of so unstable a form of status in the pursuit of political goals was the mark of a man of alarming ambition not prepared to wait patiently for political supremacy. Nicias, in contrast, was remembered for his particularly conspicuous equipping of the Athenian contingent to the Delian festival, an official liturgy, emphasizing piety.144 A comparison of Alcibiades’ spending with Nicias’ suggests that Nicias was right to claim that a man’s spending is evidence of his political attitude. The distinctive modes of political action adopted by Alcibiades (spending on the games, the championing of aggressive military policies, assembly rhetoric145) were predominantly selfrather than city-oriented. 141 Cf. Pind. Isth. .  (the winning athlete ‘makes the city share in the honour he wins’), Nem. .  ff., .  ff.; Ol. .  ff.; etc.); and the victory epigrams cited by Hönle (:  n. ). Cf. also Isoc. . ; Xen. Mem. . . – (victory in the panHellenic games brings ‘honour for oneself and fame for the city’). Cf. Loraux (: –) on the type of presentation of the élite individual where ‘the eulogy of the city is grafted onto that of the individual’. 142 Cf. N. Richardson in CAH v2. –. 143 Hornblower (: ). 144 Plut. Nic. . Cf. Schmitt-Pantel (: –). 145 Alcibiades was remembered as a superb speaker: Lys. . ; Dem. . ; Theophrastus, frag.  Wehrli; Plutarch claims (Alc. . ) that in spite of his advantages in birth and wealth Alcibiades preferred to base his influence with the demos solely on the charm of his speech. Thucydides remarks, apropos of Alcibiades’ address to the despondent Athenian fleet at Samos, that ‘there was no other man who would have been capable of restraining the mob’ (. . ).

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Alcibiades’ performance at the Olympics of   is the pivotal moment of his career. His behaviour at the games and the reactions it excited are central to understanding the extreme polarization of the civic reaction to him. As we saw above, victory in the games resulted in the acquisition of honour of a type and extent which might be difficult to integrate within the normal civic scheme. Lacking the sanction and control of official spending within the city, it was liable to produce a double reaction: on the one hand, the victor’s lamprotes (‘brilliance’)146 and kudos inspire an exaggerated cult of personal admiration; on the other hand, his success and honour make him liable to phthonos (‘envy’), a key theme of the victory ode147 and of Alcibiades’ selfdefence at Thuc. . . The more spectacular the victory, the more polarized the reaction and the more unstable the status which could result. This schema is reflected in the heroized athletic victors of cult whose brilliant victories are followed by rejection by the community; and who are then, in an attempt to ward off their destructive wrath, received back into the city with cultic honours. Alcibiades’ own career after the   Olympics parallels those of these baneful figures in a striking way: massive honour is followed by civic rejection, and then an attempt at reintegration. The impression of Alcibiades’ attendance at the Olympics as an action which put him outside the city was reinforced by the massive nature of the display which accompanied it,148 what Alcibiades in Thucydides calls the ‘other preparations on a scale appropriate to my victory’. [And.] . – provides details of this display, couched in terms of the invective directed against the tyrant: Alcibiades erected a ‘Persian’ tent, larger than that of the city, from which he dispensed hospitality to the festival-goers. He followed his victory in the race with a victory feast, at which he entertained ‘the entire festival’,149 and a spectacular offering of thanks to Zeus.150 [Andocides] alleges that at these two occasions, Alcibiades 146 Cf. Nicias’ criticisms of Alcibiades’ µ (Thuc. . . , picked up by Alcibiades, . . ): the word suggests both brilliant personal display and the feeling of superiority which accompanies it (LSJ II); On lamprotes, cf. Kurke (: –). 147 Cf. Kurke (: –). 148 Cf. the analysis of Schmitt-Pantel (: –). 149 Cf. Ath. e. The description of Ion’s feasting of the Delphians (Eur. Ion –) gives an idea of the style of entertainment dispensed by Alcibiades. 150 Weniger (: –) has the best interpretation of the sequence of events described by this text.

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made use of the sacred processional vessels of the city. When the city used the vessels for the procession of Zeus later that same day, the watching Greeks either thought that the city was using Alcibiades’ vessels, or despised the city for its submissive attitude to Alcibiades. To the onlookers, it seemed as though ‘one man was more powerful than the whole city’. Whereas in Thucydides Alcibiades claimed that his personal display at the Olympics enhanced the impression of the city’s power, for [Andocides] the scale of Alcibiades’ competition and display suggests an attempt by the individual to replace the city or to set himself in rivalry with it: this is confirmed by his use of the city’s own sacred vessels as his own. The speech reminds us that the city was also represented at the Olympics by an official delegation led by an architheoros, whose display Alcibiades overshadowed, and whose sacred vessels he purloined. Alcibiades’ behaviour resembles that of the tyrants who used the Olympics to mount displays of personal power, in which they appeared not on behalf of the city but instead of it: it was at the Olympics that Lysias is said on one occasion to have urged the other Greeks to destroy the ‘oriental’ tents of the tyrant Dionysius.151 In Thucydides, Alcibiades says that no private citizen had ever matched his performance in the chariot-race, while his son in Isoc. .  claims that ‘his spending was so lavish that the public displays of the other cities seemed less magnificent than his own private display’. In [And.]  the danger of such a claim is exposed: Alcibiades’ private display eclipses the display not just of other cities, but of his own as well, reversing the natural relationship between individual and city. The invective of [Andocides] underlines the inherent difficulty of any pattern of élite spending where the honour of the city is seen to arise from that of the élite spender, and where the civic sphere seems to be reduced to an adjunct of the individual. Both Alcibiades and [Andocides] are acutely aware of the watching gaze of the Greek world at Olympia. The action at the games has a political significance: athletics is closely associated with power. Alcibiades is surely right that his performance is a sign of dunamis, but whose? That of the city, or his own dunamis, in direct and dangerous rivalry with the city? The latter, according to [Andocides]; watching Alcibiades’ actions, the other Greeks 151

D. H. Lysias ; D.S. . . –.

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‘reacted with derision, seeing one man possessing more dunamis than the whole city’. The schema set up by Alcibiades in Thucydides is thus completely reversed: his performance at the Olympics displays to the other Greeks not the power of Athens, but its impotence in the face of the powerful individual in its midst. Kurke sees the victory ode152 as an attempt to ‘reintegrate’ the victor and his kudos into the city. Such a schema can usefully be applied in order to consider Alcibiades’ attempts to present his Olympic victory. I want to consider three examples of this selfpresentation. The first is the victory ode itself, which interweaves family story and civic story, victor and city in order to integrate the victor and his kudos.153 Pindar, Pyth. , which celebrates the victory of Alcibiades’ maternal grandfather Megacles in the chariot-race at Delphi, is a particularly relevant example. This poem ostentatiously takes the city, Athens, as its ‘foundation stone’ (lines –), and presents the repair of the temple of Apollo by the Alcmaeonids as an act of ‘the citizens of Erechtheus’ (–), a way of putting things which collapses the actions of the aristocratic family into those of the city.154 The ode ends on a note of sorrow for the phthonos which inevitably accompanies fine deeds (the theme touched on by Alcibiades himself at Thuc. . ): Megacles’ victory was won, and the ode composed, shortly after his ostracism from Athens. The ode is thus an attempt to reintegrate the victor in the fullest possible sense: here, the feared reaction of phthonos has already taken place. An ode commemorating Alcibiades’ victory in the Olympics circulated in antiquity and was ascribed to Euripides.155 It described the magnitude of Alcibiades’ victory (‘which no one else in Greece had ever achieved’) and, like Megacles’ victory ode, placed Athens in a key position, with its claim that ‘the successful man is first in need of a famous city’.156 The poem thus juxtaposes the massive 153 Kurke (: –; : ). Kurke (: ch. ; : ). Cf. Bowra (: –); Kurke (: –). 155 PMG –. The ascription to Euripides was already doubted in Plutarch’s time (Plut. Dem. ), but Bowra () argues in favour of Euripidean authorship. 156 Cf. the anecdote told of Themistocles (Hdt. . ; Plato, Rep. e; Plut. Them. ): taunted by a man from Seriphus that he would never have been famous if he had not been an Athenian, he replied, ‘and you would not have been famous even if you had been an Athenian.’ Here too civic and individual honour are interdependent. 152 154

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honour of the athlete and an attempt to position the victor with regard to the city (as in Thuc. . ), and once again reflects an awareness of the tension between victor and city. In contrast to this strategy of reintegration is the painting or paintings described in late sources157 in which Alcibiades is depicted in the arms of a figure representing the Nemean games, and crowned by figures representing the Olympic and Pythian games.158 Instead of attempting to construct a relationship between victor and city, this painting (or paintings) suggests that the victor has lost all sense of the proper relationship between the individual and his fellow citizens, or even his fellow men: such a depiction could only be described as ‘tyrannical and paranomic’.159 Like the account of Alcibiades’ return to Athens invented by Duris, it illustrates a hybristic and quasi-sacrilegious attitude. But it could hardly have been a part of a strategy of self-presentation by any figure in a fifth-century Greek city. Alcibiades was in no need of increasing the phthonos resulting from his victory through such a depiction. A third example of reintegration is the reception of the victor on his return to the city. In order to incorporate the status of the victor and adopt his talismanic power, the city received him back into its midst in quasi-ritual fashion, welcoming and crowning him and receiving in turn the dedication of his Olympic crown.160 Although there is no record of Alcibiades’ return to Athens in  , images suggesting the reception and crowning of the returning victor collect around the description of Alcibiades’ homecoming in   following his military victories in the Hellespont. On this occasion Alcibiades was surrounded by a great crowd, ‘in admiration of Alcibiades and wanting to see him, some saying that he was the greatest of citizens’ (Xenophon); he was saluted and followed and 157 Ath. d; Plut. Alc. . ; Paus. . .  (claiming to have seen the painting in the gallery on the Acropolis). Frazer (: ii. –) discusses the question of whether these sources are referring to the same work or several. 158 This suggests that, as one might expect, Alcibiades competed successfully in other games as well: cf. APF –. 159 Plut. Alc. . . Cf. Bowra (, ). The nearest parallel for the painting is the alleged painting of Lysander after his victory at Aegospotami, crowned by Poseidon, and surrounded by other divinities (Paus. . . ). On patronage of artists in the th c., see J. J. Pollitt in CAH v2. –. 160 Kurke (: –; :  ff.). The crowds accompanying the victor ‘invoked blessings, pelted the victor with crowns, and bound taniai, or fillets round his head’ (: ).

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crowned with garlands by the crowd (Plutarch); he was awarded a golden crown from the city, an honour which no one before him had received apart from Olympic victors (Nepos).161 In these accounts, the return of the military victor becomes a set piece, which comes increasingly to resemble the return of the athletic victor,162 a ceremony striving to reincorporate the victor into the city, a sort of unofficial triumph. Once again, the kudos of athletic victory and that of military victory are closely related. As in  , however, this unstable installation of Alcibiades as the superlative individual in the city was followed, this time even more swiftly, by his complete rejection by it. For an individual endowed with a kudos of such magnitude, these were apparently the only positions available with regard to the city. Both Alcibiades’ returns to the city are attempts at reintegration which fail. Just as Alcibiades distorted the proper relations between individual and city in his expenditure at Olympia, he also perverted the significance of the official liturgy system, as [Andocides] describes in his account of Alcibiades’ choregia in the boys’ dithyramb.163 His striking of his rival choregos Taureas violated civically approved philotimia by infringing the officially licensed boundaries of élite competition. More importantly, however, it represented a display of hybris which turned Alcibiades’ public appearance before the city (and the other Greeks in attendance at the festival) into a theatrical display of his power over it.164 To judge from Demosthenes’ Against Meidias, such incidents were not uncommon in the atmosphere of intense competition between élite individuals at the Xen. HG . . ; Plut. Alc. . ; Nepos, Alc. . . Cf. D.S. . –. Cf. Thuc. . . , where the victorious Brasidas is welcomed by the people of Scione as if he were an athletic victor returning home: ‘they received him splendidly in every way: publicly he was awarded a golden crown, as the liberator of Greece, and on a private level too they garlanded him with fillets and approached him as though he were an athlete.’ Cf. also Plut. Per. : ‘the women put crowns and fillets on his head, as though he were a victorious athlete’. 163 [And.] . . The passage should be read with Wilson (: –). 164 The sense of the theatricality of the élite individual’s public appearance is strongly felt (cf. Wilson : –): the Athenians and the other Greeks are the spectators ( , ) of the competition not only on stage through the choruses, but off it, through public confrontation. When the judges come to make their decision, it is clear that they are deciding not just on how the boys performed but also on the contest of public honour enacted by Alcibiades and his rival (Alcibiades has clearly won this, so the judges decide in his favour). The episode recalls Cleon’s satire of the Athenians in assembly as , ‘speechspectators’ (Thuc. . . ). 161 162

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festival:165 they might even suggest a quasi-acceptable form of philotimia.166 But such an act could also be used to suggest the hybristes, and portrayed as an assault not just on the rival but on the laws and the city as well. Once again the feeling that the city is on display (this time at its own civic festival) is important: whereas Thucydides’ Alcibiades claims (Thuc. . . ) that his personal brilliance as choregos is seen by foreigners as strength ( ), [Andocides] sees instead a display, before an international audience, of the city’s powerlessness against the hybristic individual. .. Alcibiades’ body and the civic body When Pausanias the regent, elated by the honours he had received ‘was unable to live [ ] in the established way’, aspects of his everyday lifestyle (wearing Median clothes, setting a Persian table) provided signs of what he intended to do later on a larger scale (Thuc. . –). Alcibiades too revealed his tyrannical attitude in his diaita, a way of living which, as we saw above, could carry a political charge (as in the Spartan diaita, the diaita of Xenocrates’ aristocrats). He enjoyed great standing among the citizens, but the desires [ µ ] he pursued were greater than his available resources, both in horse-rearing and his other expenditure. Later this was one of the main causes of the downfall of the Athenian state. For the common people, fearing the magnitude both of the paranomia he displayed with respect to his own body in his lifestyle [diaita] and of the spirit with which he carried out everything he became involved in, believed that he desired [ µ ] tyranny, and became his enemies,167 and even though on a public level his conduct of military affairs was excellent, they were aggrieved on a private level as individuals with his 165 Dem. . –, –, –. Wilson (: –). There were even institutional attempts to control such competition: [Xen.] Ath. Pol. . . 166 Thus Demosthenes (. ) excuses the assault in Alcibiades’ case as the sign of legitimate competition between two choregoi. Cf. Plut. Alc. . . 167 µ : the word used for enemies of the state. The Athenians swore to be the µ of would-be tyrants (law of Demophantus, And. . –). Lys. .  argues that Alcibiades and his family are to be treated as the ancestral enemies ( this time) of the city. The word also suggests the status of Alcibiades as a virtual state in his own right (see further below). Isocrates, describing Alcibiades’ reaction to his exile (Philip ), claimed that he was not cowed into accepting his exile by the size of Athens, but ‘determined to make war [ µ ] on her’. Thucydides in .  may also be alluding to the ‘war’ with Alcibiades which the Athenians unleashed by exiling him. According to Nepos (Alc. . ), Alcibiades used to claim that he was making war (bellum gerere) not on Athens, but on his personal enemies (inimici), because these were the enemies (hostes) of the city.

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practices [epitedeumata], and handing over affairs to others, it was not long before they brought down the city. (Thuc. . . –)

Nothing could make clearer the centrality of Alcibiades’ personal behaviour (diaita, epitedeumata) to the public perception of him. Alcibiades’ personal life was perceived politically. The Athenians saw his unrestrained attitude to his desires, his ‘body’, and his expenditure, not (just) as immoral, but as indicators of a particular political stance, of a desire to make himself tyrant over the city. The contempt for normal convention (paranomia) displayed in Alcibiades’ personal life was taken as evidence of a contempt for the rules and conventions of political life as well (political paranomia), and the desires which he was unable or unwilling to control in his private life suggested a similarly uncontrollable desire in the political sphere to make himself tyrant over the state,168 the only position which would allow him to support his unrestrained pursuit of pleasure. (The notorious behaviour of the Greek tyrants illustrates the association of the desire for bodily pleasure with the craving for political power.169) Thucydides’ carefully worded parallel clauses pair lack of control in the pursuit of pleasure (‘paranomia with regard to his own body’) with the dianoia displayed in his public actions, as factors of equal importance in creating in the Athenians the impression of megethos (‘magnitude’) which led them so to fear Alcibiades. The grammar of the previous sentence (. . ) makes Alcibiades’ uncontrolled private spending one of the most impor) of the city’s downfall. For Thucydides, tant causes ( Alcibiades’ lifestyle is directly linked to the fall of Athens. Of course, in a society where the political realm was defined so broadly, many aspects of behaviour are liable to be interpreted politically: the vague paranomia ropes together behaviour ranging from an unconventional private life to political rebellion.170 Thucydides does not explain exactly what aspects of Alcibiades’ personal life were found so alarming: such matters lay outside the 168 On the connection between pleasure and tyranny, cf. Foucault (: –). On the political implications of Alcibiades’ personal behaviour, see now Davidson (: –). 169 Hdt. . ; Eur. frag. N; Plato, Rep.  with Cornford (: –); Connor (:  n. ). Cf. Plut. Alc. . : Alcibiades in   inspires in the Athenian lower classes ‘a terrible eros to be tyrannized over by him’. 170 Cf. the variety of types of behaviour labelled paranomia in [And.] : striking Taureas (§ ); having a child by the Melian captive (§§ , ); using the allied cities to subsidize his Olympic entertainment (§ ).

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scope of serious history (note the hint of euphemism in the phrase ‘desires both in horse-rearing and other expenses’). But he does make it clear that they were associated with massive expenditure. This suggests that the best way of appoaching Alcibiades’ diaita is to see it not so much as a purely personal predilection for immoral excess, but rather as the pursuit of conspicuous extravagance, of an aristocratic lifestyle designed to set the one who practised it apart from or above others. As we saw above, such a lifestyle may easily be interpreted as intended to show contempt for other citizens and for the nomoi of the city. Alcibiades’ lifestyle, his truphe and habrosune (‘luxury’), were not only perceived politically, they were also to a certain extent an inherently political mode of behaviour. Other, non-Thucydidean texts tell us that when he appeared in public Alcibiades was physically distinguished from his fellow Athenians by his beauty (emphasized again and again in the sources171), a quality associated with an aristocratic cultivation of the body, and easily linked in Greek thinking to other sorts of excellence.172 Other features of Alcibiades’ appearance and manner emphasized his aristocratic distinction. Plutarch talks of Alcibiades’ ‘luxurious trailing of purple garments through the agora’.173 The comic poet Archippus satirized Alcibiades’ son (Alcibiades IV) for imitating these mannerisms of his father: ‘He walks mincingly,174 dragging his cloak, so as to appear as like his father as possible: he bends his neck and talks with a lisp’175 (Archippus, frag.  K.–A.) The behaviour of the son, Alcibiades IV, demonstrates a self-conscious attempt to set himself apart in his public appearances, imitating not only his father, but a distinctively aristocratic deportment. For Greeks and Romans alike, the trailing of long garments is a virtual topos of the dissolute 171 See above all Satyrus at Ath. b–. on ‘the beautiful Alcibiades’, and Xen. Mem. . . ; Plut. Alc. . ; D.S. . . ; Nepos, Alc. . . 172 As in the term (‘beautiful and good’) to denote ‘aristocrats’. On the , a civic festival incorporating a male beauty competition, see Crowther (). But beauty might also suggest femininity (Aesch. .  and ). 173 Cf. Satyrus at Ath. c: ‘when he served as choregos and entered the theatre with the procession, dressed in purple, he was admired not only by the men, but by the women’. Cf. the care and expense lavished by Demosthenes on his clothing while choregos (Dem. ., ). 174 . According to Hesychius, the word means: ‘effeminately, in an ennervated way’. But there is a problem with the text of this frag. 175 On Alcibiades’ ‘lisp’ (actually a rhotacism which turned ‘l’s to ‘r’s) see Aristoph. Wasps –; Plut. Alc. . –.

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effeminate aristocrat,176 like the aristocrats in Xenophanes, Poem  mentioned above, who ‘went into the agora wearing cloaks of allover purple . . . delighting in their glorious locks, drenched in the smell of elaborate perfumes’. Since the gesture is a deliberate and calculated display of personal luxury, it is logical that it takes place in the agora, the most public place in the city. It is in the agora that Meidias was alleged to have walked about with three or four slaves, talking in a loud voice about drinking-cups and other symbols of an aristocratic lifestyle.177 Apart from the effeteness of the gesture, dragging the garments presumably ran the risk of damaging the costly fabric. The combination of feminizing luxury with reckless expenditure is typical: one recalls Agamemnon walking on the carpets in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, ‘like a woman or a barbarian’.178 The distinct aristocratic lifestyle easily suggests effeminacy and hybris. The citizen’s choice of clothing is ideologically charged: expensive soft clothes like those which Philocleon must put on in Wasps before taking his place in the symposium are a mark of the effete aristocrat.179 The shoes allegedly named after Alcibiades180 were probably some sort of luxurious soft boot, like the ‘Laconians’ Philocleon refuses to wear.181 Long hair is also an aristocratic symbol: Alcibiades, of course, ‘wore his hair long throughout his life’.182 Even his mode of walking could suggest luxury and the aristocratic life: in the Archippus fragment quoted above, Alcibiades’ son walks ‘mincingly’ in imitation of his father’s effeminate aristocratic gait, recalling the way Philocleon has to learn to 176 Ephippus, frag.  K.–A.; Eupolis, frag.  K.–A. (a text which may have Alcibiades in mind) and the passages cited by K.–A. ad loc., to which add Hor. Sat. . . –; Sen. Ep. . –. 177 Dem. . ; cf. Aesch. . ; Dem. .  (Aeschines trails his cloak through the agora). For invective relating to the conspicuous display of wealth, cf. Ober (: ). 178 Aesch. Ag. –. Cf. Hall (: –). 179 Aristoph. Wasps –. Cf. Aesch. .  (on Demosthenes): ‘if someone were to take off all those delicate little cloaks and soft little tunics of yours . . . and pass them around among the jurors . . . they would be at a loss to say if they had got hold of the clothing of a man or a woman’. Cf. Hall (: –). 180 Ath. c; cf. Pollux, . . 181 Aristoph. Wasps –. Cf. Hdt. .  (Croesus advises Cyrus that if he compels the Lydians to wear tunics under their clothes and put on soft boots, he will quickly make them women instead of men). 182 Ath. c: the implication is that the prolonged predeliction for this hairstyle is a part of Alcibiades’ luxurious and effeminate cultivation of his personal beauty.

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walk in order to look really aristocratic: ‘a bit luxuriously, like a rich man’, waggling his hips (which to Philocleon automatically suggests the camp prance of the kinaidos).183 The bend of the neck deliberately cultivated by Alcibiades’ son in imitation of his father was also a classic sign of the kinaidos.184 The gesture is thus parallel to garment-trailing: practised by the élite member as a sign of his aristocratic difference from others, it is easily construed as a mark of ‘femininity’. The phrase used by Thucydides to define what was politically disturbing about Alcibiades’ way of life is ‘paranomia with respect to his own body’. While this phrase naturally incorporates other bodily pleasures like eating and drinking,185 it focuses in particular on sexual pleasure. This interpretation is confirmed by Antisthenes, who, perhaps in paraphrase of Thucydides . , claimed (frag.  Caizzi) that Alcibiades was ‘paranomos both in respect to women and in the rest of his diaita’. Sexual pleasure is seen as the strongest and most dangerous of the desires of the body, hence its particular association with tyrants. According to Aeschines, prosecuting Timarchus for ‘prostitution’, it is ‘the violent desires of the body which fill robber bands, urging a man to murder his fellow citizens, to serve tyrants, to plot to overthow the democracy’.186 The man who cannot control his physical desires cannot be trusted as a citizen, let alone as a leader. This thinking is founded on an implicit comparison between the political order of the laws and constitution on the one hand and the individual’s moral ordering of his own person, his sophrosune, on the other. The language of control and self-control focuses physically on ‘the body’,187 an untouchable and independent zone, which the citizen 183 Aristoph. Wasps –: , a word which suggests a wanton or effeminate walk (cf. LSJ ). The kinaidos is typified by two styles of walking, either waggling his hips or keeping them under control ( [Ar.] Physiog. a–). Cf. the gait of the dandy general in Archilochus, W, and of Menelaus at Eur. Or. – (with Hall : –; cf. Hall : ). On walking-style as an indicator of ‘ethical gender’ in the second sophistic, see Gleason (: –). In general on the way the Greeks read gait, see Bremmler (). 184 [Arist.] Physiog. a–: cf. comic adesp.  Kock; Bremmler (: ); Gleason (: ch. ). The durability of this image of Alcibiades can be seen from the long-haired, bent-necked effeminate depicted in a Roman-period mosaic from Sparta (reproduced on the front cover of Ellis ). 185 Cf. Winkler (: —‘food, drink, sex, and sleep’), noting Aesch. . –. 186 Aesch. . , with Winkler (: ): ‘Athenian ideology did not employ our more careful distinction between sex and politics’. 187 Aesch. . , , , , , , , , , etc.

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must keep free from the tyranny of pleasures and under his own control, just as the city must be kept free and controlled by laws.188 The origins of the perception of Alcibiades as ‘paranomos towards his own body’ can be traced in the first instance to his youthful reputation as the darling of many aristocratic lovers.189 This left him open to the charge that he had overstepped the boundary which separated the behaviour acceptable in a modest eromenos from shameless passivity.190 In Plato’s Symposium (b–d) Alcibiades claims to have ‘got under the covers’ with Socrates in an attempt to seduce him, an act of great shamelessness: the same act features as a piece of invective against Alcibiades’ son in Lysias, . , and in Aeschines’ invective against Timarchus.191 The allegation contained in the ‘loidoriai of Antiphon’ that the young Alcibiades had on one occasion run away to submit himself to the pleasure of one of his lovers, was considered by Plutarch so damaging to Alcibiades that he discounted it as mere invective.192 To act in this way was to lay oneself open to the charge of being a kinaidos,193 the man who completely surrenders his body to others, not for their pleasure or for gain, but for his own pleasure.194 In this figure, passivity and complete abandonment to pleasure complement one another in suggesting a feminine figure, ‘a man with a male body who has committed female offences’, as Aeschines describes Timarchus.195 In comedy, quick to form or react to images of the sexual orientation of political figures, Alcibiades was satirized as europroktos and katapugon196 (terms which like kinaidos signify the combination of sexual passivity and lack of control over sexual pleasure), and as a ‘woman’.197 188 Winkler (: ch. ); Halperin (: ch. ). Cf. more generally Foucault (: –). 189 Cf. [Plato] Alc. I a–c. 190 Cf. Dover (: –). 191 Aesch. . . 192 Plut. Alc. : ‘Antiphon’ claimed that Pericles had refused to announce Alcibiades’ disappearance publicly, ‘since if he was safe, the rest of his life would be unbearable’. 193 Cf. Davidson (: –). Davidson argues that it is wholly the loss of control over pleasure, not passivity, which makes the katapugon and the kinaidos ethically feminine. 194 Aesch. . . 195 Aesch. . –. 196 Aristoph. Acharn.  with the scholiast ad loc. Dover (:  ff.). Further comic references to Alcibiades’ unbridled sexuality: Aristoph. frag.  K.–A. 197 Cf. Eupolis, frag.  K.–A.: ‘(A.) Let Alcibiades come out from the women. (B.) Don’t talk rubbish! Why don’t you go home and exercise your own wife.’ The implication is apparently that to the man looking for sexual pleasure, Alcibiades will do just as well as a woman (cf. the comm. of K.–A. ad loc.).

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In later life, the texts claim, Alcibiades had many sexual relations not just with expensive hetairai, but with the wives of citizens.198 This behaviour too is associated with the pursuit of aristocratic luxury (habrosune):199 ‘The luxurious [ ] Alcibiades, O Earth and Gods, whom Sparta wants to get for adultery’ (adespota, frags. – Kock). Because the key issue in determining ‘ethical gender’ is the attitude of the subject to pleasure, even as active sexual agent the kinaidos remains assimilated to the feminine.200 In a fragment of Pherecrates, Alcibiades’ pursuit of pleasure through adultery suspends him between masculine and feminine: ‘Though he is not a man [ ], Alcibiades, it seems, is now the husband [ ] of every woman around’ (Pherecrates, frag.  K.–A.). Even in heterosexual mode, Alcibiades attracts the charge of feminizing and passivity.201 Other stories expand on this construction of Alcibiades’ life of pleasure in terms of ‘ethical gender’. In a speech attributed to Antiphon, Alcibiades was represented as sailing to Abydus (centre of an Ionian, semi-barbarized life of luxury) ‘in order to learn from the women there ways of action which corresponded to the paranomia and shamelessness of [his] own mind’.202 Another speech attributed to Lysias claimed that Alcibiades was accompanied on this journey by his uncle Axiochus, who was simultaneously Alcibiades’ colleague in debauchery and his erastes.203 The pursuit 198 Xen. Mem. . . ; [And.] . ; Aeschines (Socraticus), Axiochus frag.  Dittmar. 199 Similarly, the erotic pursuits of Alcibiades on Abydus are identified as truphe (Ath. f ). 200 The kinaidos moves easily from passive homosexuality to active adultery: cf. Aesch. . : serving as an official on Andros, Timarchus outrages the allies of Athens by having adulterous relations with their wives. Cf. Foucault (: –). On the adulterer as feminine, see Davidson (: –; : ); Edwards (: ). On the construction of ethical gender, see Gleason (, esp. –); Edwards (: –). 201 Cf. Bion apud D.L. .  (frag.  Kindstrand): ‘as a boy, Alcibiades drew men away from their wives; as a young man he drew women away from their husbands.’ Excess in sexual relations displays the same debauched passivity whether it is with men or women: cf. Cic. in Verrem . . . ; and Suet. de Vita Caesarum .  (on Julius Caesar): ‘omnium mulierum virum et omnium virorum mulier’, with Edwards (: –). Xenophon’s remark (Mem. . . ) that ‘many grand women hunted Alcibiades because of his beauty’ seems to assign the active role to the women, reducing the adultery of Alcibiades to a passive submission to female pleasure. Thus Alcibiades’ beauty is admired ‘not just by men, but also by women’ (Satyrus at Ath. c). 202 Antiphon, frag.  Blass = Ath. b. 203 Lys. frag.  Baiter–Saupe = Ath. f–a, de.

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of an ‘aristocratic’ life of pleasure by Alcibiades and his uncle with the hetairai of Abydus can easily be used to generate the suspicions of the ordinary Athenian:204 Alcibiades must be learning strange ways of sexual congress, or simultaneously pursuing his kinaedic pleasure with his uncle. The allegations relating to the time in Abydus multiply: the two slept with the same hetaira, Medontis; later they both slept with the daughter resulting from their unions, each claiming the other was the father.205 Here, sexual paranomia, in the sense of an excessive pursuit of sexual pleasure, moves easily into more specific forms of paranomia: incest and forbidden sexual relations. Allegations of incest, which perhaps appeal to a popular perception of aristocratic life as characterized by frequent marriages between near kin,206 allow the assimilation of Alcibiades not just to the feminine, but to the other great negative defining principle of acceptable behaviour in the polis, the barbarian. ‘Alcibiades was paranomos, both in respect of women and the rest of his way of life, for he slept with mother and daughter and sister, like the Persians’, claimed Antisthenes.207 This sort of violation of the accepted norms of behaviour in the personal sphere invited the removal of the offender from the political sphere through ostacism. According to [Andocides] . : ‘[your ancestors] ostracized Cimon, because of his paranomia, for he slept with his own sister. . . . They judged him not from his performance in the games, but from his epitedeumata.’ In the same way, the Athenians became incensed with the epitedeumata of Alcibiades, and became his enemies (Thuc. . . ), and expelled him from the city. The association between shocking violation of family morality and political 204 According to Plutarch (Alc. . ), it was allegations of a dissolute lifestyle (‘getting drunk and consorting with hetairai from Abydus and Ionia’) which helped bring about Alcibiades’ downfall in  . If so, this would add flesh to Thucydides’ claim that Alcibiades’ downfall was partly caused by ‘paranomia with respect to his own body’, but the origin of the detail is completely uncertain. 205 Lys. frag.  Baiter–Saupe Ath. f–a, de: cf. Davidson (: ). 206 Cf. the marriage of the children of Themistocles, and alleged marriage of Kimon and Elpinike. On the significance of such marriages see Humphreys (: –). 207 Frag.  Caizzi. The wording in Greek is µ . If we take this phrase (noting the absence of the definite article) to mean not Alcibiades’ own mother and sister, it will probably refer to the story of Alcibiades’ relations with Medontis mentioned above (cf. Rankin : –). Sleeping with a sister (the form of incest which is particularly Persian) is only here attributed to Alcibiades. The allegation is, however, made elsewhere against his son (Lys. . , ). It is possible that carelessness or invective has confused the stories.

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disaster in the career of Alcibiades inevitably recalls tragedy. After speaking in favour of putting the men of Melos to death, and enslaving the women, [Andocides] alleges, Alcibiades bought one of the women as a slave and had a child by her (§§ –), an act which invites comparison with the most shocking scenes of tragedy and myth, and makes Alcibiades ‘more paranomos than Aegisthus’.208 In this case, the public danger which arises out of private paranomia is particularly clear: the child of the union will inevitably be the sworn enemy of the city, or so the speech claims. Invective like this brings Thucydides’ linking of Alcibiades’ personal life and the overthrow of the city dramatically to life. In Thucydides the paranomia of Alcibiades’ personal life is closely related to massive expenditure ‘both on horse-rearing and on other expenses’. His excesses involved ‘desires which were greater than his available resources’. Here, the pursuit of a life of pleasure is linked to the destruction of wealth. Like Timarchus, Alcibiades becomes a squanderer of his patrimony, that property which one is expected to hand down undiminished to one’s descendants, in trust to the city.209 Appetite and expenditure on this scale demand the resources and the ruthlessness of a tyrant to satisfy it: as with Plato’s tyrannical man, appetite for pleasure leads directly to craving for power.210 But what were these other expenses of Alcibiades, these desires which proved so costly? The Attic stelai, which record the property of Alcibiades sold by the state after his exile for sacrilege do not contain any items which would require expenditure on such a scale:211 a Milesian kline, a collection of cloaks, which, if they really did belong to Alcibiades, might have been good for garment-trailing. The impression one gets is that Alcibiades’ expenditure on private luxury would have been dwarfed by spending in the pursuit of honour. But for fifth-century Athenians, the link between unrestrained pursuit of pleasure and uncontrolled expenditure was a natural and automatic one: excessive spending is an essential part of the discourse of the control of pleasure, as James Davidson shows in his work on Athenian truphe.212 Timarchus’ pursuit of vices (flute-girls, hetairai, 209 Cf. Winkler (: –). Cf. Wilson (). Plato, Rep. e–d; cf. Davidson (: –). 211 Cf. Pritchett (: , Stele I, lines –, –, and possibly –; , Stele II, lines –, and possibly –). On the interpretation of the inscription, see Pippin (,  f.); Hatzfeld (:  f.); APF . 212 (). It was the same in Rome: see Edwards (:  ff.), noting the ‘blurring of notions of financial and moral damage’ (p. ). 208 210

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dice, and opsophagia) forced him to sell his patrimony as quickly as he could lay his hands on it, not even waiting to get a reasonable price, but in a frenzy to feed his desires, so that he ‘squandered a fortune which another man would have found sufficient for liturgies’.213 Such claims probably vastly overestimate Timarchus’ real spending on luxury, but this is not a question of the careful analysis of accounts. Catastrophic expenditure is a reflection of the subject’s complete lack of control with regard to pleasure. A key focus in the discourse of spending and pleasure was the use of alcohol. The care taken in the symposium to regulate alcoholic consumption through the provision of elaborate drinking-rules shows the importance of restraint for the ethical orientation of the symposiasts. A symposiarch was elected to regulate the amount of wine to be drunk and its mixture, and the drinking was solemnized by prayers and libations to the gods. The symposiasts drank from shallow cups, and kept pace with each other in the drinking.214 The careful order parallels the political order of the city, regulated by the laws. It is this careful symposiastic order which is overturned by Alcibiades in the final scene of Plato’s Symposium (–). Already drunk when he enters, Alcibiades deposes the democratically elected symposiarch, and orders the filling of a whole mixingbowl of (crucially) unmixed wine, a quantity of wine of undrinkable immensity,215 which he then drains. The episode is a neat illustration of how a political mentality could be read directly off anarchic and ‘tyrannical’ practices with regard to pleasure and consumption. This Herculean feat of unrestrained consumption puts Alcibiades into another category of akolasia, just as his unrestrained desires in the political sphere put him outside the normal community of citizens. Lack of self-control in drinking is naturally linked in the texts to Alcibiades’ sexual excess. Both vices suggest the same alarming lack of control over pleasure.216 In the Axiochus of Aeschines, 213 214

ch. .

Aesch. . –, –, with Davidson (:  ff.). Davidson (: –, –). On alcohol consumption in general see his

215 Cf. Dover () on a–, noting that making Alcibiades down eight gallons of neat wine when already drunk is a ‘heroic’ touch by Plato. On the Symposium episode, cf. Davidson (: –). 216 Cf. Plut. Alc. .  (‘acts of insolence connected to drinking and eros’). Overindulgence in sex and overindulgence in wine are linked in Greek thought: cf. Plut. , frag. .; Theopompus, FGH , frags. , ; Davidson (: –).

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Alcibiades was attacked as ‘wine-flooded217 and a chaser after other mens’ wives’. A corrupt (in the philological sense) fragment of Eupolis quoted by Athenaeus presents Alcibiades holding forth on his achievements to an admiring interlocutor: .218 I hate Laconizing, but I would relish the chance for some ‘frying’.219 . Many220 are they, I think, that have been fucked by you. . ‹Was it not me› who first invented drinking221 in the morning? . You certainly have devoted yourself to inventing a lot of lakkoproktia for us. . And again, who was it that first said, ‘piss-pot, boy!’, in the middle of drinking? . That sure was a Palamedean feat of yours, a real piece of ingenuity. (Eupolis, frag.  K.–A.)

Alcibiades’ excess in drink and sex is so unprecedented as to make him a ‘first inventor’, a benefiter of mankind like Palamedes, initiating the Athenians into new realms of lakkoproktia (‘tankarsedness’, an unquenchable and disgusting desire for pleasure222). As in Thuc. . , Alcibiades is made to present his private life as a contribution towards the aggrandisment of the city, though not this time in terms of lamprotes, but in lakkoproktia.223 Alcibiades was not the only person ever to break the rules established for the good order of the symposium. Indeed, the elaborate controls, and the symposiastic poetry which advocates an orderly symposium and warns against the dangers of excess,224 are a 217 , from , to bubble over (frag.  Dittmar). Once again images of uncontrollable quantity are important. 218 The identification of the first character as Alcibiades depends on Pliny, NH . , where the invention of ‘drinking in the morning’ is attributed to Alcibiades (cf. line  of the fragment). 219 , to fry, from (‘frying-pan’), perhaps with a pun on , a Thessalian magistrate. The next line shows that the word is also meant to suggest sexual activity. 220 A word in the feminine gender has dropped out here. 221 , where may suggest starting the drinking again after a hard night’s partying. 222 Cf. Davidson (: , ). 223 Contrast Isoc. Nicocles  (‘let your own sophrosune stand as an example to the rest, realizing that the manners of the whole state are copied from its rulers’), and Isoc. Nicocles  (Nicocles wished to show himself superior even to the best in his control over sexual pleasure). Cf. Foucault (: –). 224 e.g. Xenophanes, frag.  West; Eubulus, frag.  K.–A. Cf. Davidson (: –).

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reminder of the imminence of the breakdown of good order. They define boundaries, but also suggest the challenge of transgressing them, whether in search of the feeling of liberation which comes from overstepping the limit, or out of a deliberate desire to demonstrate one’s distinctness from traditional civic morality. It is in the context of the breaking of rules to outrage others that we need to see the acts of hybris which flowed from the symposium. The explosion of the drinking-group on to the streets to commit random acts of violence on passers-by emphasized not only the solidarity of the aristocratic group, but also its superiority over others.225 Here, hybris is brought on by wine, and by the excesses of youth. But the real hybristes, a Meidias or an Alcibiades, displays his contempt of others, and of his society, without the excuse of the high spirits induced by wine or youth, and as a sign of personal, rather than group, power.226 In such cases, the sense of not being bound by the nomoi of the city, and the sense of personal superiority over others, which had been implicit in the individual’s personal life, are openly displayed. The real hybristes thus prefers conspicuous acts against citizens before large audiences where the political character of the action is unmistakable, like Meidias’ and Alcibiades’ assaults on rival choregoi at the city’s festivals, or Alcibiades’ treatment of his fellow citizen Diomedes before the eyes of the Greek world at the Olympic games ([And.] . ). Because it is a display of superior power, inspiring fear in some and a sort of admiration in others, hybris typically goes unpunished.227 Therein lies its wider political danger. Elated by dunamis, the hybristes is led to ever greater acts of hybris, which display and extend his dunamis even further, so that he comes to threaten the constitution and laws themselves: ‘hybris begets the tyrant’.228 The only way to overcome the fear and charisma exerted by such a figure is by a decisive collective act of opposition, like a court verdict and above all by ostracism, which removes the individual from the community altogether.229 226 On Alcibiades’ hybris, cf. Fisher (: ch. ). Murray (: ). [And.] . . Not only does Alcibiades’ hybris go unpunished, but it also brings him advantage (, , , ). Having struck Taureas, he wins the prize; having stolen Diomedes’ chariot he is declared victor because of his dunamis with the judges. 228 Soph. OT . The alternative reading ‘the tyrant begets hybris’ has much the same effect for our purposes. 229 [And.] . : since it is impossible to punish such people privately because of their superiority to the laws, they can only be reached by the public penalty of ostracism. Meidias too, because of his wealth, influence, and hybristic power225 227

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The Herms and Mysteries affair, which did result in the ejection of Alcibiades and others from the civic and religious community, was a dramatic demonstration of the inherently political character of an aristocratic lifestyle emphasizing distinctness, and its potential to develop in an anti-civic direction. Just as the symposium leads naturally to a collective display of hybris against passers-by, so the drinking-group could develop into an organization which was not just anti-conventional but also anti-democratic in orientation, especially when buttressed by new sophistic theories which provided an intellectual justification for the superiority of the aristocrat and the folly of democracy. The behaviour of groups like the kakodaimonistai, which met only on days of ill omen,230 was apparently intended to enact a rebellion against the democracy’s orthodoxy of civic and religious values. But, as in the similar drinking clubs of eighteenth-century England,231 the revolt of values was also a revolt against a political order seen as excluding the members of the group from influence and power: in Athens such attitudes and behaviour were to be important in the revolution of  , where aristocratic sunomosiai played a key role in the organization of the extremists.232 The anti-conventional behaviour of the drinking-group was certainly liable to be misconstrued,233 but also to develop in a genuinely dangerous direction. The mutilation of the Herms and illicit performance of the Mysteries were seen as, and to some extent were, acts of sympotic hybris234 directed not just at passers-by, but at the democracy itself, an enactment of an attitude of contempt for the established political and religious order tantamount to an actual assault on the constitution—a symbolic coup. displays is immune from the normal sanctions: Dem. . –, , , , – (‘will he ever be convicted if he gets off this time?’). 230 Lys. frag.  Thalheim = Ath. . d. Cf. also the sacrilegious societies to which Conon is alleged to have belonged to as a youth: Dem. . , –, , . Cf. Murray (: ). 231 The comparison to the so-called Hell-Fire Club and similar societies is made by Murray (: –). The Hell-Fire Club’s parody of established religion and society, and its anti-conventional pursuit of pleasure had a political subtext (liberty and libertarianism were closely associated): the members were united by a feeling of being excluded from power under the Whig oligarchy: cf. Ashe (: –). 232 Thuc. . . . 233 Cf. Murray (: –). For the distrust such drinking societies were liable to arouse, see Dem. . –, with Ober (: –). 234 Cf. Thuc. . . , ’ .

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As evidence that Alcibiades was involved in the performances of the Mysteries and the mutilation of the Herms, his enemies were able to cite ‘the undemocratic paranomia displayed in his epitedeumata’ (Thuc. . . ). The charges against Alcibiades thus united excess in the pursuit of pleasure, the practice of an aristocratic lifestyle which holds the demos in despite, and an actual attack on the constitution. Thucydides’ choice of words here of course recalls . : it is the lifestyle of Alcibiades described in that chapter which made it natural to believe that he had been involved in a hybristic, sympotic, aristocratic outrage like that of the Herms and Mysteries. In the presentation of Lys. , the Herms and Mysteries affair is introduced as the culmination of a catalogue of aristocratic pleasure-seeking and hybris practised by Alcibiades and his family (. ). In invective contexts, like Lys.  or [And.] , Alcibiades’ lifestyle is seen as an assertion of his superiority to and contempt for the polis and its conventions which naturally culminates in revolution or sacrilege. The lifestyle pursued by Alcibiades may indeed have been inspired by a ‘hybristic’ conviction of superiority. But we should not overlook the capacity of a way of life which emphasized the elevation and aristocratic distinction of the individual to attract admiration and bring political advantage.235 The hostility and envy aroused by a life of luxury is the counterpart of a fascination felt at another level. Thus the average Athenian loathed the figure of the tyrant as the embodiment of tendencies absolutely opposed to the city and its values, but at some private level might have liked to be a tyrant himself, and accepted this as a normal desire in others.236 Excess, even ‘undemocratic’ excess could be attractive, and the figure who acts in this way may do so partly out of an awareness that his pursuit of the maximum, both of pleasure and power, arouses the admiration of others. .. ‘The same friends and enemies as the city’ Alcibiades’ pride and honour were defined not just within Athens in competition with others but through his relations to other cities and their members: 235 On the appeal of Alcibiades’ flagrant ‘aristocratic behaviour’ cf. Kyle (: –); Donlan (: ); Ober (: ); Schaefer (–: –). 236 Gorgias in Plato’s Gorgias (a–d), is amazed by Socrates’ denial of the attraction of tyrannical power. Isocrates in the Evagoras () claims that ‘everyone would agree that tyranny is of all mortal and divine goods, the greatest and grandest and most competed for’.

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[Alcibiades opposed the peace of Nicias out of pride and philonikia], because the Spartans had made the peace through Nicias and Laches, overlooking him because of his youth, and not honouring him for the ancient proxenia which his family had once held. This position had been renounced by his grandfather, and he himself had intended, through his attentions to the prisoners from the island [i.e. those captured on Sphacteria], to revive it.237 Considering himself slighted in every way, his first course of action had been to oppose the peace, claiming that the Spartans could not be trusted . . . and now . . . he immediately sent privately to the Argives, telling them to come with the Mantineans and Eleans to seek an alliance: now was the right moment, and he himself would assist their cause as best he could. (Thuc. . . –)

In this passage, links to Sparta (whether of formal xenia or not) enhance the standing of Nicias, Laches, and Alcibiades within Athens, and this standing in turn enhances their influence with the Spartans. The individual’s ties of loyalty outside the city reinforce his position of honour within the city. But the maintenance of links abroad might also result in tensions with the demands of loyalty to the city. We can see them, for example, in the attempts of Alcibiades’ grandfather to renounce his proxenia with Sparta, or Pericles’ offer to make his lands public should they be spared by his guest-friend Archidamus. Alcibiades’ communications with his xenoi in Argos238 ‘privately/in secret’ ( ) in the passage quoted above circumvent the normal foreign policy of assembly and boule, representing, in effect, the hijacking of state policy by the individual. Alcibiades’ subsequent duping of the assembly and the Spartan ambassadors who had come to save the peace may also have been brought about by manipulation of xenia and proxenia.239 Here, the influence of the individual outside the city threatens to become an alternative, rather than a complement, to the city in the formulation of foreign policy. In Herman’s recent study of the practice of xenia, over half of the links of xenia and proxenia attributed to leading Athenians during the Peloponnesian War are those of Alcibiades240 (the very name 237

On his attempt to do so cf. Daux (). Cf. Thuc. . ; Plut. Alc. . , . . Plutarch is for some reason well informed about Alcibiades’ links to Argos: note Alc. .  (Alcibiades’ construction of long walls in Argos acquires gratitude and strength for himself no less than for the city). 239 Thuc. . –, with Herman (: –). 240 Herman (: –; see also –, –, –). 238

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Alcibiades owed its origins to the xenia between his family and that of Endius in Sparta241). This network of links with aristocrats and potentates abroad provided Alcibiades with an alternative focus of action and values, opening up a sphere of action ‘outside’ the city. These xenia links might be put to the service of the city, but only at the risk of exposing the reliance of the city on the influence of the individual. In  , the city hesitated to recall Alcibiades from Sicily in too open a way, for fear of alienating the important contingents from Argos and Mantinea, who were serving with the expedition because of Alcibiades,242 presumably as a result of his xenia links to leading Argives. What is more, what had been put at the city’s disposal could also be turned against it. Alcibiades’ personal connections with the leading men of Miletus would later be used to bring about the revolt of the city from Athens.243 This example is particularly disturbing, since it suggests that the loyalty of the cities of the Athenian empire to Athens might be partially dependent on links controlled by Alcibiades.244 This fear is exploited in [Andocides’] description of the participation of Athenian subject-allies in Alcibiades’ feasting of the festival-goers: ‘The Ephesians erected a Persian tent for him twice as big as the official tent of the city; the sacrificial victims and the cost of maintaining the horses were provided by the Chians; the task of providing the wine and the other expenses he gave to the Lesbians’ ([And.] . ).245 In Greek practice, conspicuous entertainment of this sort should have been aimed at symbolizing and promoting the status of the feast-giver within the community. Here, however, Alcibiades employs ‘Persian’ modes of feasting aimed at establishing the domination of the dynast over the community246 Thuc. . . . Thuc. . . ; cf. . . . Cf. And. . , where Andocides offers to put his links of xenia at the disposal of the city. 243 Thuc. . , . . ; cf. Schaefer (–: ). On Alcibiades’ links to the family of Aspasia of Miletus see Bicknell (). 244 [And.] . , discussed below, suggests that Alcibiades also had powerful personal influence in Chios (cf. Thuc. . . ), Ephesus (cf. Plut. Alc. . ), and Lesbos. We have already noted the persistent connection with Abydus (Antiphon, frag.  Blass; Lys., frag.  Baiter–Sauppe). Alcibiades’ service as tribute-assessor ( [And.] . –) may have been an important factor in his links with Athenian allies. According to Xenophon (Mem. . . –), Alcibiades was constantly surrounded by the flattery of powerful men, because of his dunamis in the city, and with the allies. 245 Other versions of this story are in Plut. Alc. . – and Ath. d. 246 Schmitt-Pantel (: ch. ); Davidson (: –). 241 242

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(Alcibiades dispenses the feast from a massive ‘Persian’ tent, like the one from which the Persian king was known to inflict his hospitality of subjection247). [Andocides’] description of his exploitation of the subject-allies recalls—probably deliberately—the Persian king’s allocation to Themistocles of Magnesia for his bread, Lampsakos for his wine, and Myos for his opson.248 This famous incident suggested to the Greeks not only the subjection of those cities (in particular the shocking subjection of Greek to Greek), but also the culmination of Themistocles’ ‘Medizing’. Receiving this ‘barbarian’ food-homage cut off Themistocles once and for all from the practice of the Greek city: ‘accepter la barbare, perse, marque la renoncement définitif à la condition de citoyen athénien’.249 Pausanias too provided evidence of his Medizing contempt for his fellow Greeks by his adoption of a ‘Persian table’ (Thuc. . . ). Here again, Alcibiades’ behaviour assimilates him to the barbarian: this is consistent with the overall presentation of [And.] : the man who cannot control himself, the tyrant, is naturally attracted to the domination of others. Alcibiades’ transformation at Olympia of Greek feasting into a display of an illegitimate, ‘barbarian’ relationship between individual and community is of course all the more shocking because the cities involved are Athenian subject-allies. Their involvement in Alcibiades’ public entertainment displays to the watching Greeks not their loyalty to the imperial city, but their subservience to an individual. The involvement of Ionians and ‘Asianized’ Greeks, half-corrupted by barbarian practice and attitudes, makes this picture all the more plausible.250 Illegitimate domination within the city is accompanied by ‘barbarian’ domination abroad. Once again, the individual replaces the city, this time in its imperial role: Alcibiades usurps the city’s rightful place of honour, just as he appropriated her sacred processional vessels and her place in the Hdt. . , . . Cf. Schmitt-Pantel (: –). Thuc. . . . Different versions in Plut. Them.  (= Phaenias of Eresus, frag.  Wehrli, Neanthes of Cyzicus FGH , F.ab); Ath. . f–a. 249 Schmitt-Pantel (: ). 250 On Alcibiades’ influence among the Ionians after  , cf. Paus. . .  (apropos of the statue of Alcibiades erected in temple of Hera in Samos): ‘when Alcibiades enjoyed power with the ships of the Athenians around Ionia, he was cultivated by many of the Ionians’. Cf. Aristoph. frag.  K.–A., which appears to describe Alcibiades surrounded by a fawning crowd of distinguished Ionians; Lys. . . 247 248

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Olympic procession. The key anxiety surrounding Alcibiades’ practice of xenia appears once again not to be one of loyalty (‘treason and patriotism’), but of the individual dominating or replacing the city (‘aiming at tyranny’). Alcibiades’ practice of xenia follows the same pattern as his conspicuous spending: he claims to put his reserves of honour or dunamis in the service of the city, but in doing so threatens to make the city subordinate to the individual. In the admiring invective of [And.]  Alcibiades once again takes on the characteristics of a power in his own right, an alternative to the city. This impression is if anything confirmed by the encomium of Isoc. , where Alcibiades’ civic credentials are demonstrated by his ‘having the same friends and enemies of the city’ (. ),251 as though he were a foreign dynast whose loyalty the city had to win. Alcibiades’ power and his external position allow him to be the friend or enemy of the city, but not its citizen. One is tempted to ask whether Alcibiades really did treat the allies at Olympia in the way described by [And.] . Unfortunately, there is no clear criterion which would allow us to disentangle the invective discourse of the orator from the genuine symbolism of the day of the feast.252 But it is important to remember in this context that the control of ‘barbarian’ dunasteiai by individual Greeks was a familiar phenomenon,253 not just an invective discourse. Themistocles was granted fiefdoms by the Persian king. The Athenian Miltiades the Elder established a ‘barbarian’ dunasteia in the Chersonese, an area of key strategic importance for Athens: this later passed to his nephew, Miltiades the victor at Marathon, leading to his trial at Athens for ‘tyranny’.254 The Peisistratids too controlled a fiefdom in Sigeium in the Troad.255 Later, following his exile in  , Alcibiades himself entered this world of barbarian power-relations. He established xenia links with barbarian dynasts, like the Persian satraps Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus,256 and with local Thracian kings257 (apparently at a Cf. Dem. . ; Herman (: ). Schaefer (–) takes the story as a more-or-less realistic description of what actually happened, using it to argue for the continuing influence of aristocratic and feudal elements in Greek inter-city politics. Contrast Schmitt-Pantel (: –) who emphasizes the discourses to which the orator is appealing. 253 Cf. Berve (: –, –). 254 Hdt. . –, –. 255 Hdt. . . , . , . . 256 Thuc. . ; Xen. HG . . ; Nepos, Alc. . . 257 Xen. HG . . , . . ; D.S. . . –; Nepos, Alc. . –. . 251 252

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time when he was theoretically acting as the general of the city in the Hellespont258). These Thracian links he used to follow in Miltiades’ footsteps and carve out a personal fiefdom on the northern shore of the Propontis near the Chersonese, which supplied him with money and mercenary troops.259 The assimilation of Alcibiades to a figure of barbarian domination, which is typical of invective, was in this way actualized in dramatic fashion. Alcibiades’ personal fiefdoms put him ‘outside’ the city, both figuratively, in the sense that they suggested a rejection of civic values, and literally, in the sense that they allowed him a sphere outside the control of the city in which to operate.260 Alcibiades’ outside contacts, which culminated in these barbarian and external modes of power, are central to the picture of him as an individual who cannot be incorporated into the city. Alcibiades’ activity independent of the city continued even after  , when he was theoretically acting as general on its behalf.261 His establishment of an independent personal dunamis, through links and power-bases outside the city, was intended not just as a source of refuge in case of a decisive break with the city, but also as a bargaining position, a means of making him invaluable to Athens at a time when she was desperately in need of foreign help. The cultivation of personal power-sources in order to make himself independent of the city and the city dependent on him was after all the policy he had been pursuing even before his exile. But now it took on a new twist: the attempt to use the power and influence under his personal control in order to convince, or blackmail, the Athenians to restore him to a position of power. In   he attempted to use his influence with Tissaphernes to force a return to Athens with the 258 Cf. Xen. HG . . . On the date of acquisition, see Hatzfeld (: , ); Schaefer (–: –); Berve (: ). 259 Lys. . , ; Xen. HG . . , . . ; Nepos, Alc. . , . , . –; Plut. Alc. . –, . ; D.S. . . . On the location of the forts, see Kahrstedt (: –). These and other forts in the area were apparently on offer to whichever dynast happened to appear there: they were later offered to Xenophon (Anab. . . ). Their possessor in turn owed loyalty to the Thracian kings, and carried out military campaigns against their enemies (Nepos, Alc. . ; Plut. Alc. . ). 260 Cf. Lys. . , alleging ‘he preferred to be a citizen of Thrace or any city rather than his own fatherland’. According to Plutarch (Alc. . ) the Thracian forts were taken as a sign that he was ‘not able to live [ ] in his fatherland or not willing to’. 261 Cf. Andrewes (). Note Xen. HG . . –: Pharnabazus insists on swearing the agreeement for the surrender of Chalcedon not just with the representatives of the city, but also with Alcibiades in person.



Élite Individual and Democratic City

aid of the oligarchs, presenting himself as ‘the one person capable of securing’ the friendship and help of the Persian King.262 In  , again in exile and watching the preparations for the battle of Aegospotami from his personal fortress in the Chersonese, he approached the Athenian commanders and, as individual, offered to save the city: ‘He came to them and told them that the Thracian kings Medocus and Seuthes were his friends [ ], and that they had agreed to provide him with substanial forces if he wanted to fight it out with the Spartans. He asked them therefore, to give him a share of the command’ (D.S. . . ).263 The price for Alcibiades’ help was thus his return yet again to a position of power.264 Alcibiades’ repeated attempts to force a return to Athens show the importance of a position within the city, even for the most influential and uncivic of citizens. To quote Alcibiades’ own Olympic victory hymn, ‘the successful man is first in need of a great city’. Even the ‘great individual’ needs some form of association with the city to achieve his fullest potential—he exists there in a position of uneasy tension under the constant threat of outright rejection. By the time of his appeal to the generals at Aegospotami, Alcibiades was no longer capable of simply being reintegrated to the city on the same standing as any other citizen. The basis of his return (as in  and  ) was to be the influence he controlled in his own person, i.e. he was to come back not as private citizen, but as a dynast in his own right or, as Diodorus puts it, ).265 The extraordinary position of strategos an ally ( µµ autokrator created for him in   was a reflection of this unorthodox status.266 By this stage, whether he acted for or against the city, the extent and nature of Alcibiades’ personal influence inevitably put him to some extent outside it. When he was murdered in  , it was on a quest for the ultimate per262 Thuc. . . –, . . – (the words are those of Peisander persuading the Athenian assembly of the necessity of recalling Alcibiades). 263 For other versions of what passed between Alcibiades and the generals, cf. Xen. HG . . ; Nepos, Alc. . ; Plut. Alc. . –, Lys. . . 264 Aristophanes’ Frogs of the previous year suggests that the perilous situation of the war was leading the Athenians once again to discuss renewing negotiations with Alcibiades. 265 . . . 266 Xen. HG . . –. According to Nepos, Alc. .  Alcibiades was allowed to choose his own colleagues.

Élite Individual and Democratic City



sonal connection, which would have put him in a supreme position either to help or to harm his native city:267 the friendship of the Persian King.268 267 Cf. Isoc. . , which claims that Alcibiades was murdered by Lysander and the Spartans, on the grounds that it was insufficient to destroy the walls of the city, ‘if he did not also kill the person capable of restoring them’. Cf. Plut. Alc. . . 268 Nepos, Alc. . . His claim is borne out by the location of Alcibiades’ death, in Phrygia on the road to Persia: cf. Robert ().

 Rhetorical Works

PART A: Background Of the rhetorical works composed in the classical period on the subject of Alcibiades, four survive: Isocrates, ; Lysias,  and ; and [Andocides] . [And.] , an invective against Alcibiades set in the context of the last ostracism held in Athens, has long been suspected of being a later rhetorical exercise,1 and I believe that this view of the speech is correct, for the reasons set out in Appendix  to this chapter.2 The speech displays a rhetorical artificiality which suggests that it should be associated with the exercises based around the figure of Alcibiades that were a favourite theme of later declaimers. On the other hand, it also shows a good understanding of classical Athens, and is concerned, like the other speeches, with an attempt to read off Alcibiades’ significance for the city from his behaviour. These factors suggest that the speech may have been composed as early as the mid- or late fourth century; they also make it appropriate to consider this speech in conjunction with the others. To treat these speeches at this point, before considering Thucydides, might seem contrary to natural chronology. Yet the History as we have it, including the important analysis of Alcibiades at . , must have achieved its final form after the end of the war—perhaps at around the time Lys.  and Isoc.  were composed. In any case, as I will argue in Chapter , the polarized debate of accusation and defence exemplified in these speeches is essential background to the presentation of Alcibiades in the History. Moreover, the discussion of the speeches will maintain the focus on Alcibiades’ civic image which dominated the previous chapter. For these reasons, it is convenient to discuss the rhetorical material first. 1 Though Raubitschek () points to features of the speech which suggest a th-c. origin. 2 See also Gribble ().

Rhetorical Works



[And.]  shows how Alcibiades speeches, originally the product of real and bitter political struggles, showed an early tendency towards artificiality. Speeches on the theme of Alcibiades offered glamorous subject-matter as well as clearly polarized competing positions. This made it an attractive subject for displays and exercises. As we shall see, there is even some cause for doubt about the degree to which Lys.  and , and Isoc. , represent real speeches delivered in court before a demos audience. This is an important question: are we to see the speeches as addressed to the city, with its pressing ideological and political debates, or to a more limited audience of aficionados of display rhetoric? One nineteenthcentury scholar, Hoyer,3 went so far as to claim that all Alcibiades speeches were the invention of the ‘rhetorical schools’. This goes too far, but the squabbles over the significance of Alcibiades between Isocrates and Polycrates and between Speusippus and Isocrates,4 or the depiction of Alcibiades in Demosthenes’ speech Against Meidias (§§ –), show the extent to which Alcibiades became a rhetorical symbol in the fourth century, a figure of the great man from the great days of Athens. The popularity of Alcibiades as a theme for artificial rhetorical display makes it hard to tell whether the lost Alcibiades speeches whose titles are recorded in ancient authors (which I discuss in Appendix  at the end of this chapter), are ‘real’ speeches, or later exercises. We can already see that the line between real and artificial Alcibiades rhetoric, between a speech whose interests are primarily political, and one which is aimed mainly at rhetorical display, is not a particularly clear one. Even in ‘real’ speeches, the construction of a defence or attack of the great Alcibiades is a task which has many of the features of an exercise, while the interest of the author of later exercises in the Alcibiades theme is partly a fascination with precisely that tension between great individual and community which occupied Alcibiades’ contemporaries. [And.]  for example, is concerned just as much with historical re-creation as with rhetorical display. Indeed, what ‘display’ speeches seek to display is partly expertise at appealing to a (notional) demos audience. It is in this area where ideology meets rhetoric that the discussion of this chapter will be located. (). On the motivations of th-c. Alcibiades speeches see also Turchi (). Isoc. . –; Speusippus, Letter to Philip  (Köhler : letter , pp. –). 3 4



Rhetorical Works .       

After the restoration of the democracy in  , the son of Alcibiades by his marriage with Hipparete (whom I will call, following APF, Alcibiades IV5) returned to Athens (Lys. . –). He had been with his father in Thrace after   and was still at this time a boy of about . Born just before the exile of his father in   (Isoc. . ), he will have achieved his majority in  or  . He immediately became the subject of a series of court actions. In the last known of these, for which Lys.  and  are prosecution speeches, he faced a charge of illegally serving in the hippeis. The description in these texts of the details of the campaign which gave rise to the charge leaves little doubt that it is to be identified with that of Haliartus in  :6 the trial itself must have followed shortly after. Now Lys.  incorporates unmistakable references to Isoc.  (see below, Section ). This latter work purports to represent the defence speech of Alcibiades IV on the occasion of an action by one Teisias for the illegal appropriation by the defendant’s father of a team of racing horses. The trial for which Isoc.  was composed must therefore be dated before   (the date of the desertion trial), and after –  (when Alcibiades IV came of age), and preferably as early as possible, since delaying the trial much after Alcibiades IV had come of age would only weaken the position of the prosecutor. In Isoc. .  and . , Alcibiades IV complains that he has already been the subject of repeated litigious accusation (see especially . : ‘often’). While it clearly suits the speaker here to exaggerate the number of previous unjustified attacks on him, we can probably conclude that Alcibiades IV had already been involved in at least one court action before the racing-team trial.7 What we know about the court actions involving Alcibiades IV can therefore be set out in the following chronology: c.  : trial or trials of uncertain nature. c.  or  : racing-team trial (Isoc.  = defence speech). APF – collects what we know about Alcibiades IV. Blass (–: i. –); Carey (: ). If Isoc.  has been reworked for publication at a later date (see below), it remains possible that the references to previous trials were added at the time of publication, so that the trials referred to might include the desertion trial for which Lys.  was composed. 5 6 7

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

 or  : desertion trial (Lys.  and  = prosecution speeches). In addition, one or more of the lost Alcibiades speeches discussed in Appendix  to this chapter may have been composed for trials of Alcibiades IV in the s, either those referred to in Isoc. . , or others. The hidden agenda behind these court actions was a programme to attack the reputation of their victim’s dead father (cf. Isoc. . : ‘they bring cases for private complaints, but the substance of their accusations are the affairs of the city, and they spend more time attacking my father than they do setting out the charges to which they have sworn’). In the campaign of Haliartus in  , there were others who served improperly in the cavalry,8 but only Alcibiades IV appears to have been brought to trial. The artificiality of the charge of desertion in this case is underlined by the fact that in the Haliartus campaign no actual battle was fought, while the generals who had directed the campaign testified that they had given the accused special permission to serve in the cavalry.9 In Lys. , nine sections out of forty-two are devoted to the treatment of the accused’s father. Isoc.  cannot represent the whole of the speech given at the trial, but the forty-one sections which are devoted to the discussion of Alcibiades must (if they were really delivered at the trial) represent a substantial portion of the original. In each case the speakers accuse their opponents too of talking about the defendant’s father and not the supposed charge.10 In both the racing-team trial and the desertion trial (cf. Lys. . ) the prosecutor does not disguise the fact that he is motivated primarily by enmity to Alcibiades, rather than his son. Alcibiades IV does not appear to have been a figure of any significance in himself, partly, it is clear, because of his youth (even in the desertion trial he was only ). Indeed, he is presented in our texts as a facsimile, a rhetorical adjunct, of his father,11 demonstrating the same qualities. The best thing he could have done with 8 Claimed by Mantitheus, the speaker of Lys.  (§ )—this passage is probably a direct reference to the trial of Alcibiades for desertion. Carey (:  n. ) suggests that the generals permitted unorthodox cavalry enrolments because of the special need for cavalry at Haliartus. 9 Lys. . –. Carey (: –) sets out the weaknesses of the prosecution case. 10 Isoc. . –; Lys. . –, . 11 Bruns (: ); Hoyer (:  ff.).



Rhetorical Works

his life, according to Lys. . , would have been to make it an apologia for his father’s. Instead, he has set out to copy or rival Alcibiades’ dissolute lifestyle (‘imitating his own ancestors’—Lys. . ). While still a boy he got under the covers with other men (like Alcibiades himself in the Symposium of Plato12), went about with hetairai, and took part in riotous drinking-bouts (at the age of  at the most!), just like his father. Just as the father betrayed his own city, the son betrayed his friends and even his own father (Lys. . –). Later, he had an incestuous relationship with his sister, following the example of his father who had begot children by his own daughter (Lys. . ).13 Just as his father saw fit to fight with the enemies of Athens, he himself refused to fight alongside his fellow citizens (Lys. . ). The parallelism reaches its height in the peroration of Lys. , where accusations against the father and son become indistinguishable, and the two figures merge into an invective unity. In Isoc. , the pitiful fate of Alcibiades IV closely resembles that of his father: orphaned at a young age, exiled from his native land, slandered by the same enemies as his father (Isoc. . , ). Outside the speeches, a fragment of Archippus ( K.–A.) satirizes Alcibiades IV for imitating the clothes, mannerisms, and lisp of his father. In the presentations of the early fourth century, the life, moral character, and self-presentation of Alcibiades IV are subsidiary to and dependent on his father:14 his defence stands or falls with that of his father. The attacks on Alcibiades IV in the s can be seen as political in two related senses: firstly as party-political (i.e. related to the competition of influence between élite individuals in the city), and secondly in the sense of touching on ‘the affairs of the city’ (cf. Isoc. . ), specifically the competitive attempts by the Athenians of the s to define an attitude to the experience of the loss of the empire and the stasis of – . After  , political struggles in Athens had come increasingly to focus on the attitude adopted towards Alcibiades, a situation Symp. b–d. Lys. . : ‘some of them have slept with their sisters, some of them have had children by their daughters’. The speaker has already referred to the incest of Alcibiades IV with his sister (§ ). I take it that the second allegation refers to the charge contained in Lys. frag.  Baiter–Sauppe that Alcibiades III had slept with his daughter by the hetaira Medontis in Abydus. Cf. also p.  above. 14 Hoyer () was so impressed by the resemblances that he was led to argue that Alcibiades IV was an invention of the ‘rhetorical schools’. 12 13

Rhetorical Works



ironically referred to in the question put to the competing poets at the end of Aristophanes’ Frogs (–). As with the fictional Aeschylus and Euripides in the play, there was pressure on competing political figures to take up a position with regard to Alcibiades.15 Thrasybulus of Steiria, later the leader of the returning demos in   and the leading political figure of the first part of the s, had tied himself closely with Alcibiades from as early as  , when he had proposed his appointment as general in Samos:16 later, between  and  , he served with Alcibiades as general in the Hellespont. Another political figure of the s, Adeimantus, had been impeached with Alcibiades in the Mysteries affair in  .17 Both Thrasybulus and Adeimantus served with Alcibiades (according to some sources, at his special request18) on the board of generals of   when Alcibiades was general-inchief, and both fell with him when he lost his command after Notium.19 On the other side, another Thrasybulus (of the deme Kollytus) who was politically active in the s was distinguished by his enmity towards Alcibiades: after Notium, he had left the fleet to return to Athens and bring charges against Alcibiades.20 Conon, a leading political actor of the late s, had also served with Alcibiades on the board of  , but unlike Thrasybulus and Adeimantus, had been re-elected after Notium.21 Adeimantus and Conon had both served as generals at the battle of Aegospotami, and later suffered from the stigma of having survived the battle.22 Thus, many of the leading figures of the s were politically vulnerable with regard to their activity in the Ionian War, and in particular, because of their support of or opposition to Alcibiades. They therefore had a stake in his reputation and public presentation.23 This helped to keep the polarized debate about Alcibiades, For what follows cf. Andrewes (); Strauss (: –, ). Thuc. . . Andoc. . . On Adeimantus see Strauss (:  n. ). 18 Nepos, Alc. .; cf. Xen. HG . . . 19 Xen. HG . . . 20 Plut. Alc. . . 21 Xen. HG . . –. Conon was the leader of the board of generals sent to replace Alcibiades in  : cf. Strauss (: ). 22 Adeimantus had been spared from execution after the battle by Lysander (Xen. HG . . ). He is accused (Lys. . ) of betraying the fleet to Lysander together with Alcibiades. Conon’s prosecution of Adeimantus on charges relating to their shared generalship (Dem. . ) must have centred on the issue of the behaviour of the two at Aegospotami. That Conon went to the trouble of prosecution suggests a sense of his own vulnerability in this area. 23 Cf. Bruns (: –; –). 15 16 17



Rhetorical Works

which had been a feature of the years – , alive in the years following   as well. The first section of Xenophon’s Hellenica, and perhaps much of Thucydides’ History, were written at this time: in both texts the presentation of Alcibiades (characterized by the use of antilogical speeches and carefully worded narratorial interventions) reflects the polarized Alcibiades debate taking place at the time these historians were writing.24 Attacks on Alcibiades through his son, who offered a convenient means of propelling this issue into the courtroom, were thus a way of attacking those who had supported him. The generals of the campaign of Haliartus, criticized in Lys. . – and . – for their support of Alcibiades IV in court, included Thrasybulus of Steiria: it is probably he whom the speaker has primarily in mind when he describes the powerful forces in the background protecting the defendant. The prosecution of Alcibiades IV may have served as a way of mounting an indirect attack on Thrasybulus after the success of the Haliartus campaign.25 We may take it that in the racing-team trial, where the background is less clear, a similar party-political background was important.26 Trials in which the conflicts relating to the time before   formed an important background were characteristic of this period.27 While the Amnesty, and the subsequent rules related to it, prohibited trials of individuals on charges relating to activity before the time of the Amnesty,28 discussion of this time inevitably provided tempting material for prosecutors or defendants.29 In the trial of Socrates, the charge of corrupting the young reflects the notorious association of Socrates with Alcibiades and others involved in the Herms and Mysteries affair, 24 Xen. HG . . –; Thuc. . , . –, . –, . . –. Cf. Bruns (: –), and Ch. , below. 25 Strauss (: ). 26 Cf. Strauss (: ); Gernet and Bizos (: ). Teisias apparently regarded himself as being robbed of  talents and perhaps an Olympic victory by Alcibiades: sufficient reason in itself for a prosecution. But an attack on Alcibiades IV, involving as it did an attack on his father’s reputation, was inevitably a political as well as a personal act. 27 Strauss (: –). 28 Through the paragraphe of Archinus (Isoc. . –; Strauss : ). 29 e.g. Lys.  (trial of Eratosthenes, member of the Thirty). In Lys. , , and  the speakers face allegations at their dokimasia relating to their behaviour during the time of the Thirty. In Isoc. . –, the prosecutor attempts to use the jury’s hatred of the Thirty against his opponent.

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and with the Thirty.30 The trial of Andocides inevitably became a review of the whole issue of his involvement in the Herms and Mysteries affair and his actions before  . In the prosecution of Adeimantus by Conon31 on the latter’s return to Athens in   the decisive issue must have been the behaviour of both parties at the battle of Aegospotami. It is possible that at some of these trials the reputation of Alcibiades was also discussed. The trial of Alcibiades, and to a lesser extent, those of Socrates and Andocides, are exceptional even by Athenian standards in the amount of material introduced which does not relate to the actual charge. They should, however, be seen as extreme examples of, rather than exceptions to, normal practice in the Athenian judicial system. The Athenian courtroom was a means not only of adjudicating matters of justice, but also of deciding publicly between the strengths of competing élite individuals32 (in particular presumably, those trials for which speeches have survived, since these stem from the most important and public trials involving the most outstanding rhetoric). In the case of the Alcibiades trials, the strength of the individuals being tested was not so much that of the litigants themselves (though Alcibiades IV was obviously deeply interested in protecting his father’s reputation), as that of those who stood behind them. Not only the influence of the figures involved was put to the test, but the view of the past which they supported, and which supported them. And the medium through which this testing took place was the delivery of competing presentations of the dead Alcibiades. The trials also raised questions of pressing general interest: the role of the great individual in shaping the fortunes of the city, and the reasons for the failure in the Peloponnesian War and the loss of the empire.

30 See further Ch.  below. In a late anecdote (Plut. Alc. . – and with variation Ath. . ef) someone called Anytus features as Alcibiades’ shamefully treated lover. This has led some to suggest that one of the motives of Anytus in his prosecution of Socrates was to rid himself of the stigma of an association with Socrates. But the historical credentials of the story are pitiful. 31 Dem. . . 32 Cf. Osborne (: esp. –); Ober (: ); both comparing courtroom to theatre.

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Rhetorical Works .      

.. Isocrates,  In the opening sentence of Isoc.  the speaker addresses the jury: they have now heard witnesses, among them ambassadors from Argos, testifying that the defendant’s father did not take the racing team away from Teisias, but bought it from the city of Argos (§  makes it clear that these allegations concerned the Olympic games of  ). But the prosecution insists on turning the trial into a discussion of his father: the speaker must therefore defend his father’s reputation. The ensuing defence of Alcibiades III takes us to § , where the speaker returns to attack Teisias, especially his association with the Thirty, §§ – are an appeal for pity. In a brief peroration (§§ –) the speaker again compares himself and his father to Teisias. Various sources report the incident which gave rise to the chariotteam trial, but there is a peculiar disagreement amongst them as to the details. Plut. Alc. . , D.S. . , and [And.] .  relate how in the Olympic games of  , Alcibiades entered under his own name a racing team which in fact belonged to an Athenian called Diomedes (not Teisias). The accounts differ as to the details: in Diodorus, Diomedes (apparently unable to attend the games himself ) entrusts his team to Alcibiades, who is a friend of his, to be entered in the Olympic competition, but at the registration procedure before the race, Alcibiades has the team entered as his own. In [And.]  Alcibiades uses his influence with the judges to appropriate the team of Diomedes at the registration procedure, but in this account Diomedes is an Athenian but not a friend of his, and is present himself at the games. Nevertheless, one could see this as an invective version of the story presented in Diodorus.33 Plutarch’s account appears to be an attempt to reconcile the Diodoran tradition with the information at the beginning of Isoc. : Diomedes requests his friend Alcibiades to purchase the team on his behalf from the city of Argos, where Alcibiades possessed great influence; 33 The fact that [And.]  presents Diomedes as just an Athenian citizen, rather than a friend of Alcibiades, might be seen as more favourable to Alcibiades. But by omitting the story of the earlier deal between Alcibiades and Diomedes, the author paints a picture of hybris combined with dunamis which is more consistent with the invective strategy of the speech as a whole (note how the story parallels the Taureas story in § ). Alcibiades’ anti-civic hybris is naturally directed at common citizens.

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Alcibiades purchases the team but then enters it under his own name, as in Diodorus. There is no obvious way of reconciling the inconsistency regarding the name of the victim of Alcibiades’ alleged injustice.34 Teisias cannnot be Diomedes’ heir,35 because Isoc. .  specifically names Teisias as the person from whom Alcibiades stole the team. The theory that he was Diomedes’ partner36 sits very uncomfortably with Diodorus and [And.] , who make no mention of any partnership. The ingenious solution of Münsterberg37 is at first attractive: the team bought by Alcibiades was the one belonging to the public stud of Argos, which (supposes Münsterberg), as the theoretical descendant of the mythical horses of Diomedes, was known as the ‘horses of Diomedes’; this term was misunderstood by later writers as a normal possessive genitive, leading them to the conclusion that Diomedes was the name of the real owner of the team, Alcibiades’ victim. But () the name Diomedes is attested for fifth-century Athens,38 () there is no other evidence that horses from the public stud at Argos could be so called, and () the theory seems to demand an astonishingly cursory reading of whatever text gave rise to the alleged mistake. It might be better to go back to the idea that there are really two incidents involved here,39 which Plutarch has tried to reconcile: one in which Alcibiades appropriated the team of Diomedes at the registration procedure before the race, and another in which he buys a team from the city of Argos on behalf of his friend Teisias and keeps it for himself. It may seem improbable that Alcibiades should be involved in two such incidents at the same Olympic games, but we should also ask ourselves what lengths Alcibiades had to go to in order to get together seven teams for the  Olympics. Thucydides (. . ) says that Alcibiades’ chariot-racing expenses exceeded his fortune. It is possible that Diomedes and Teisias had both agreed to support Alcibiades in his tremendous effort for the chariot-race out of friendship or for 34 There is also an inconsistency in the amount of damages claimed by the plaintiff in the two cases: Diomedes claimed  talents (D.S. . ), while Teisias claimed only  (Isoc. . ). 35 Pace Burn (:  n. ). 36 Mathieu and Brémond (: ); Hatzfeld (: ). 37 (). His theory is accepted by Davies, APF –. 38 A Diomedes was treasurer of Athena in – : APF . 39 This idea is attributed by Mathieu and Brémond (: ) to an earlier edition of Isocrates by Coraïs which I have not been able to locate.

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money, and that they turned against him either because his friendship no longer seemed expedient, or because he failed to pay up. In the complex arrangements Alcibiades apparently found necessary in order to get the teams together, there may have been room for doubt as to who really owned a team. The discrepancy of the names cannot be used to support the idea that the trial which gave rise to Isoc.  was an invention of the speech’s author.40 The circumstantial detail surrounding the trial (especially the Argive ambassadors), and the repeated references to the prosecutor Teisias (related to Charicles and serving on the boule under the Thirty: Isoc. . –) rule this out. Whatever the status of Isoc.  itself, the trial which provides its occasion was real. Isocrates’ authorship of the speech has nearly always been accepted.41 There is general avoidance of hiatus, and community both of content and form with other speeches of Isocrates.42 On the other side, there are no grounds on which the traditional attribution might be challenged.43 .. Lysias,  and  These two speeches (the second only a couple of pages long) are part of a prosecution for illegally serving in the cavalry. The accusation of ‘desertion’ (which is heard before a military court presided over by the generals44) was brought by a certain Archestratides, who is referred to in both Lys.  and Lys. . His speech, which is not extant, came first for the prosecution case.45 Archestratides’ speech must have included a setting-out of the charge and a narration of the details which gave rise to it. Thus, after a brief introduction, the speaker of Lys.  concentrates on showing As does Hoyer (: ). Nowack (: ), supporting the authenticity of the speech against an earlier challenge; Blass (–: –). 42 Apart from the interest in Alcibiades, common to Isoc.  and the Philip and Busiris (see below), Blass notes expressions shared between Isoc.  and the Panegyricus: .  cf. .  (description of Pericles); .  cf. .  (descrip). tion of Athens as 43 Disbelief of Isocrates’ denial that he had ever composed for the courts (Antid. ) began with Aristotle (see D.H. Isoc. . . –. ). 44 Lys. . , . . For the law of desertion see Carey (: –); Gernet and Bizos (: –). 45 It is referred to by both speeches (. , . ). Nothing else is known of Archestratides. 40 41

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that the defendant is liable to the charge of desertion (, –), and on arguing that the jury should not be induced to acquit Alcibiades IV by the powerful forces supporting him, who will claim that they ought not to condemn the son of the great Alcibiades (. –). §§ – attack the career and character of Alcibiades IV. Sections – return to deal again (cf. . –) with the good will the defendant might receive as the son of Alcibiades. This somewhat illogical order (the treatment of Alcibiades III being split in two) allows the speaker to set the attacks on father and son side by side, stressing the identity of moral turpitude shared by the two, so that the peroration can treat them together with their ancestors as a group, as moral degenerates and enemies of the city. Lys.  deals principally with two questions: the testimony of the generals on behalf of the defendant (§§ –), and the argument that the punishment the defendant will receive is out of proportion to the seriousness of his crimes (§§ –). Concluding with the latter argument allows the speaker to finish by re-emphasizing the cornerstone of the prosecution arguments, that the letter of the law must be followed. The speech is not a rhetorical exercise spun out of Lys. .46 Where Lys.  had dealt in general with the supporters of Alcibiades, Lys.  deals specifically with the inappropriateness of the support of the generals for the defendant, and introduces new arguments, including a demonstration that the generals’ claim that they had given Alcibiades IV special permission to serve in the cavalry is likely to be untrue. The section on the appropriateness of the punishment cannot be seen as derived from the earlier speech. The speech names a certain Pamphilos47(. ), not mentioned in Lys. , the identification of whom by the jurors must have depended on information contained in the narratio of the speech of Archestratides. The ascription of Lys.  to Lysias, already in question by the time of Harpocration,48 was doubted (along with Lys. ) by Blass.49 The difficulties of determining Lysian authorship of any of 46 Thus Carey (:  n. ), against Dover (: –). Cf. also Blass (–: i. –). 47 Perhaps the general of / : see Strauss (: ). 48 Harpocration, . –. 49 Blass (–: i. –), arguing that the two speeches are by the same author. See also e.g. Gernet and Bizos (: –); Carey (: –).

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the speeches in the Lysian corpus have been underlined by Dover,50 but the question is irrelevant for our purposes. .. Publication How are we to regard Isoc.  and Lys. ? Are they the accurate records of real speeches given at the trials, or are they political ‘pamphlets’51 with very little relationship to the originals? Can we safely regard them as (to use the terms of Ober52) élite-mass texts aimed at an Athenian jury, or has revision put them into the category of élite-élite texts, designed for the amusement and instruction of the author’s peers? To answer these questions, we may start with some general considerations. Isoc.  as we have it cannot represent the full speech for the defence in the racing-team trial.53 The existence in the original trial-speech of a formal rebuttal of the charges now lacking in our text, in which the defence case was supported by witnesses, is suggested by the opening words of the speech. What is missing, in fact, is that section of the speech which, in that it dealt with the specific details of the charge, and not with the presentation of Alcibiades (or with that of the oligarchical prosecutor Teisias, who is used as a foil to Alcbiades), was of less rhetorical, literary, and political interest. This suggests that the absence of the first part of the speech is not due to a textual accident,54 but to deliberate omission. But omission by whom? It is possible that speeches like that for Alcibiades IV at (: esp. –). I am not sure that the word ‘pamphlet’ is a helpful one in discussions of rhetorical works of the th and th c., concealing as it does the variety of possible motivations for the composition and publication of such works, and the degree of relationship (if any) to an original speech (cf. Adams (), arguing against the position that the political speeches of Demosthenes are ‘pamphlets’). In particular, I doubt whether we can speak safely of ‘the pamphlet literature of the late fifth (or early fourth) century’ (Harvey : –; Connor : –). Most of the works mentioned by Connor (except those of Isocrates, and is it right to call them ‘pamphlets’?) survive only in meagre fragments. 52 (: e.g.  ff.). Ober bases the conclusions of his book on the assumption that surviving Attic oratory is a fairly accurate record of what was actually said in the courtroom, but does not argue much for this assumption (cf. his p. ). 53 Contrast Zycha (), who argued that it might represent the full court speech. Another possibility, that it is the second speech for the prosecution, is also ruled out by the phrasing in .  (see Nowack : ; Blass –: ii.  n. ): moreover if Alcibiades IV spoke second, who spoke first? 54 The mutilation of the Urbinas MS of the speech has been used to support the idea that the first part of the speech has been lost in transmission. See Nowack (: ); Blass (–: ii.  n. ). 50 51

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the racing-team trial were written in collaboration, and that the publisher-author of a speech published only that section of a speech for which he was responsible.55 Or it is possible that the missing sections dropped out at an early stage because their users were not interested in them. But it is also possible that the missing sections of the speech were deliberately omitted by the person responsible for releasing it into circulation,56 in other words that the speech as we have it represents a published version, involving the possibility that it has been substantially altered in the course of revision for publication. Other surviving speeches of the period show a similar sort of ‘convenient incompleteness’57 to that of Isoc. . Isoc.  (Against Lochites), for example, begins: ‘So all who were present at the time have testified to you that Lochites struck me and was the aggressor.’ The absence of the first part of this speech reduces the surviving section to a demonstration, divorced from any context, that the action of the accused is to be classed as hybris: this makes the speech resemble a rhetorical exercise like those of Antiphon. Lys.  begins: ‘Enough has been presented to you regarding the case of the prosecution: I ask you now to hear about the other things’; there is no narration of the facts of the case, and only the defence of the speaker’s public and private life survives. Again, in Lys.  the main section of the speech containing the details of the case is missing. As in Isoc. , only that part of the speech which deals extensively with the reputation of the defendant’s relative (in this case, Nicias the general) survives.58 Isocrates’ letters , , and  contain only the rhetorical opening sections, omitting (conveniently, one might think, for Isocrates) the specific advice offered.59 In the case of forensic speeches, the ‘publication’ of abridged versions of the work might be in the interests either of the logographos wishing to demonstrate his skill with a particular type of argument, or of the client, who wished to circulate a defence of See Dover (: –), and contra Usher (). Blass (–: i. –; ii. –); Rauchenstein (: ); Drerup (: i. cxxiii–cxxiv) (which also provides a bibliography of scholarship on Isoc.  before ); Carey (: ). 57 See Blass (–: i. –; ii. –). Contrast cases where a speech begins or breaks off in mid-sentence, so that loss in transmission must be responsible (Lys. , ). 58 Lys.  and  may be further examples of this class of abbreviated speech: cf. Innes (: –). 59 Cf. Nowack (: ). 55 56

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his good name and that of his family (cf. the examples of Lys.  and Lys.  above). In the case of Isoc. , both author and defendant might have had an interest in the release into circulation of the parts of the speech which have survived. The speech has strong formal resemblances to an encomium of Alcibiades (see below). As with the poetic epinikia of Pindar, the ‘publication’ of the speech would have furthered the reputation of the young Alcibiades IV and Isocrates at the same time. Isocrates himself would have approved of this comparison: in his Evagoras he talks of how he intends his prose encomium to rival the poetic encomia of earlier generations.60 If Isoc.  has been tampered with before publication, we are forced to consider what the relationship is between the published work and the original speech given at the trial. Fourth-century authors (Isocrates, for example) found it natural to address the topics which interested them in the form of a ‘fictitious’ speech. Such speeches were often linked to a specific rhetorical event. Thus Plato, writing an Apology for Socrates, put his composition into the form of a rhetorical imitation of the speech given by Socrates on the occasion of his trial, and Polycrates also put his Accusation of Socrates (different though it must have been in form and purpose from the Apology) in the form of the speech given by the prosecution at the same trial.61 Isocrates in the Antidosis went a step further in basing his own Apology around a trial which, as he specifically admits in a preface, never really took place.62 In a different but related phenomenon, histories included imitations of speeches which had been delivered on historical occasions. In all these cases discussion and analysis was not just carried out in a rhetorical way, but also focused through a real, or at least specific, rhetorical event. Real events, and their wider significance, were presented by means of a speech composed as though for that occasion.63 Clearly, most fourth-century oratory does not belong to this genre of ‘invented’ speeches. Though the distinction is not always easy to draw, we have to distinguish (as fourth-century Athenians must have distinguished) between (a) speeches put into circulation as reasonably accurate reproductions of a speech given on a particular occasion, like the court speeches of the Lysian corpus (in these 60 63

61 See Ch.  below. 62 Isoc. . . Cf. Isoc. . . On ‘invented’ speech (Bruns’s fingirte Reden) see Russell (: –).

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cases, the one who releases the text into circulation is normally the same person as the composer of the original speech), and (b) speeches composed as though for a particular rhetorical occasion (where the composer of the published speech is normally not the same man as the composer of the original speech, if there was one). In the case of published speeches of type (b), the relation between published speech and any actually delivered speech might be minimal. But the form of Isocrates’ Antidosis, where the rhetorical event upon which the speech is based is more or less invented,64 is recognized as exceptional by Isocrates himself.65 While [And.]  is composed for a rhetorical occasion which probably could not have taken place, it is important that it is linked to a real event (the last ostracism), so that there is still a sense in which the speech could have been given. In cases of type (b), it thus seems normally to be the case that the rhetorical occasion behind the speech should be a real, or at the very least, a plausible one. This still leaves scope for considerable variation in the extent to which these speeches accurately represented their originals. In the case of Plato in the Apology, Thucydides in his speeches, and to a lesser extent other historians, a relatively great degree of correspondence is often supposed. At the other end of the scale, the resemblance between a work like Polycrates’ Accusation of Socrates, which did not scruple to mention events which took place six years after the dramatic date of the speech, and the original accusation of Socrates, must have been extremely slender.66 In published speeches of type (a) we would expect a much higher degree of correspondence between original and published speech. The degree of verisimilitude we are entitled to expect is closely related to the author’s intention in ‘publishing’ his speech. The concept of modern publication is not necessarily a helpful one for understanding how works might come into circulation in the fourth century .67 Isocrates speaks of publication of his works (for 68) as a deliberate act, but these which he uses the word were for the most part composed to be read or performed in private. 64 Even here, the self-defence is closely associated with a real action: the antidosis to which Isocrates was challenged (Isoc. . –). 65 Isoc. . : the speech is ‘novel’ and ‘different’, being neither forensic nor epideictic. 66 See Ch.  below, § . 67 See Turner (: –); Kennedy (: –). 68 Isoc. Antid. ; Panath. , .

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Particularly in cases of rhetoric for public delivery, a work might also circulate without the direct intervention, or even against the will, of its author,69 or the act leading to circulation might be an oral performance rather than the handing-over of the work to scribes.70 We might expect that speeches which came into circulation without a deliberate act of publication would normally represent the original speech more closely. But an act of publication involves the possibility that the author has changed the speech to adapt it from a work composed for a specific occasion of performance before a demos audience, to a work of more general significance for an élite audience, or for other reasons.71 The principal usefulness of rhetorical works to readers was often as an example to be studied and learned by heart as a method of rhetorical instruction.72 In such cases it is very possible that other changes were made to adapt the speech to its new purpose. It is dangerous to argue73 that published speeches must have resembled the originally delivered speech very closely, on the grounds that too great a discrepancy would make their author look ridiculous, for this depends on an assumed notion of what the reading public expected to find in published versions of original speeches. The distinction between type (a) and type (b) speeches made above remains an important one, but as I suggested at the outset, apparently not a very hard one, so that we are left with something closer to a sliding scale of verisimilitude. Each case must be examined on its own merits. These general considerations show how complex is the case of Isoc. . The speech might be (a) a reasonably accurate record of an original lawcourt speech, released in abbreviated form (perhaps because Isocrates was only responsible for the second part of the speech) with an uncertain amount of other changes; or (b) an ‘exercise’ composed as though for the original trial. But between these two extremes there are other permutations: for example, Isocrates 69 Galen, On his Own Books (Scr. Min. ii.  ff. Marquardt), . –, with Dover (: –). 70 Turner (: ). 71 Cf. Usher (: ). See Adams (:  ff.) on the reasons why an orator might decide to publish a political speech. 72 Cf. Ar. Sophistical Refutations b; Plato, Phaedr. –; Kennedy (: –). This consideration is relevant in the case of speeches of which only the (rhetorically) interesting portion survives. 73 As Ober (:  n. ).

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may really have written a speech for the trial, then reworked a section of it for publication in order to turn it into a kind of encomium of Alcibiades III. .. Indications of revision in the speeches After this general background, we can now turn to look at the speeches themselves, and at internal indications of revision for publication. Here attention has focused on two factors: (i) the intertextual relationship of the speeches, and (ii) their extensive treatment of individuals. There is clearly an intertextual relationship between the speeches. Lys.  responds to arguments of Isoc. :74 He is especially accustomed to say that it is unreasonable that his father should receive gifts from the demos on his return, while he himself is unjustly slandered because of his father’s exile. (Lys. . )

This argument is in fact used at Isoc. . : It would be very strange indeed if when my father got a reward after his exile, I were to be punished because of his exile.

Again, attacking Alcibiades for his collaboration with the Spartans during his exile, the speaker of Lys.  says: He dares to claim that Alcibiades did nothing wrong in taking the field against his own country. In your exile too, he argues, you seized Phyle and cut down trees [ µ ] and made attacks on the walls. (Lys. . –)

More or less exactly this line of argument is, in fact, adopted in Isoc. . : After you had seized the Peiraeus, did you not destroy the corn in the country, lay waste the land [ µ ], set fire to the suburbs, and eventually attack the walls?

The closeness of these correspondences suggests that we are dealing with intertextuality, not with references by Lys.  to arguments made typical by the continual rhetorical treatment of Alcibiades.75 These correspondences are best explained by 74 Rauchenstein (: –) was apparently the first to point out the references in Lys.  to Isoc. . 75 Other similarities might be due to typical arguments: while Isoc. . – argues that after   Alcibiades greatly benefited the city, Lys. .  argues that

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supposing that the chariot-team trial preceded the desertion trial, and that the speaker of Lys.  is responding to arguments made at the earlier trial, perhaps even to these arguments in their published form. However, German scholars including Bruns thought they had detected, in addition, a reverse correspondence:76 Isoc.  also replies to Lys. . They explained this by accepting that the chariotteam trial preceded the desertion trial, but supposing that Isoc.  was not published until after the desertion trial, allowing Isocrates to build in a new rebuttal of the arguments of Lys. . This would imply that the object of publication of Isoc.  was to take part in a written controversy, making it considerably less likely that it faithfully reproduced the original speech given at the trial. The speaker of Isoc.  complains (. ): ‘Sometimes they pretend to despise him, saying that he was no different from any one else, but in this instance they hold him responsible for everything that happened’. This sounds like a critique of the strategy of Lys. , which claims on the one hand that Alcibiades was no more than a common criminal, but on the other that he was responsible for Athens’ misfortunes. Yet we can imagine other opponents of Alcibiades apart from the speaker of Lys.  falling into this sort of inconsistency, any of whom may be in Isocrates’ mind here. In fact, the speaker of Lys. , in arguing (§§ –) that Alcibiades was responsible for the city’s ills, is careful to do so in a way that does not imply that Alcibiades possessed a special status, or conflict with his insistence on the banality of Alcibiades’ immoral actions: Alcibiades betrayed to the Spartans the sort of information available to any citizen, if he only be base enough to communicate it to the enemy. In that Lys.  avoids the inconsistency pointed to by Isoc. , it could plausibly be argued that Isoc. .  refers to other previous opponents, not Lys. .77 But these arguments are he was not able to undo the harm done during his exile. Where Isoc. .  claims that Alcibiades persuaded Tissaphernes to stop giving money to the Spartans and distributed pay to the soldiers, according to Lys. .  Alcibiades failed to fulfil his promise of getting the King to give money to Athens, and instead stole more than  talents from the city (i.e. was forced to extort the money in Ionia, while keeping some for himself ). 76 This idea seems to go back to the first edition of Blass, and was widely accepted by th-c. German scholarship (Frohberger :  n. ; Schultze : ; Nowack : esp. , ; Blass –: i. – and ii. ; Bruns : –). Only recently has it been criticized (Seager : –; Carey :  n. ). 77 Cf. Carey (:  n. ).

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not decisive. There is force in the point that it is particularly typical of Lys.  to argue not that Alcibiades was a great criminal but that he was a common traitor, and though he technically avoids the inconsistency pointed out in Isoc. . , this nicety is hardly likely to have mattered to Isocrates, whose aim was to traduce the arguments of his opponents. It remains possible, at least, to read Isoc. .  as a reference to Lys. . The speaker of Isoc.  claims that his opponents ‘try to slander [Alcibiades] by claiming that he fortified Decelea and induced the islands to revolt and became the teacher of the enemy’ (. ). This appears to be picking up Lys. . : ‘he persuaded the Spartans to fortify Decelea, and he sailed off to induce the islands to revolt, and became the teacher of the city’s ills’. Though this catalogue of crimes is the sort of thing that would be likely to appear in any accusation of Alcibiades, the specific correspondences are still striking. Once again, it could be said that the phrasing of Lys.  is an attempt to avoid the solecism criticized in Isoc. .  (‘they claim that he taught the Spartans how to make war, the Spartans who are skilled in teaching this to others’), by making Alcibiades the teacher not of ‘the Spartans’, but of ‘the city’s ills’.78 In this case, one should also consider the possibility that Alcibiades as didaskolos (‘teacher’) of Athens’ enemies was a topos in general currency in the s.79 But once again, Isoc. .  could still plausibly be read as a traduction of his opponent’s more careful phrase. Scholars who hypothesized a complex relationship between the two speeches were partly led to do so by the conviction that the sort of extensive and irrelevant treatment of individuals not directly implicated in the trial which is found in both Isoc.  and Lys.  would not have been tolerated in an Athenian court.80 Bruns therefore argued that both works must be reworkings of the original court speeches, to which the long sections dealing with individuals had been added.81 Today, we are less likely to be troubled by irrelevant passages in Athenian court speeches dealing with the reputation of individuals (cf. Section  above). Even if we cannot find a Seager (: ). Cf. Thuc. . . – (‘Alcibiades became Tissaphernes’ didaskalos in all things’), and Ch.  below, § . 80 (: –). 81 Bruns (: –) reconstructed the sequence of events thus: () racingteam trial, () desertion trial, () publication of Isoc. , () publication of Lys. . For the logical problems involved in this reconstruction, cf. Seager (: –). 78 79

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parallel for such extensive treatment of a figure who was not one of the litigants,82 this should be seen as an extension of normal Athenian court practice rather than an exception to it.83 We must also remember that although the figure of Alcibiades remained politically important, Alcibiades himself was dead and not available for trial, whereas his son offered the opportunity of trying him in absentia. This was what was really at stake in the trials of the son, even if it could not be admitted officially. In the case of the most extensive treatment of Alcibiades, Isoc. , there is an additional factor to be taken into account: though the son was the defendant, the person accused of the crime was his father.84 Since the alleged incident had taken place almost twenty years ago, it must have been hard to argue convincingly about the facts of the case, so that the burden of defence and accusation naturally fell on discussing whether the father was the sort of person who was likely to commit an act of that sort, i.e. on his character and his way of life. Furthermore, we do not know what proportion of an original speech the part which is now Isoc.  might have occupied. There is thus no reason to suppose that extensive passages dealing with individuals in speeches are later additions in the spirit of a pamphlet or an exercise. Certainly, the speeches for and against Alcibiades from the s are evidence for a written contest for Alcibiades’ reputation, but this contest may have proceeded by close imitation of oral battles before a democratic court (contrast the case of Socrates, where the written contest of speeches seems often to have had little to do with the original trial85). But these considerations do not necessarily affect the arguments about the relationship between the two speeches. Nor is it necessary to adopt Bruns’s position that both speeches are later reworkings in order to maintain the inverse-relationship theory. One could suppose that Isocrates and Alcibiades IV, having had their arguments at the chariot-team trial trumped in court by Lys. , 82 The closest parallel is the digression on Theramenes in Lys. . –: in this case too the digression concerns a figure whose reputation is vital for the case of the defendant. 83 Cf. Seager (: –); Carey (: ). 84 Seager (: ). 85 The cases are not fully parallel. Whereas the trials of Alcibiades’ reputation were multiple and centred on his son, there was only one trial of Socrates at which he presented his own defence. So in Socrates’ case the written contest of speeches could proceed only by means of various versions of the speeches given at that trial, whereas in Alcibiades’ case, the existence of the son gave the competing parties the chance to renew the rhetorical battle in the courtroom.

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designed Isoc.  as a literary reply, based in some way on their arguments in the original trial. The passages adduced in favour of a reverse correspondence are not decisive, but they are striking enough to give us, once again, pause for thought about the judicial status of Isoc. . .. Encomium There is thus no reason why Lys.  should not represent fairly closely the speech actually given at the trial. With Isoc. , however, it is not just the missing first section of the speech which casts doubt on its judicial status. Isocrates was a rhetorical experimenter whose motivations in composing or publishing a speech went beyond the desire to extend his reputation as a logographos. Moreover, he went on to become obsessed by the figure of the Great Man, capable at once of saving Greece and catapulting Isocrates himself into eternal fame.86 Isocrates seems to have counted Alcibiades as such an outstanding individual.87 In the Busiris (probably written in the early s88), Isocrates presented Alcibiades (§§ –) as a figure responsible for such great benefits that his identification by Polycrates in his Accusation of Socrates as one of the pupils of Socrates was bound to undermine the arguments of the author. In the Philip of  , Alcibiades is brought forward (§§ –) as an example of the massive effect one individual could have on the Greek world.89 (Isocrates was later to be criticized for the rhetorical suitability of this use of Alcibiades, just as Isocrates himself had criticized Polycrates’ deployment of him.90) So Isocrates came to be interested not just in rhetorical experimentation and the figure of Alcibiades, but also in the rhetorical use of the figure of Alcibiades. The composition (and/or publication) of Isoc.  would have allowed Isocrates the chance to publicize himself by becoming involved in a debate of great historical and rhetorical significance, while demonstrating his rhetorical innovation. 86 On Isocrates and great men, see Nowack (: –); Bringmann (: –); Mathieu (: –). 87 Cf. von Pöhlmann (: –); Gomperz (: –). 88 At any rate after Polycrates’ Accusation of Socrates (composed after  ), and reasonably early in Isocrates’ career: cf. Blass (–: ii. ). 89 Isocrates describes here how Alcibiades, in order to win a return to Athens ‘brought into confusion not only Athens, but also Sparta and the rest of the Greek world’. 90 Speusippus, Letter to Philip  (Köhler : letter , pp. –).

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For these reasons, while in the case of Lys.  the burden of proof is on those who wish to argue that it is a substantial reworking of the original speech, in the case of Isoc. , what requires proof is the claim that it either is a part of the original court speech, or very closely resembles a part of this speech.91 Although Isocrates later boasted that he was the first man to compose a prose encomium of a non-mythical person (in Evagoras ), a certain generic standardization of the praise of an individual (if not actual rules for a separate genre of encomium) had developed long before this (a formalized list of rules for encomium is first found at Rhet. ad Alex. b). Prose encomia of mythical figures had been composed by sophists, for example Gorgias, and composing encomia of unlikely subjects (such as Polycrates’ of Busiris) had become popular by the time Isoc.  was written.92 It is thus not anachronistic to speak of the resemblances of Isoc.  to encomium.93 It is particularly §§ – of the speech, formally a defence of the character and way of life of Alcibiades, which are in question here. Here, as in encomium,94 the good birth of Alcibiades is praised first (§§ –), after which his childhood (§ ) and early manhood (§ ) are dealt with. As in encomium, stress is laid on certain fixed qualities (good birth, wealth, and reputation; Alcibiades’ famous beauty is conspicuously not praised) and virtues (ambition and courage are covered, though most of the semi-standardized encomium virtues are missing), and on achievements which can be associated with his name95 (§§ –, though in this case the praise is transferred to the subject’s ancestors, who are 91 Isocrates’ repudiation of his judicial speeches (Antid. ) might be used to argue either that he had not revised his judicial speeches, including Isoc. , before publication and was therefore embarrassed by them, or that Isoc.  and perhaps the other apparently judicial speeches were never intended for delivery in court. 92 On encomium see Fraustadt (); Dihle (: –); Momigliano (: –); Dover (: –); Russell (: ); Russell and Wilson (: pp. xi–xviii); Pernot (). 93 Rauchenstein (: ) and Nowack (: –) both regarded the generic resemblances of Isoc.  to encomium as evidence that it had not been delivered before an Athenian court (Nowack comments: ‘Das ist fürwahr eine epideiktische, aber schwerlich eine gerichtliche Rede’). Cf. also Bruns (: ); Gernet and Bizos (: –); Fraustadt (: ). 94 Cf. Rhet. ad Alex. b–a; Isoc. Evag. – (good birth), – (boyhood). 95 Cf. Rhet. ad Alex. b–: in encomium one should distinguish innate goods (good birth, strength, beauty, wealth) from those dependent on virtue (wisdom, justice, courage, and praiseworthy characteristics). For other lists of standardized virtues in encomia, see Dover (: ).

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alleged to have established the democracy which made Athens great). In a common topos of encomia,96 Alcibiades is said not to have been content with his aristocratic birth and his inherited advantages, but to have determined to do even better (§ ). Other features of narrative and style suggest encomium: a conspicuous focalization through the subject as a way of emphasizing his ambition and his power as an active agent (compare especially § , with its collections of ‘focalizing’ participles); the consistent use of superlatives. The supposed aim of defending Alcibiades’ way of life against his detractors is sometimes apparently supplanted by the aim, characteristic of encomium, of demonstrating that the subject was the best or the most fortunate:97 ‘What must a man do to be deserving of the highest praise? Is it not to be singled out with the prize of valour when fighting together with the city’s best, and then, while serving as general against the strongest forces in Greece, to show oneself their superior in every trial?’ (Isoc. . ) The fact that Isocrates later experimented with the encomium genre in the Busiris, Helen, and Evagoras brings the resemblances of this section of the speech to encomium into even stronger relief. An important factor pushing Isoc.  in the direction of encomium is its context: a defence of Alcibiades’ Olympic competition, culminating in a triumphal presentation of his unprecedented victory in the chariot-race (§§ –). This suggests one of the poetic predecessors of encomium,98 the epinikion (an epinikion for Alcibiades’ victory of   was allegedly composed by Euripides99). The theme is thus especially suited to encomiastic treatment, and may have suggested to Isocrates the idea of a prose encomium such as the one he later composed, the Evagoras. On the other hand, these chapters do not abandon their primafacie purpose of defending the personal life of Alcibiades before a democratic court. In origin, they are an extended version of that section of the defence speech which presents the services of the accused to the city (note the traditional mention of choregiai and so on in § , though here with the important difference that in the case of Alcibiades the speaker is embarrassed to mention such Cf. Isoc. Bus. , Evag. . Cf. Isoc. Evag. : ‘In what respect did he fall short of good fortune?’ 98 Fraustadt (: –) stresses the resemblances of Isoc . – to poetic encomium. 99 See Ch.  above, § .. 96 97

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mundane details). Sections – emphasize the democratic credentials of Alcibiades’ family (compare § : ‘So ancient and noble a friendship towards the demos, arising out of such tremendous benefits, did Alcibiades inherit’), while deliberately recalling the motifs of the Funeral Oration100 (encomium of the family of Alcibiades is thus closely associated with the official encomium of the city). It is important that Alcibiades’ good birth should be put in terms of membership of families inextricably connected with democracy and empire,101 that his deeds in battle should have been in the service of the city (§§ –), and that his father should have died fighting for Athens at Coroneia (§ ). In particular, §§ – aim to show that he was the most loyal of all towards the democracy, since while all the others were fighting in the stasis for themselves, Alcibiades was the only one who was fighting for ‘you’.102 This argument, designed to demonstrate that the subject is better than all the others, reminds one of encomium, but it is also convincing as an argument before a democratic jury. The clearest example of the way the speech turns in a democratic direction encomium’s demand that its subject be the best is perhaps § . Arguing that ‘the one who is most active in securing good fortune for the city must necessarily be he who has the greatest share both in its successes and its failures’, the speaker asks: ‘While the city was doing well, who in Athens was more fortunate, more admired, more envied than him? And when the city came upon bad fortune, who was more disappointed in expectations, who deprived of greater property, who robbed of a finer reputation?’ In §  the encomiastic tone is once again modulated to suit a democratic context: Alcibiades is said to have been strong and great enough to have established himself as tyrant, but to have refrained from doing so out of democratic sentiment. 100 § : Alcibiades’ ancestors made Athens so powerful that ‘those who claimed she was the city-centre of Greece [ ] and who were accustomed to go in for this sort of exaggeration, seemed to be speaking accurately.’ Claims like these were typical of the Funeral Oration (Thuc. . . , and cf. also the epigram on Euripides: Anth. Pal. . ). 101 Alcibiades’ ancestors expelled the tyrants and set up the democracy (Isoc. . –). Though it is here claimed that members of Alcibiades’ paternal family helped expel the tyrants, this is primarily an Alcmaeonid family tradition: cf. Thomas (, –). It is the Alcmaeonid link which is especially stressed by Alcibiades III and IV (cf. Ch.  above, § .). 102 Cf. Lys. . –. For this sort of presentation of Alcibiades, cf. Dem. . : by bearing arms on three occasions on behalf of the demos, Alcibiades showed his good-will for his fatherland.

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Can there be a democratic encomium of an individual (as distinct from the encomium of the city in the Funeral Oration)? One would think that the democratic demand for the submission of the élite individual to the polis is inconsistent with encomium’s requirement that the subject exert his unbridled will so as to become superior to all others.103 But in Isoc.  Alcibiades’ ambition is not the unlimited and dangerous trait we find in the Platonic first Alcibiades, or even in Thucydides.104 Instead it is channelled in a civic direction: the noble deeds planned by the subject are to be performed for the city, not in an attempt to dominate it. To this extent the ‘encomium’ of Alcibiades in Isoc.  resembles the encomium of Theseus in Isocrates’ Helen.105 In both cases the subject is represented as submitting his power to the demands of cooperative virtues in order to produce the sort of praise which will be acceptable in a civic context. Although in Athenian democratic contexts, praise of the city replaced the encomium of individuals, even in mythical narrative,106 there was still a place allotted to the praise of individuals who like Harmodius and Aristogeiton,107 represented civic virtue. When Theseus appears in overtly democratic contexts,108 we sense a tension between the heroic individual and the supposedly democratic community he leads; but Athenian audiences apparently saw no actual contradiction. The encomiastic praise of Alcibiades in the speech makes sense as a rhetorical strategy. The encomiastic tone is appropriate in the mouth of the son defending the father whose reputation has been impugned (see . ): it can thus be seen as contributing towards the ethos of the son. Moreover, the speech’s transformation of apologia into encomium allows a move from rhetorical defence to attack. The effectiveness of such a strategy was recognized by later declaimers. Setting out the appropriate strategy for a defence of Alcibiades on a charge of tyranny, Sopater109 recommends a style to suit Alcibiades’ known character (which he calls ‘strong-willed, high-minded, ambitious’): the speech should contain a large Cf. Isoc. Evag. –, , . [Plato] Alc. I a–e; Thuc. . , . . Cf. also Xen. Mem. . . . 105 Isoc. Helen –. Cf. also Theseus in Euripides’ Supplices. 106 Cf. Loraux (: –). 107 Thus the tyrannicides could even be thought suitable topics for ‘encomium’ (Aesch. . ). 108 Dem. Funeral Speech . 109 µ : case  (RG . –). 103 104

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element of ‘pomp and circumstance’ ( µ ).110 To show that Alcibiades lacked the will to set up a tyranny, Sopater recommends not a humble or submissive posture, but the use of ‘encomiastic topoi’111 (Alcibiades’ family, his father’s death at Coronea, his education with Socrates and Pericles, his recent successes on behalf of the city). This demonstration of Alcibiades’ excellence is presumably designed not only to assist the argument, but also to enhance the powerful charismatic effect of the subject’s character on the audience. In another work,112 Sopater, discussing the closeness of the relationship between ‘panegyric’ on the one hand, and symbouleutic and forensic on the other, again brings forward the example of a defence of Alcibiades as a case where forensic defence inevitably involves panegyric topoi (a similar list of encomiastic Alcibiades themes is produced), just as a prosecution of Alcibiades must involve the speaker in invective ( ). Sopater’s theorizing illustrates the sort of analysis of the demands of the rhetorical occasion ( ) that could have created a defence of Alcibiades like Isoc.  (though we must also consider the possibility that the standardized rules for an Alcibiades defence in Sopater’s day have themselves been heavily influenced by Isoc.113). Following Sopater’s lead, we should not imagine inflexible generic barriers separating encomium from judicial defence.114 Encomium is capable of supporting apologia, perhaps even an apologia before a democratic court. I will return later in this chapter to the question of whether Isoc. . – could have been presented before an Athenian democratic court. For the moment we can only note that although some democratic presentations are characterized by a tension with regard to the role of the leading individual in the city, an encomium of Alcibiades allegedly presented before a democratic jury stretches to its limits the space allowed to the glorification of individuals in the 110 RG . . –. See Russell (: –). The rhetorical principle involved here is ‘great men and doers of great deeds should be made to speak in a way that matches their reputation’ (RG . ). 111 RG . . –, cf. . . –. 112 Sopater’s commentary on the rhetorical handbook of Hermogenes, RG . –. The passage in question: RG . –. 113 Note the strong overlap in the themes in both Sopater texts with those of Isoc. : Alcibiades’ ancestors who overthrew the tyrants and established the democracy (RG . . –); Pericles; and his father Cleinias including his death at Coronea. 114 On ancient classification of rhetoric and its grey areas, cf. Russell (: –).

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city. This adds weight to the suspicion aroused by the analysis of the previous section that changes were made to the speech when it was prepared for publication.

PART B: The Speeches and their Significance Having considered the personal political battles which formed the background to the Alcibiades controversy of the s, we can now turn to consider how the speeches strive, through competing rhetorical strategies and invective discourses, to present a view of Alcibiades’ position with regard to the city. Additional rhetorical works can now be drawn in: [And.] , and the two speeches of Alcibiades himself in Thucydides. These texts have an even greater claim to be classed as ‘artificial’, type (b) published speeches, as defined above, than the speeches considered in Part A, but despite their differences of purpose, focus, and intended audience, they are still ‘civic’ texts, concerned with the rhetorical presentation of Alcibiades in democratic Athens. The controversies, rhetorical techniques, and ideological perspectives which they share make it both legitimate and profitable to examine them together. This does not mean that these speeches are necessarily related intertextually. As we saw above, Lys.  responds to Isoc. . The author of [And.]  seems to have been familiar with Thucydides, but evidence for a connection with the other speeches is meagre. Might Isoc.  and the Thucydides speeches be related? It has sometimes been suggested that Isocrates had read, and was influenced by, Thucydides.115 In the case of Isoc.  and the Alcibiades speeches in Thucydides, a direct relationship cannot be proven.116 The overlaps which can be detected are just as likely to owe their origin to a common tradition of Alcibiades speeches—or a common response to a particular sort of rhetorical situation—as they are to direct intertextuality.117 115 On this question see, in addition to the bibliography in Nowack (:  n. ): Bodin (); Hudson-Williams (); Treves (); Nouhaud (: –). 116 Schultze (: –), meticulously tabulates all comparable passages. 117 It is, however, interesting to note the points of contact between the historical detail in Isoc.  (unusually full for an Athenian judicial speech, though perhaps this is only to be expected in this case), and the narrative of Thucydides, despite the distortions of the orator: Alcibiades’ negotiation with the leaders of the   revolution (Isoc. . ; Thuc. . . ); the importance of his reconciling tendency in 

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Nor do I mean to imply the existence, in the fourth century, of a ‘genre’ of Alcibiades speeches. It is, however, true that Alcibiades’ career was evidently found particularly amenable to rhetorical treatment and would continue to be treated in speeches until late antiquity. It was not just that Alcibiades had encouraged debate in terms of polarized viewpoints118 (compare the last scene of Frogs, for example, or Xenophon’s description of the return of Alcibiades to Athens in  119). It was also that the life of Alcibiades had been articulated by great rhetorical moments of accusation and defence: the ostracism of Hyperbolus, the Sicilian debate, his appearance before the Spartans in  , the return of Alcibiades to the fleet in , his return to Athens in  . Both speeches of Alcibiades in Thucydides (or all three if we count . . –) are speeches of self-defence.120 They are a contribution to a body of Alcibiades rhetoric which not only presented a glamorous figure against the background of a classic dilemma—the conflict between a great individual and a great city—but illustrated key strategies of personal defence and attack, encomium and invective. . ’     It was normal to address an Athenian jury as though they were the demos of Athens, by means of an ideologically approved secondperson plural: (‘you’, the demos, the city of Athens). In post-  speeches like Lys.  and Isoc. , the jury can also be addressed as though they were identical with the exiled group of democrats of – 121 (as in ‘when you expelled the Thirty and returned to Athens’). This form of address thus excludes those citizens of uncertain status who stayed within the city or refused to fight on its behalf,122 as well as those oligarchical enemies of the constitution who tried to enslave the city.123 A key claim of the prosecution case (Isoc. . , ; Thuc. . . –); his turning-back of the Phoenician ships (Isoc. . , ; a more sceptical Thuc. . ). 118 Cf. Nouhaud (:  ff.). 119 Frogs –; Xen. HG . . –. 120 Cf. Macleod (: ). 121 Isoc. . –; Lys. . –. ‘You’ also condemned Alcibiades to death (Lys. . ); Alcibiades’ sufferings were undertaken on behalf of ‘you’ (Isoc. . –). 122 Like Teisias: Isoc. . , . 123 Strauss (: –) and Ober (: –) see the post-Amnesty years as particularly characterized by faction and class tension. On post-war trials of public figures in the context of the Amnesty see Cloché (). For conspicuous attempts to exploit bad feeling resulting from the stasis: see And. . ; Lys. . , . –.

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of Lys.  is that Alcibiades (and his son and whole family) are to be identified with this last group of anti-citizens (identified as ‘they’), while a defence of Alcibiades such as Isoc.  maintains that he is to be identified with the (exiled) demos. These versions of Alcibiades’ position with regard to the city are supported by competing, indeed polarized, accounts of his public career. Since Alcibiades is a clear member of the élite of birth, Isocrates in Isoc.  is not able—and does not wish—to portray him as an actual member of the demos. Instead, he maintains by rhetorical sleight-of-hand, and simply by lying, that Alcibiades always had the same friends and enemies as the demos, and experienced the same good and bad fortune with them, and thus that he was well disposed to the demos (§§ , ), or a ‘friend’ of the demos (as were his ancestors from whom he inherited this friendship—§ ). The men responsible for the performance of the Mysteries and Mutilation of the Herms in   are, it is claimed, identical to the oligarchs of   and the men responsible for the exile of Alcibiades (§§ –, ). Later, the oligarchs of   were also the enemies of Alcibiades (§ –): his exile at their hands identifies him with the exiled ‘demos’. Important here is the use of the word µ (misfortunes), a term which had become strongly associated with the events of – ,124 to describe Alcibiades’ own experience (§§ , ). Alcibiades was responsible for the reestablishment of the rightful constitution in   (§ ), and would have restored it again in  , had not his death at the hands of Lysander and the Thirty made him a virtual martyr to the democratic city (§ ). Alcibiades was the only one during the years of stasis who had ‘your’ interests at heart; he found himself in danger ‘partly at your hands, partly because of you, partly on your behalf, partly with you’ (§ ). In contrast, the membership of the prosecutor Teisias of the City group in –  and his links with the Thirty call into question his ability to identify himself with the constitution and the demos of Athens (§§ –). Whereas Isoc.  claimed that Alcibiades preferred to undergo any danger whatsoever with the city than enjoy good fortune with the Spartans (§ ), Lys. .  argues that his flight to Thrace in   shows that he would rather be a citizen of any other city than his own. The ostracism of Alcibiades’ ancestors shows that an 124 Lys. . , . . Cf. Lévy (: –). µ implies a merging of defeat and stasis into a single experience, as well as a willingness to forget.

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‘ancestral enmity’ has been inherited by Alcibiades towards the demos, and by the demos towards Alcibiades (§§ –).125 Alcibiades betrayed Athens to the Spartans (§§ –), and the fleet to Lysander in   (§ ). Since this last event brought on the regime of the Thirty, the speaker claims that all those in the jury who feel angry with the Thirty should consider Alcibiades responsible. (Because Alcibiades was known to have been exiled by the Thirty, it was impossible to claim that he was directly identifiable with them.) Alcibiades’ degenerate opposition to the city is closely linked to his impiety towards the gods (§ —though there is not as much emphasis on the Herms and Mysteries affair as we might have expected126). The portrayal of Alcibiades in these speeches is related to the ideological concerns of the s. In Isoc. , Alcibiades seems to embody the ideal of ‘concord’ ( µ ) which was central to the ideology of the restored democracy.127 Taking command of the fleet in  , and finding oligarchs opposed to democrats and city opposed to fleet (§§ –), he restored the constitution to the demos and reconciled the citizens (§ ),128 thus anticipating the events of  . Hence when Teisias undertakes to get vengeance for past actions (§ ), he again demonstrates the opposite sort of behaviour to Alcibiades. The speaker of Lys. , in his portrayal of Alcibiades as the declared enemy of Athens, goes so far as to accuse him of being behind the defeat at Aegospotami, suggesting that he betrayed the fleet to Lysander together with Adeimantus (. ).129 This charge, which comes as the culmination of the accusations against Alcibiades (where it can hide behind more substantiated allegations) looks more like the ultimate move in a rhetorical strategy which directly associates Alcibiades with all the city’s misfortunes

125 Cf. Demosthenes’ description (. ) of Meidias as the common enemy of the state ( ). 126 Contrast the reasonably extensive treatment in Isoc. . –. 127 Cf. Lys. . –; Isoc. . ; And. . ; Lévy (: –). 128 Cf. Thuc. . . – on the importance of Alcibiades’ reconciling effect in  . 129 Adeimantus had been spared by Lysander after the battle (Xen. HG . . ). Conon’s later prosecution of him on charges relating to their shared generalship (Dem. . ) was presumably closely linked to the allegation that he had betrayed the fleet.

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than a seriously intended accusation. Significantly, it is not further developed or referred to elsewhere in the speech.130 As usual, Isoc.  presents the very opposite picture of Alcibiades’ position in the city. He and his ancestors (§§ –) are set up as figures who established democracy, and founded the empire131 (note especially § , where their leadership of the ‘democratic’ exiles from the Peisistratid tyrants is described in language recalling the democratic exile of  ). Whereas Lys.  unites in Alcibiades the overthrower of the constitution of Athens and the destroyer of her external power, in Isoc.  internal unity created by Alcibiades’ leadership in   results in military victory under his generalship (§§ –). The speaker claims that the Spartans realized that there was no point in destroying the walls of Athens in   unless they also got rid of the man capable of rebuilding them (§ ). It is natural that the death of Alcibiades, betrayed like her by his oligarchic enemies, should follow shortly on the disaster suffered by Athens at Aegospotami. More than just the past is at stake here: by linking Alcibiades and his family to the ancestral constitution and the great days of empire, Isoc.  associates him with the aspirations of Athens in the s. Important here is the claim that Alcibiades was capable of rebuilding the walls, a potent symbol of Athenian power and independence and the loss of it.132 For Lys. , on the other hand, Alcibiades is the destroyer of the walls (§ ). There is no need to see a partypolitical point here (Isocrates’ presentation of Alcibiades does not, for example, imply a controversial imperialist position): the rebuilding of the walls and the re-establishment of Athenian power was seen as a natural consequence of the restoration of democracy. These polarized presentations of Alcibiades thus function not only as a way of testing the authority of those individuals who had or had not supported him in the previous decade, but also as a focus of the debate within Athens about the significance of past events and responsibility for them, and about the recovery of internal political stability and external power.133 130 The idea of a ‘stab in the back’ never became dominant in Athenian accounts of the loss of the war, though cf. Lys. . , alleging the badness ( ) of the generals as a reason for the defeat at Aegospotami. Cf. also Lévy (: –). 131 For the ideological link between democracy and empire, see e.g. Hdt. . . 132 Cf. Funke (: ); Lys. . ; And. . . 133 Cf. in general Strauss (: –).

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A focal point for these speeches’ polarized presentation of Alcibiades’ position in the city is his élite aristocratic status. The position of an élite in a democratic city was always an uneasy one. But in the s the élite of birth, the traditional aristocratic families of Athens, seem to have come under particular pressure, as a result of the taint arising from the association of many of their leading members with the affairs of the Herms and Mysteries and with the regimes of the Four Hundred and the Thirty. Thus Mantitheus in Lys. , accused at an official scrutiny of serving with the cavalry of the Thirty, feels it necessary to defend his aristocratic manners and to dissociate himself from the rest of the hippeis group (. , –). The accuser of the aristocratic Lochites on a charge of hybristic assault urges the jury (Isoc. . –) not to wait until Lochites and men like him again seize power and establish a second regime of the Thirty, but to destroy them at the first sign of hybristic behaviour. According to Xenophon (HG . . ), the Athenian decision to send  hippeis to join Agesilaus in Asia in   was partly motivated by a desire to remove them from the city:134 Xenophon’s hostile gloss suggests a background of considerable tension. The charge made against Socrates of corrupting the young, which focused attention on Socrates’ aristocratic associates and their anti-democratic misdeeds, is also relevant here. In Lys. , the cooked-up charge of serving illegally with the hippeis is designed to exploit this antipathy (compare . : he did not have enough friendship to the demos to face danger with ‘us’ hoplites). Once again, the use of pronouns is important. ‘Ideologically approved’ second persons indicating the demos (‘you’) are contrasted with a group of opponents (‘they, them’). The vagueness of this third person is used to great rhetorical effect. Sometimes it suggests the defendant and his powerful supporters (e.g. § ), sometimes the defendant together with his father and whole corrupt family (§§ , , –). By natural extension it can also designate the oligarchs of   (§ ), who are regarded as coextensive with Alcibiades and his corrupt colleagues.135 The rhetorical effectiveness of this vague third person lies in its ability 134 ‘Thinking that it would be to the advantage of the demos if they were to leave Athens and be killed’: on this and other signs of hostility to the hippeis following  , see Strauss (: ); Ober (: ); Spence (: –); Donlan (: –, discussing Lys. ). 135 Alcibiades is equated with the oligarchic exiles who joined the Spartans at Decelea: Carey (: ).

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to suggest all of these together, an indeterminate group of corrupt aristocrats and enemies of the demos.136 After accusing Alcibiades of fighting more often against the city than with it, the speaker claims: ‘For these actions it is your duty and the duty of future generations to take vengeance on them whenever you catch one’ (. ). ‘Such men’ says the speaker, recalling the words of the accuser of Lochites quoted above, should be regarded by everyone as common enemies (§ ). This strategy of grammatical objectification, which relies on the identification of the speaker’s enemies with those of the city, reaches its height in the peroration (§§ –): The speaker asks: Why should one spare such men many of whom have prostituted themselves, while others have slept with their own sisters, or had children by their own daughters, and others again have performed the Mysteries and mutilated the Herms, and committed impiety towards all the gods and crimes against the whole city, behaving in a wicked and illicit way both towards other citizens and towards themselves? (. )

Here, the third persons suggest not just the family of Alcibiades, but the whole Athenian élite of birth, with their typically aristocratic abuses (paranomia in their sexual relations, marriage to close relatives, impiety). Elsewhere too, the speech identifies aristocratic behaviour with a lifestyle of depravity, treachery, and a lack of moral standards. The claim that the depraved lifestyle of Alcibiades IV was motivated by a desire to emulate his ancestors (§ ) parodies aristocratic ideals of competitive excellence: only by acting in this way, maintains the speaker, did Alcibiades IV think he could become outstanding (lampros—a word with strong overtones of aristocratic display137). ‘They’ are said (§ , compare § ) to have reached such a state that they are ashamed of (what is fine and noble), while making what is base the object of their philotimia (the élite competitive urge): a complete reversal of normal moral values. The jury are invited to regard the aristocratic code as simple depravity (§§ , , ), as a cover for a way of life 136 A similar divisive use of pronouns is practised by Alcibiades in his speeches in Thucydides. In the speech to the Spartans, ‘we’ is used to distinguish Alcibiades and his aristocratic ancestors from the rest of the city (. ), which is associated with the ‘acknowledged madness’ of the democracy. Again, Alcibiades’ Olympic victory magnifies the glory of ‘my ancestors’ (. . ). Thus the aristocratic élite is grammatically and conceptually set apart from the rest of the city. 137 On lamprotes and its aristocratic connotations see Connor (:  n. ,  n. ). Cf. also Eur. Supp. ; Dem. . .

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which sets this élite apart from and against not only the Athenian demos, but gods and men. Lys.  attacks the very basis of the appeal to aristocratic status which characterizes Isoc.  and Thuc. . . Why, asks the speaker of Lys. . , should ‘they’ be spared because of their birth when ‘we’ do not have the ability to appeal to the deeds of our ancestors, great and glorious as they are, whenever we find our lives in danger in battle as a result of ‘their’ akosmia (‘lack of order’)?— the final word combines the treason of Alcibiades, the failure of his son to take his place with the other hoplites, and the decadent lifestyle of them both. The aristocratic status of the Athenian demos, a claim typical of the Funeral Oration, is thus turned into a weapon against the speaker’s élite opponents. Given the possibility of a negative exploitation of membership of the birth élite like that of Lys. , we might have expected Isoc.  to play down those things which separated Alcibiades from the demos. In fact, Alcibiades could hardly be more set apart from the demos audience who are (supposedly) being addressed than he is in this speech. He is presented as born into the very top of the élite of birth (§ : the claim that Alcibiades’ paternal genos was the aristocraticsounding Eupatrids appears to be an attempt misleadingly to exaggerate the aristocratic status of the family138). He was motivated by an aristocratic desire to emulate his ancestors (§ ), and married into the very richest and most distinguished of Athenian families (§ ). His decision to compete in the chariot event at the Olympics (a natural expression of aristocratic ambition) was motivated not by any lack of athletic ability, but by an awareness that only in this event could he be sure of competing only against the µ , the most aristocratic and wealthy, and not against any common types (§§ –). The speaker does not shrink from emphasizing Alcibiades’ position ‘outside’ and independent of the city: when accepted by the city as leader, he is distinguished from it by the unbridgeable gap of aristocatic prestige and wealth; when rejected by it, he is powerful enough on his own to set himself against it. Whereas for the speaker of Lys.  the tradition represented by Alcibiades and his family puts them into the position of civic pariahs, Isoc.  presents a picture of an élite individual of 138 Cf. APF –; Thomas (: ). Alcibiades probably belonged to the genos Salaminioi. The closeness of Alcibiades’ relationship to Cleisthenes, the author of the reforms, is also exaggerated (APF ).

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such exaggerated distinction that he seems to be no longer capable of being incorporated in the city. It is possible that this exaggerated presentation of the élite individual is associated with a later revision of the speech which has made it incompatible with the occasion and audience for which it was originally composed.139 But can we be sure that such a presentation is inconceivable before a demos audience? The tension between the democratic sentiments expressed by an élite speaker and his deliberate attempts to stress his special position within the city is a characteristic feature of Athenian civic oratory (even if not normally to this extent). Élite speakers regularly broadcast their status and achievements to demos audiences: claims that these were perfomed ‘for’, and demonstrated friendship towards, the demos, only emphasize the separation of the élite speakers and demos audience.140 Such claims suggest a tension fundamental to Athenian ideology, a democratic ideology which glorifies aristocratic forms.141 One of the most conspicuous examples of deliberate flaunting of aristocratic symbols before a demos audience is Thuc. . . Like Isoc. , this speech is set against the background of the status conferred upon Alcibiades by his unprecedented Olympic success. Buoyed up by this extraordinary victory, Alcibiades makes no attempt to present the relationship between the élite individual and his demos audience in the traditional terms of solidarity and friendship: the demos is excluded from participation in Alcibiades’ achievements and values, except to the extent that it is allowed to bathe in his reflected glory. Far from playing down or concealing his position of inequality in the city, Alcibiades claims it as the right of a man like him, ‘thinking greatly, not to be put on a level with 139 For Rauchenstein (:  ff.), Blass (–: i.  and ii. ), and Carey (), the unacceptability of Isoc.  before a democratic audience was a decisive indication that it could not have been delivered in its present form. 140 e.g. Is. . –, . ; Lys. . –: for more examples, Dover (: –). Cf. Wilson (: ): ‘The rhetoric which aims to bring him [the élite speaker] nearer to the demos and its sympathies in so doing unavoidably points to the ineradicable social and economic gulf separating them.’ In general on the survival of ‘élitist’ attitudes and practice in Athens, cf. Seager (). 141 Cf. Loraux (: esp.  ff.). Loraux notes (p. ) ‘the contradiction [i.e. between democratic speech and aristocratic representations, though contradiction is surely the wrong word] seems to have affected not only the oration but the city itself’. In Plato’s version of the Funeral Oration the democracy is actually an ‘aristocracy’ (Men. c).



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others’, and tells his demos audience that they must simply put up with his superior status (. . ): In Isoc. , it is at least claimed (§ ) that though considered powerful enough to make himself tyrant, Alcibiades was committed to being on a level of political equality with everyone else. Thucydides’ Alcibiades, on the other hand, simply flaunts his aristocratic ancestry and lamprotes (‘outstanding brilliance’). In the case of Thuc. .  we know that the sentiments were not composed by an Athenian politician for a demos audience, but by a historian who wished (. ) to present a figure who was perceived as tyrannical. It is an example of ‘characterizing speech’, aimed precisely at illustrating how the individual of extraordinary status and ambition crosses the border between civic adulation and civic rejection.142 Nevertheless, the speech also suggests precisely how narrow this border could be, and how easily a presentation emphasizing status-traits which a demos audience would admire could become unacceptable or even alarming and anti-civic. Athenian ideology, for example in the Funeral Oration, was founded on the right of access for all citizens to the aristocratic, rather than the demand that the élite should show their equality to the demos by abandoning their traditional symbols. Thus Thucydides’ Alcibiades, justifying his own position of superiority over his audience, reminds them that they too look down on others as inferior to themselves: in so doing, he invites them to share in the aristocratic élitism he himself so conspicuously demonstrates (Thuc. . . ). Indeed, a feature of these speeches is the paradoxical presentation of ‘aristocratic’ features in a ‘democratic’ way, as when (Isoc. . ) Alcibiades is eulogized by his son for having inherited from his ancestors an ancient and noble (and thus aristocratic) friendship for the demos, or as in the examples of ‘democratic encomium’ considered above. If the tension between the élite status of the speaker and democratic ideology appears to be strained to breaking-point in these speeches, this may be owing to the pressure put on it by Alcibiades himself and his son, as well as to a later reworking of the speeches. Just as we saw the difficulty of sundering encomium from democratic apologia, so here aristocratic symbols and democratic ideology are bound together, without 142 Cf. Cornford (: ): ‘it seems very unlikely that Alcibiades at such a moment would have actually used language so offensively boastful’.

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presenting any seams or joins where we could begin to separate an original democratic presentation from a reworking of the text.143 .    One of the focuses of the debate in the speeches about Alcibiades’ position in the city is the interpretation of his actions against the city after his exile in  . Both Isoc. . – and Thuc. .  offer a defence of Alcibiades’ collaboration with the Spartans. This defence has often been misunderstood. For some, Alcibiades’ conduct is unpatriotic and clearly indefensible: the Thucydides passage must therefore be treated as simple sophistry,144 while the comparison of Alcibiades to the democratic exiles of –  in Isoc.  is taken as further evidence that the speech could never have been delivered before a democratic audience.145 For others, Alcibiades’ conduct and the way he seeks to defend it are evidence that the Greeks were fundamentally lacking in patriotic virtue.146 Most recently, Herman147 has argued that Alcibiades’ civic treachery is defensible in terms of the non-civic morality of xenia, guestfriendship. Refreshing though such an approach is, it too is misleading: nowhere (not even in Alcibiades’ speech to the Spartans in Thuc. ) is there any suggestion that Alcibiades’ cooperation with the Spartans after his exile had anything to do with, or could be justified in terms of, a tie of loyalty to the Spartans, or any individual Spartan. All these approaches ignore the fundamental point that Alcibiades had already been exiled before he began to act against Athens. An individual driven into exile by his enemies was no longer faced with the simple moral imperative of loyalty to the city. 143 As Bruns (: –) thought he could distinguish an original judicial speech to which encomiastic elements had been added. 144 Westlake (: –); Dover in HCT iv. ; Pouncey (: ). 145 Rauchenstein (:  ff.); Nowack (: ). 146 Pusey () and Chroust () pose the question ‘Were the Greeks (including Alcibiades in his famous comment in Thucydides) patriotic?’ and come to the conclusion that they were not. The claim that the Greeks were not patriotic in our sense would appear to be correct. But the term ‘patriotism’ tends to conceal the complexity of ties of loyalty that Greek citizens felt to each other and to the polis (cf. Goldhill : ), and is not a particularly useful interpretative tool in the context of classical Athenian society. 147 (: –, –); cf. Cartledge (: ).

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His exile weakened the demands of loyalty,148 and, from a personal point of view, imposed on him the duty of avenging himself on his enemies and winning a return to his city. Evagoras, in Isocrates’ Evagoras –, driven into exile by his enemies, was not humbled in spirit as others might have been, but showed such greatness of spirit that, rejecting the shame of exile, he did not cease from his exertions until he had won a return to Salamis, coming to the aid of his friends, avenging himself on his enemies, and establishing himself as tyrant. Elsewhere, Isocrates presents Alcibiades’ actions (Philip –) in exactly the same terms: unlike others, Alcibiades in his exile was not cowed by the size of the city, but determined to make war on Athens and secure a return by force. The decision not to accept exile, but to force a return, particularly when viewed from a more personal, rather than a civic point of view, was admirable, a sign of a great and uncompromising character.149 Clearly, a defence purely in these terms was not likely to be successful before an Athenian court. The jurors who had sworn to uphold the laws of the city could not accept that Alcibiades’ personal moral duty to avenge himself on his enemies and win a return was alone capable of justifying the harm he did to the city. Thus the defence of Alcibiades in Isoc.  has to bring in other pleas. To encourage the jurors to understand and forgive ( µ — . ) his father’s actions, the speaker encourages them to adopt Alcibiades’ point of view. He asks the jury to remember how they felt and what they did in their own exile under the Thirty (§§ –). It is important to note that he does not actually compare Alcibiades’ exile to that of the jurors: he merely encouages them to think of Alcibiades’ experience in terms of their own. The acceptability of this argument in a democratic context is linked to the identification of the enemies of Alcibiades responsible for his exile with the oligarchic enemies of the city (§§ –), so that both Alcibiades and the democrats of   can be seen as involved in a similar attempt to liberate the city from their (and its) natural ene148 This is the implication of [And.] .  (ostracizing someone only allows them to carry on acting against the city with more justice) and Isoc. .  (Teisias did not have the excuse of being exiled to justify his actions against the city). Cf. Isoc. . : ‘you should not start judging what sort of citizen my father was from the time when the city was no longer his concern’. 149 Aristotle (Post. An. . , b) sees Alcibiades’ decision to make war on Athens as a sign of his megalopsuchia, a mark of ‘inability to bear dishonour’ comparable to the wrath of Achilles.

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mies. The jury are reminded that passive acceptance of exile may be equally wrong (as in the Evagoras and Philip): the demos too found fault with those exiles of –  who did not attempt to harm their country in an attempt to get it back. Important also, however, is a second and complementary strategy: a rhetorical presentation of the facts which emphasizes the reluctance of Alcibiades to act against the city.150 Alcibiades had suffered gross provocation (§§ –): conspiracy behind his back, sentence of exile pronounced in his absence, curses and persecution heaped on him even after his exile. He took every possible measure before he was finally compelled to co-operate with the Spartans (§ ): the alleged period spent in Argos before moving to Sparta151 is very important here. Likewise Xenophon (HG . . –) attributes to Alcibiades’ defenders the claim that Alcibiades had only paid court to the Spartans because he was compelled by the illegal behaviour of his enemies as well as by the despair and constant danger associated with his exile. It is very important for Isoc.  to show that Alcibiades’ actions in his exile were not aimed primarily at damaging Athens, but at winning a return to the city, and avenging himself upon his enemies.152 Thus it is claimed (§ ) that after his return to the fleet at Samos, his actions on Athens’ behalf made it clear to everyone that he had been making war on those who had exiled him (who, as we have seen, are identified with the oligarchic enemies of the demos) and not on ‘you’. Defending himself on the same charges, though this time before an audience of Spartans, Thucydides’ Alcibiades makes a similar defence (Thuc. . . ). He had not turned against his country, but was seeking to get it back, and his actions were directed not against Athens, but against those responsible for his exile.153 As in Isoc. , 150 Cf. the defence of Nicias in Lys. . –: Nicias was the author of many benefits to the city; where he appeared to have brought disaster, he was compelled against his own will, and bore the suffering himself. 151 The time in Argos is also reported by Isocrates (. ), by Plutarch (Alc. . ), and by Nepos (Alc. ), who sends Alcibiades to Elis and Thebes—but significantly not by Thucydides. 152 Cf. Nepos, Alc. . : ‘he made war, as he himself was accustomed to say, not on his native land, but on his personal enemies, because these were the enemies of the city’. 153 Alcibiades’ concern is apparently not only that he will appear to be unpatriotic, but that the Spartans will see his advice as motivated by simple hate against his former polis ( µ —. . ), and for that reason refuse to follow it.

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154) is not the Alcibiades claims that the true patriot ( person who refuses to attack his country, but the one who exerts every effort to return to it (. . ). But whereas in Isoc.  the enemies responsible for Alcibiades’ exile were the oligarchical enemies of the city, in the Thucydides speech these enemies have already been identified as the ‘radical’ democratic leaders (. . ). In these circumstances, to win a return to Athens and avenge himself on his enemies implies a constitutional change to the disadvantage of democracy, the strategy actually employed by Alcibiades in   (Thuc. . . ). We are thus presented with two similar defences, centring on the right, or even duty, of the exile to attempt a return to the city, and to seek vengeance on his enemies. Once this premiss is established, Alcibiades’ actions against the city can be seen as admirable, rather than treacherous. Since he actually achieved his aim, an individual acting alone against a whole city, they can also be seen as the sign of a great nature. The massaging of the identity of the enemies of Alcibiades to suit the audience is subsidiary to this main argument. Alcibiades does not claim ‘the right to define and identify the state of Athens in terms of his own political evaluation’,155 i.e. in terms of oligarchy or democracy (despite his remarks about the acknowledged folly of democracy, designed primarily to please the Spartans). Rather, he claims the right to avenge himself on his personal enemies and secure a return. Moreover, this attempt to win back his stake in the city is seen as a true commitment to it and thus as ‘patriotism’. For Alcibiades, the city is the place where he can ‘safely exercise [his] rights as a citizen’ (Thuc. . . ). His definition of the city is thus personal rather than political. Thucydides supports the view that Alcibiades’ actions in exile were aimed at securing a return to Athens: ‘he knew that if he did not destroy the city, the time would come when he might persuade the Athenians to recall him from exile’ (. . ). The implication is apparently that although Alcibiades was aiming at a return to Athens, he did not much care what harm he did to her in the meantime. This underlines the purely personal nature of Alcibiades’ agenda after his exile. If there is sophistry in Alcibiades’ speech to the Spartans, it lies in his labelling of this purely personal agenda as . Even Isoc.  does not go so far as to describe 154 155

On the word and its origins, see Connor (: –). Cartledge (: –).

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Alcibiades’ action against Athens as actual ‘patriotism’. Alcibiades’ claim to be inspired by a love of Athens is just as transparent as his claim to be acting according to democratic or oligarchic convictions. In fact, Alcibiades did not much care what sort of constitution prevailed at Athens, so long as it was favourable to his own designs (cf. Thuc. . . ). Alcibiades’ over-subtle language in his speech to the Spartans (note the artificial and deceptive series of antitheses in . ) tends, when stripped of its rhetorical dressing, to reveal nakedly egotistical goals.156 In contrast to the defences of Alcibiades in Thucydides and Isoc. , Lys.  claims that Alcibiades was motivated simply by disloyalty and immorality. His flight to Thrace in   shows that he had no desire to live in Athens (§ ), except to the extent that, like the oligarchs of  , he wished to come back and be tyrant over it (§ ). By representing Alcibiades’ collaboration with the Spartans as a simple handing-over of the sort of secrets any Athenian citizen might know (§ ), the speaker makes it equivalent to an act of prodosia (treachery), a straightforward moral offence in which the safety of the city is sold to the enemy for base personal gain. Alcibiades’ behaviour is no longer suggestive of possibly admirable dunamis (personal power) or a burning sense of personal honour, but is a simple case of moral degeneracy. .

BIOS



EPITEDEUMATA

In all the speeches considered in this chapter, Alcibiades is defended and accused not just in terms of his public actions, but also in terms of his ‘personal’ life, in particular his moral behaviour (particularly in regard to the body and control of pleasure), relations with philoi (including friends and relatives), and conspicuous expenditure (particularly at the Olympic games). These, just as much as his public actions, are taken as evidence of his attitude towards the civic and position in the city. As we have seen (above, Chapter ) Thucydides saw Alcibiades’ way of life (epitedeumata— ‘practices’) as the cause of the hostility of the Athenians and his eventual downfall. In Isoc. , after dealing with Alcibiades’ military career, the speaker continues:

156

Macleod (: –); cf. Ch.  below.

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Regarding his achievements as general, I know that I am leaving many things out . . . But they are also slandering the rest of his bios in a particularly insulting and outspoken way . . . Perhaps it is silly to pay attention to all their charges. Nevertheless I am particularly keen to go through for you the way of life [epitedeumata] of my father. (see . , )

He then proceeds to give a history of Alcibiades’ birth, youth, marriage, and Olympic competition (§§ –). Again, Lys.  attacks not only the crimes committed by Alcibiades father and son against the city but also (§§ –, –) their private poneria (‘immorality’): here too, public career and personal behaviour are separated in the presentation, though a clear conceptual distinction between the two is not made. [And.]  founds its invective on a presentation of Alcibiades’ bios (§ ), almost wholly omitting discussion of his public career. The speaker seems to signal the fact that his presentation is unusual in this regard (§§ , ). All three speeches proceed from the principle that a figure’s civic morality may be read from his personal morality, that an analysis of what we would regard as Alcibiades’ personal life will reveal what sort of citizen he was. The terms bios and epitedeumata157 suggest a conception of a person’s moral character as a unity evidenced and exemplified in characteristic action of various sorts both public and private. Where the significance of Alcibiades’ public career was disputed, it was natural to turn to his bios to determine the sort of man he really was. [And.]  relies almost exclusively on a presentation of Alcibiades’ personal life to argue that he is unacceptable as a citizen. The speech can be seen as a rhetorical exploitation of the suspicion aroused by Alcibiades’ lifestyle, which is described by Thucydides in . . Though Alcibiades survived the ostracism which forms the occasion of [And.] , similar allegations arising from his personal life helped bring about his exile in connection with the Herms and Mysteries affair not long afterwards and again in  . The speech is worth examining in detail. The central invective section of [And.]  begins and ends with the theme of Alcibiades’ relations with the allied cities (§§ – tribute reassessment, §  subsidies of Alcibiades by the allied cities at Olympia). Between these two points, the presentation of 157 Cf. [And.] . : ‘he who should have been put to death for his epitedeumata, is chosen by you as public prosecutor’.

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Alcibiades’ conduct starts from his personal life and works gradually to the international level: his treatment of his family (his wife and Callias, §§ –) is followed by that of free non-citizens (Agatharchus, §§ –), and then of citizens (Taureas, §§ –). This last incident in particular, in which Alcibiades strikes his rival before the archons, the citizens, and ‘all the Greeks’ (§ ), already shows the implications of his private conduct for the political integrity of the city itself (the judges award the prize to Alcibiades in view of his dunamis and invulnerability), and for Athens’ position with regard to the other Greeks. These themes are developed in the next stories. Alcibiades’ fathering of a child by a slave from captured Melos (§§ –) is used to show how private paranomia endangers the whole city: just as Thyestes’ union with his own daughter resulted in the birth of Aegisthus, who overthrew the Argive state, Alcibiades’ sexual licence also breaks into the public sphere, for the son of his union with the Melian must also be a danger to the city itself (§§ –). This melodramatic exploitation of a theme from tragedy leads on directly to the first explicit statement that Alcibiades represents a threat of tyranny (§ ). Alcibiades’ real-life transgression is made directly comparable to the horrifying transgression of the norms and rules of the civilized community characteristic of the figures of the tragic stage.158 In the stories concerning Alcibiades’ competition and attendance at the Olympic games (§§ –), the same sort of behaviour that he demonstrated towards his family and other citizens is now directed against the city itself before the eyes of the other Greeks. His appropriation of Diomedes’ chariot-team by means of his illicit influence with the Olympic officials (recalling the outcome of the Taureas episode) is used as a demonstration of his power to the other Greeks, especially Athens’ allies (§§ –). That Alcibiades intended this action as a display of hybris towards the whole state is shown by a further story, his appropriation of the city’s sacred processional vessels (§ ), this time the belongings not of an individual, but of the city itself. Finally, just as his demonstrations of power against his fellow citizens went unpunished in Athens, so now his shameful, slave-like treatment of the allied cities, whom he 158 [Andocides’] implicit connection between Alcibiades’ anti-civic ‘performance’ as choregos in the Taureas episode, and his replaying ‘tragic’ roles in his private life is analysed by Wilson (). In both cases, the civic implications of Alcibiades’ ‘private’ paranomia are particularly clear.

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used to supply his wants at Olympia as though he were the Persian king, goes unpunished by all the Greeks (§§ –). The arguments of the central invective are thus arranged in a crescendo from the domestic to the international, culminating in a presentation of Alcibiades’ greatest triumph and strongest card, his Olympic appearance, as his most shameful act. (The arrangement is also broadly chronological, with the Olympics, which took place shortly before the dramatic date of the speech, coming last.) This movement from apparently private to successively more public actions bears out the speaker’s main thesis, that to understand the real intentions of Alcibiades and his danger to the city, one must look to his personal life.159 ‘I am amazed at those who are convinced that Alcibiades is a lover of democracy—a form of constitution which more than any other would seem to favour equality [ ]—and yet do not consider him from the point of view of his private life [ ]’ (§ ). ‘When someone treats his wife so insultingly and plots to kill his brother-in-law’, asks the speaker (§ ), ‘what sort of conduct can we expect from him towards the citizens with whom he has dealings?’ The insulting behaviour of Alcibiades towards his wife is symptomatic of the same fundamental behaviour-pattern of hybris and paranomia seen in his shameful handling of his fellow citizens and, ultimately, of whole cities. Alcibiades’ bios and epitedeumata are those of the man who cannot rule himself or be ruled, of the anti-civic figure, the tyrant, who must be removed from the city by ostracism.160 In the same way, Lys. . – sets the appalling behaviour of Alcibiades and his family towards one another side by side with his crimes against the city, claiming ‘their immorality and lawlessness has shown itself not only in their behaviour towards others as citizens, but also in their attitude towards each other’. Just as in [And.]  Alcibiades insults his wife and plans to kill his brother-in-law Callias161 (§§ –), in Lys. .  Alcibiades IV has incestuous 159 As often, the reality of a man’s bios is contrasted with the deceptive nature of appearances or words: cf. Leo (: –). 160 The shift from a private failure to control oneself to an attempt to overthrow the public, civic order is seen as an inevitable one: Plato. Rep. e (the tyrannical man). On the necessity of democracies guarding against those displaying an uncivic bios, see Aesch. . , , , cf. . . 161 The subsequent marriage of a daughter of Alcibiades to Callias’ son makes it hard to believe that Alcibiades had really plotted to kill Callias.

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relations with his own sister, leading (once again) to dispute with the family of Callias and divorce. Alcibiades IV betrayed his own father and murdered his own friends, while Alcibiades left his own son to rot in the hands of his enemies (Lys. . –). It will not be surpising if the man who mistreats his philoi also ends up betraying his city, as Alcibiades did. Again, Alcibiades IV’s desertion of his place in the ranks (akosmia), a dereliction of a ‘public’ duty, is a natural offshoot of his own and his father’s moral akosmia (‘lack of self-control’).162 Alcibiades is accused of fathering a child by his own daughter,163 just as [And.]  accuses him of fathering children where it is least appropriate—with the Melian captive. Both orators find it natural to move from sexual paranomia to civic paranomia. In Thucydides too it was ‘the magnitude . . . of Alcibiades’ paranomia towards his own body’ (. . ) which led to the fear that he was aiming at tyranny. In [And.] , as in Thucydides, there is a direct route from Alcibiades’ sexual behaviour to the allegation of aiming at tyranny (§ ). The tyrant is to be identified in the attitude demonstrated by conduct as a whole, including conduct of the most ‘private’ kind. The defence of Alcibiades, on the other hand, presents public and private activity as related expressions of great achievement. Alcibiades’ winning of the hand of Hipparete in marriage (Isoc. . ) is seen as a prize of honour ( ) comparable to the prize of honour Alcibiades received from the city as a reward for his valour in the battle of Potidaea, which the speaker has just described:164 the aristocratic motif from the private sphere, of the rich father choosing the hero from a host of noble suitors,165 is thus set against the public and civic recognition of his valour in battle. The ease with which Alcibiades’ ‘private’ life and his public evaluation are linked is partly a factor of Alcibiades’ own illegitimate confusion of the two spheres, his upsetting of the distinction between individual and city, public and private, so important in democratic Athens.166 This is seen most clearly in [And.] . In Lys. . , , , , . Lys. . : the allegation presumably refers to the story of Lys. frag.  Baiter–Sauppe, and the so-called loidoriai of Antiphon (Ath. . b): see App.  to this chapter. 164 Pindar, Ol. . – also compares the honour of a victory to that of a marriage. 165 Cf. the story of how Alcibiades’ ancestor Megacles won the hand of the daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon (Hdt. . –). 166 Cf. Humphreys (: –). 162 163

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fulfilling the public office of reassessing the tribute, Alcibiades appropriated public funds for his private use (§ ). He is accused (§ ) of believing ‘not that he should obey the laws of the city, but that you should submit himself to his character [ ]’.167 The laws which guarantee the city’s political stability are here supplanted by the character of the individual, in a reversal of the normal pattern of civic behaviour where the citizen submits himself to the laws of the city. The character of the individual replaces the laws of the city, which are like its character168—a dramatic illustration of a ‘tyrannical’ supplanting of the private by the public. The key site for Alcibiades’ supplanting of the city is the Olympic festival,169 where tyrants traditionally demonstrated their power before the other Greeks. In Isoc.  we already find the claim that the number of chariot-teams entered by Alcibiades could not be matched by even the greatest cities, while in the other aspects of his attendance at the festival, ‘his spending was so lavish that the public displays of the other cities seemed less magnificent than his own private display’ (Isoc. . ). The implied subsidiarity of city to individual here, and in Thuc. . , is brought out explicitly in [And.] . Whereas in Isoc. , Alcibiades’ private display eclipses that of other cities, in [And.] , it eclipses that of Athens. Alcibiades dispenses his hospitality from a ‘Persian’ tent, which is ‘twice as large as that of the city’ (§ ). His use of the city’s public and religious property, the processional vessels, as his own, leads the watching Greeks to confuse individual and city: they either assume that the city is using Alcibiades’ own vessels, or despise the city for its subservience to an individual (§ ). Whereas in Thuc. .  Alcibiades had claimed to enhance the prestige of the city, in [And.]  this is seen as the task of the official Athenian delegation, whose display Alcibiades set out to eclipse and whose sacred vessels he purloined. Alcibiades, like the tyrant, appears at the festival to compete not on behalf of the city, but as it were instead of it, the individual thus replacing the community.

167

µ

Cf. Aristoph. Frogs –: (Aeschylus on the topic of Alcibiades) µ

µ ’

,

’

,

no account rear a lion in the city, but if one is reared, then humour his ways’). 168 Cf. Plato, Rep. e–a. 169 On Alcibiades’ Olympic display and its significance, see Ch.  above.

(‘on

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

.     In Isoc. , Alcibiades is depicted as a figure of crucial importance for the city. When working against the city he was able to do it considerable harm. As soon as he was appointed general, he reconciled the citizens and led them to a string of victories. The fortunes of the city can be seen as dependent on Alcibiades whatever attitude the Athenians adopt towards him. If Alcibiades had not been got out of the way in  , the revolution of   could never have taken place; if the Thirty and Lysander had not put Alcibiades to death in  , he would have been capable of rebuilding the walls and restoring the democracy. In the encomiastic presentation of Isoc.  (especially §§ –), Alcibiades is said to stand out from others in every area: birth, military achievement, marriage, and especially (the climax of the narrative) his Olympic victory, which made his contemporaries ‘incapable of being envied’, and left his successors no possibility of doing better than him (§ ). Emphasis is placed on the honours awarded Alcibiades as a proof of his special status in the community: the Olympic victory, the prize of honour at Potidaea (§ ), the gifts of the city on his return in   (§§ –). The encomiastic elements of the speech assist the impression of special status, for the subjects of encomia are generally those whose heroic or cultic status has already been recognized or whose tremendous deeds can be represented as making them worthy of such status.170 Not only Isoc. , but other works of Isocrates (the Busiris and Philip) stress the special status of Alcibiades, which is indicated by the phrase (‘be set apart from the others’),171 an expression suggesting the individual’s outstanding place not just in the community, but also with regard to all his fellow men. As we saw above, Isoc.  emphasized not Alcibiades’ similarities to the demos, but his friendship towards it (e.g. § : ‘it is obvious that he came to the aid of the demos, and he wanted the same constitution as you’). The implication is that Alcibiades had a 170 Suggestions of Evagoras’ more-than-human status: Isoc. Evag. , –, , , . On supposed anticipation by Isocrates of Hellenistic ruler-cults, see Taeger (). 171 Isoc. .  (cf. . ), Bus. . Isocrates uses the phrase elsewhere in encomiastic contexts: Evag. –; Helen . Note also the distinction in Helen  between (‘normal people’) and (‘those greatly set apart’).

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choice about whether to support the existing constitution in a way that other Athenians did not, and possibly even that he as an individual stood in a relationship of equality to the demos,172 their relations being those of individuals or cities with each other (enjoying either friendly or hostile relations). The defence of Alcibiades by his supporters in Xenophon (HG . . –)173 creates a similar impression: Alcibiades was ‘the most powerful of citizens’, who had been plotted against by those less able than him, men whose action towards the city was purely for their own personal benefit, whereas Alcibiades always had the best interests of Athens at heart. He had no reason to upset the existing constitution, since he received from the demos more honour than any of his contemporaries. Alcibiades’ opponents on the other hand, Xenophon continues, maintained that he alone was the cause of the present problems of the city, and he alone was likely to be the cause of the disasters which were feared; repeated use of the word µ (alone) underlines the way even Alcibiades’ enemies, however much they may have hated him, regarded him as having a special status with respect to the city and as capable single-handedly of sending great evils upon it. In Isoc. Philip –, Alcibiades on his own is presented as proud enough and powerful enough to ‘make war on’ ( µ )174 the city of Athens, and alone bring it into confusion. Isocrates could just as easily maintain (in Isoc.  and in the Busiris –) that Alcibiades was the author of great goods for the city: these polarized presentations at least have one thing in common: a recognition of Alcibiades’ extraordinary status and power. According to an idea with a long tradition, the great individual is received by his contemporaries with envy and hostility, and his greatness is recognized only after his death.175 This idea too is expressed in Alcibiades texts: most notably by Alcibiades himself in Thuc. . . .176 In Isoc. . , the speaker notes that it is open to the meanest of men to make insulting ( ) accusations not only against the best of men, but also against the gods. There is 172 Cf. Seager (: ): ‘ µ as a body and as an individual are somehow to be regarded as equals’. 173 On this passage see Canfora (). 174 Cf. Thuc. . . : believing that Alcibiades was aiming at tyranny, the Athenians became his µ . 175 See the references in Lefkowitz (: ). 176 Alcibiades’ use of this figure recalls Pericles’ at Thuc. . , but there it was applied to the city itself.

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a hint that Alcibiades might receive, or be thought worthy of, cultic honours.177 The speaker of Lys. .  claims that the aim of his opponents is to impress the jury with Alcibiades’ crimes against Athens by making them seem like evidence of dunamis (personal influence, unorthodox power). Since dunamis is normally a negative quality in the context of the Athenian courtroom,178 this looks like an attempt to traduce the arguments of the earlier speech. But a close reading of Isoc. . – suggests that the intended strategy here may really be to show how Alcibiades’ campaign against Athens was evidence of a tremendous personal power. In response to the charge that Alcibiades in his exile ‘fortified Decelea, and caused the islands to revolt, and became the teacher of the enemy’, the speaker replies: ‘Sometimes they pretend to despise him, saying that he was no different from any one else, but in this instance they hold him responsible for everything that happened, and claim that it was from him that the Lacedaimonians learnt how to make war, when they actually have the ability to teach this to every one else’ (Isoc. . .) By merely pointing to the inconsistency of his opponents’ claims, the speaker appears to be arguing that even if Alcibiades did harm the city, then this is evidence that he was a great figure with tremendous dunamis, that he really did ‘differ from the others’.179 The only other refutation offered of his opponents’ position is a weak one from probability: the Spartans, as masters of war, needed no instruction from Alcibiades. Thus little is done to counteract the impression that Alcibiades really did harm the city: indeed, that he did so is virtually admitted later in the speech.180 Isocrates’ strategy is rather to let the impression of Alcibiades’ city-harming dunamis stand, as a way of impressing the jurors, so that the allegation of Lys.  is confirmed. In another context (Philip –), Isocrates openly treats the harm done by Alcibiades to Athens as evidence of a proud and great nature. Cf. Introd., above, § . Lys. . , ; Dem. . , , –; Din. . . 179 Cf. Bruns (: ). 180 In § , the argument runs: you, Teisias, were different from Alcibiades, ‘for you did wrong [ ] to them [the jurors, the demos of Athens] not after being exiled from the city, but while living in it as a citizen, not out of compulsion but willingly, and not in self-defence but as the aggressor.’ It would seem to follow, then, that Alcibiades too did wrong to the Athenians. 177 178

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Hence in attacking Alcibiades, Lys.  is compelled to show not so much that he harmed the city (for this carries with it the danger of arousing the admiration of the jury rather than their anger), but that if he did so, this was accomplished through simple lowness of character and treachery, not dunamis. His actions are thus portrayed, as we have seen, as worthy not of admiration, but of disgust, and his aristocratic status suggests only a long tradition of inherited amorality. The tendency of Athenians to react to the great individual’s acts of hybris and demonstrations of dunamis with admiration rather than anger is remarked on by [And.] . : It seems to me that it was natural that the judges [at the boys’ dithyramb] should seek to insinuate themselves with Alcibiades: they saw how Taureas, who had spent so much money, was treated so insultingly, while Alcibiades despite his illegal conduct [paranomia] exercised great power [dunamis]. It is you who are responsible. You refrain from punishing those who behave in a deliberately insulting way [ ], and while you punish those who commit their crimes in secret, you admire those who carry out outrages in the open.

The attitude of the Athenians described here is the attitude Isoc. attempts to inspire in its audience: as individuals, the Athenians admire the arrogance and power of Alcibiades which, as citizens, they should condemn.181 The existence of such a pattern of the glorification of the great individual must affect our reading of the charge of aiming at tyranny. On the one hand, this charge can be viewed as an invective schema for presenting the uncivic attitude demonstrated by Alcibiades.182 It is that, of course. But the uncivic glorification of the individual illustrated by the texts we have examined is itself evidence of the real danger Alcibiades posed the city. The success of such rhetorical strategies relies on attitudes which are inherently threatening to the civic order of the polis, especially the democratic polis. Whatever its social or economic origins in any particular case, tyranny is ultimately founded on the psychological willing181 Thuc. . .  is an interesting reversal of this schema: the fear and suspicion felt by the citizens towards Alcibiades on an individual basis ( ) leads them to depose a talented leader, whom if they had been thinking only in their capacity as citizens, they might have kept. 182 Seager (). Also on Alcibiades and the charge of aiming at tyranny: Palmer ().

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ness of the citizens to submit themselves to the individual dynast, and to accept the tyrannical individual’s more-than-normal status in the community. ‘Aiming at tyranny’ should be seen as consisting not so much in the concrete planning of seizure of power, but rather as a dangerous status-difference of the individual with respect to the community, together with a dangerous overglorification of the individual by himself and by the community. Thuc. . , for example, is cast as the speech of someone ‘aiming at tyranny’, but not because the speaker outlines in it his plans to hire bodyguards and seize the acropolis. The possibility that Alcibiades could have made himself tyrant is taken seriously in the texts.183 According to Isoc. , Alcibiades could have seized tyrannical power but decided not to (§ ). For this, the speaker claims, the jury should feel charis towards Alcibiades. This very argument, in that it asks the Athenians to admire Alcibiades as ‘the one who alone of the citizens was worthy to be subject to this accusation’, is itself an illustration of the attitude of dangerous wonder which can lead to tyranny. Alcibiades, as great individual, is represented as capable on his own of upsetting the democratic constitution of Athens. If he decides not to, that is to be classed as another of the benefits conferred by the great individual on the community.184 [And.] , by arguing that Alcibiades’ behaviour puts him outside the community and endangers it, shows strong tendencies towards the presentation avoided by Lys. , and towards the admiration of Alcibiades which the speaker himself condemns in his fellow citizens.185 Outside the community can also imply above it; and the capability of endangering the community or of being thought worthy of ostracism suggests the same potentially admirable power that was rejected by Lys. . Important in this connection is [And.] . : ‘On top of all this, there are some who have the audacity to say about Alcibiades that there has never been anyone like him. As for me, I think that the city will suffer tremendous harm at his hands, and will hold him responsible in the future for disasters on such a scale that no one will remember his former wrongdoings.’ 183 Cf. Plut. Alc. . –. ; Nepos, Alc. . . But note that the Plutarch passage may be influenced by later treatments of the theme in declamation or historiography (Russell : ). 184 Cf. Seager (: ). 185 Bruns (: ), provocatively calling the speech ‘enkomiastisch’.

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Rhetorical Works

This illogical argument is a good illustration of the phenomenon of admiration of Alcibiades in spite or because of his anti-political tendencies: the second sentence does not contradict the first, but merely restates it in another way. Bringing up the argument in the first place looks like playing into the hands of the opposition, while the speaker does nothing at all to remove the impression he has thus created of Alcibiades’ superlative and admirable status. In general, where Lys.  accuses Alcibiades of poneria (‘immorality’), a quality likely to arouse contempt, [And.]  accuses him of hybris, an attitude which only those of extraordinary status are capable of adopting, and suggestive of ‘heroic’ overglorification of the self. To some extent, of course, this difference of strategy is partly related to the rhetorical purpose of the two speeches: whereas Lys.  is trying to secure a conviction of Alcibiades’ son for ‘desertion’, [And.]  is putting the case that Alcibiades should be ostracized, a context where it is important to argue that the accused is a danger to the community rather than that he is an object of contempt.186 We are now in a position to see the speeches’ polarized presentations of Alcibiades as, in a sense, related. In Isoc. , Alcibiades is presented as possessing a status which set him apart from his supposed equals in the democracy. In [And.] , he is represented as a powerful figure threatening the community, an individual supplanting or attempting to dominate the city. Even Lys.  accords Alcibiades and his family a special position in the city, as the ‘ancestral enemies’ of the whole community. These approaches can be seen as different rhetorical presentations of a single figure: the great individual in the city.187 The Alcibiades of the speeches is an individual of superlative status, admired not so much in spite of, as because of his dangerous individual power and overreaching ambition.188 The ambivalent figure of the great individual can also be recognized in Demosthenes’ use of Alcibiades as a historical exemplum in his prosecution of Meidias for hybris (Dem. . –).189 Here, Meidias’ consistently demonstrated ability to get away with his hybris is set against the reaction of ‘your ancestors’ to 186 Ostracism victims should be men of dangerous axioma and dianoia: cf. Thuc. . . . 187 Cf. Introd., above. 188 Bruns (:  ff.) calls this phenomenon ‘the cult of Alcibiades’. 189 Cf. Wilson (: –).

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Alcibiades. Despite his aristocratic birth, the magnificence he displayed at Olympia, and his great military services for the city, claims Demosthenes, ‘your ancestors’ exiled Alcibiades and suffered the terrible consequences rather than put up with his hybris in the city (§§ –). On the one hand, then, Demosthenes’ argument parallels that of [And.] , whose strategy (§ ) is to contrast the attitude of Athenian ancestors with the reaction of contemporary Athenians to the hybristic individual,190 in this case Alcibiades himself. But as Demosthenes continues, his argument shifts. In contrast to Alcibiades, he goes on to say (§§ –), Meidias is distinguished by the lowest possible birth and the meanest liturgies: far from being able to demonstrate great services to the city as a general, he cannot even pass muster as a private soldier. The clear implication is that in the light of Alcibiades’ possession of these qualities his hybris was natural, if not justifiable: faced with such a magnificent character it might have been understandable if the Athenians had put up with the hybris that went with it, so that their refusal to do so is all the more admirable (§ ). Thus the introduction of Alcibiades also serves to head off the admiration the jury might feel for the hybris of Medias by making it clear how different he was from the great Alcibiades.191 Demosthenes is forced to argue simultaneously that Meidias is a dangerous, hybristic individual whom the citizens must stand up to, as their ancestors did to Alcibiades, and that he is a worthless nobody (µ µ µ ), in no way fit to be compared to the great Alcibiades. As in Lys. , Demosthenes is acutely aware of the danger that the hybristic behaviour he is attributing to his opponent could arouse more admiration than opposition in the jury. The strategies of these speeches reveal a deep ambivalence in the democratic concept of hybris, and in the attitude of the demos towards the great individual, in which fear and hostility are inextricably mingled with admiration.192

Cf. also Aesch. . –. Demosthenes perhaps felt that he had to treat Alcibiades, the figure par excellence who was both hybristic and capable of arousing tremendous admiration, and who conspicuously got away with his acts of hybris, before he could be used by Meidias as an exemplum for his own case. 192 Cf. Wilson (:  ff.). 190 191

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Rhetorical Works . 

Finally, I turn to consider the place of these speeches in the development of Greek writing about the individual, and in particular of Greek ‘biography’. The search for the beginnings of biography resembles in some ways a literary version of the search for the rise of the individual, in the sense that it is often thought possible to pursue it without a precise definition of terms (or that its pursuit is problematized by the adoption of various definitions of the object in question). This can result in contradictory analysis: Momigliano193 went so far as to call Isoc.  the first biography of Alcibiades, while Dihle194 argued that oratory, including that of the early fourth century, had very little that was biographical about it, and little influence on the development of a tradition of biography. A question as complex as the beginning of biography has many aspects. In an attempt to clarify the discussion, I would like to single out three: () the development (the word should not necessarily be understood in the sense of a teleological or linear progression) of certain sorts of interest in the individual and individuality; () the development of methods of moral description and character evaluation; () the development of literary forms. We need to separate psychological and social phenomena from literary ones, and not assume that the latter are merely a reflection or revelation of the former. An interest in individuals, differentiated individuals, and their depiction through action and (in particular) speech, can be found from the very beginnings of Greek literature. What is not found until later are methods for a systematic abstract description of character, and the development of forms of literature devoted more or less entirely to the individual,195 allowing the development of forms for the presentation and literary portraiture of real contemporary figures (as distinct from fictional characterization). If we apply these distinctions to the Alcibiades speeches it is possible to agree to some extent with both Momigliano and Dihle. On the one hand, these works (particularly Isoc. ) are important in (: ). (: –, –). On biography and oratory in the th c. , cf. also Nouhaud (: –). 195 Prose literature in general did not become important until the end of the th c. . 193 194

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the development of prose forms for the discussion of the individual. Isoc. , as we noted above, grows out of that section of an Athenian legal defence speech where the defendant presents his services to the city and his bios as a whole, as a proof of his possession of a certain authorized civic attitude. Such appeals had always had a peculiar degree of generic independence, since the defendant’s plea for charis (a sense of debt for services performed) or forgiveness may be independent of his guilt or innocence of the main charge. But in Isoc. , because of the peculiar circumstances of the trial and perhaps also the reworking of Isocrates, this section of the speech has become disproportionately developed, and (in a natural response) elements from another rhetorical genre, encomium of a mythical figure, have been introduced. Particular political and judicial circumstances (the ideological importance of Alcibiades in the s, the nature of the charge) encouraged the extended presentation of the life of a real individual in prose, which suggested or at least anticipated the prose encomium of real figures that we find in Isocrates’ Evagoras and Xenophon’s Agesilaus. Other trials of the s also led to speeches which illustrate the importance of the defence speech (and specifically the digression which presents the bios of the accused) for the development of prose forms for the presentation of individuals:196 faced with charges which concealed a much wider attack on their bios, Socrates, and Andocides in On the Mysteries, felt compelled to devote a large proportion of their defence speech to a self-presentation that included narrative of episodes from their lives.197 The special circumstances of the s encouraged depiction and redepiction of the individual from various points of view, and through various media: the controversies surrounding Alcibiades and Socrates were particularly important here.198 But we cannot go so far as to say that the particular socialpolitical circumstances of the s caused, or even triggered, the 196 The link, or even ambiguity, between the defence speech and encomium is a natural one, remarked upon by Isocrates in his encomiastic works: see Bus. , ; Helen –, . Gorgias’ Helen, which is called an encomium (§ ), is also a defence (§ ). 197 Cf. the analysis of Wolff (:  ff.). Other incomplete speeches from the period –  considered in §  above (Isoc. ; Lys. , , and ) which consist entirely or mainly of the ‘services’ or personal section of a defence speech, should also be seen in this context. Note especially Lys. . –, a short defensive presentation of the life of Nicias: cf. Bruns (: –). 198 Bruns (: –).



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development of new literary forms, that the development of a particular interest in the individual at this time ‘led to’ the development of biography.199 As far as the trials of Alcibiades and the others are concerned, we should see these as merely one of a number of possible starting-points. Far more important is the generic innovation of Isocrates and Plato, the expansion of the scope of written oratory and of the applications of literacy in Athenian society, and the steady expansion of the uses of prose, all of which (arguably) allowed literary expression of forms of interest in the individual which had long been a feature of Greek society (poetic encomia and epinikia for real, living individuals had a long history). If the Alcibiades speeches have a place in the development of literary forms, their role in the development of techniques for the description and analysis of the individual is more limited. In this context, the most suggestive aspect of the speeches is the chronological depiction of the life of the individual. The attempt to describe the life of an individual from birth to death, suggesting a concept of a life as a meaningful unity, is often seen as a key element in the development of biography. But how great a role does a chronological approach really play in the speeches? The ‘services’ section of a defence speech (and its inverse, the attack on the bios of an opponent) aims to present a slanted picture of the bios of the individual, particularly as it relates to the city. Here the meaning of the word bios is important:200 the Greek word suggests the way of life of the individual (especially from a moral point of view), much more than the course of the life itself (contrast the words ‘life’, or Leben, where the sense ‘way of life’ is not completely absent, but where there is much more emphasis on ‘course of life’). Bios is a life as it was actually lived, and the depiction of bios concentrates on the description of typical actions from the life of the subject (especially, of course, in the context of a trial, where actions have value as evidence). These episodes are often arranged in rough chronological order for narrative convenience, but this may be suspended when other presentational factors intervene. 199 Contrast Momigliano (: ); Dihle (: –). I am not sure that arguments that the individual was more important at the beginning of the th c., or important in significantly different ways, can stand up to a detailed analysis, except in the limited sense suggested in this chapter of a temporary focus on individuals in the s in the context of the evaluation of the experience of – . 200 Cf. Leo (: , –).

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Again, encomium, in order to magnify the achievements of an individual, employs a semi-standardized format,201 which while it contains logical-chronological elements (in the sequence: ancestors, birth, boyhood, achievements), is not a description of the life of an individual from birth to death. When we reach the point of the speech which describes the achievements ( ) of the individual, chronological narrative gives way to a synchronic impression of the type of life lived by the individual and its effect on his surroundings. In Isoc. , the description of the course of Alcibiades’ life begun in §  stops after the description of the   Olympics, and merges into a defence of Alcibiades’ conduct as a citizen, particularly in connection with – . (The end of the chronological format is also partly determined by the needs of the defence speech: after  , Alcibiades’ life became far less suitable for depiction, and we have already had a treatment of –  earlier in the speech.) Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the presentation of encomium is the feeling that it is important to include a description of the childhood and early achievements of the praised individual. This implies, if not a sense of the development of the individual personality (for the point is to show that the individual displayed in his childhood the same praiseworthy qualities as he did when he was an adult202), then at least a feeling that the life forms a coherent whole. Lys.  too incorporates a chronological description of the childhood of Alcibiades IV as a part of an invective description of his bios. But in this case, because of the age of the defendant, there was very little adult material to hand, while depiction of the childhood allowed a description of the immoral interaction of Alcibiades IV with his father. Moreover, the described behaviour of Alcibiades IV (consorting with hetairai, taking part in wild drinking-parties) is hardly that of a child: because of the scarcity of independent invective topoi for the behaviour of the subject as a child, the speaker resorts to the anachronism of depicting him as a virtual adult. Whereas the episodes from the life of the individual in encomium are semi-standardized, depictions of individuals in invective are rather more flexible. Both the treatment of Alcibiades IV in Lys.  and the treatment of Alcibiades in [And.]  concentrate on those 201 202

On encomium cf. above, § . On childhood in biographical writing, see Pelling (b).

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incidental stories of a life which, though not necessarily in themselves important, illustrate the negative qualities the speaker wishes to communicate. The invective technique of Lys.  is characterized by brief mention of a series of damaging rumours with little or no further development. But the stories in [And.]  (not a true invective, but an ‘exercise’) have the character of developed anecdotes, self-contained stories whose significance for the understanding of the bios is explained at length by the speaker. This use of anecdotes anticipates, or perhaps reflects, their use to illustrate a person’s bios in Hellenistic literature. The speeches contribute virtually nothing to the development of modes of description of the individual: their aim is in no way literary portraiture, nor are they even concerned with the sort of invented and simple self-characterization demanded by ethos.203 Rather, they establish artificial and polarized versions of Alcibiades in relationship to models of civic behaviour. Their interest in Alcibiades as an individual is in the sense of great man (type  individuality, as defined in the Introduction, above), not a differentiated personality (type ): there is not even any attempt to create a credible moral life, or moral personality. The comparison of Alcibiades with Socrates must therefore now be abandoned. Whereas Alcibiades is a great personality, Socrates is an extraordinary one; whereas the Alcibiades speeches present a superlative figure, the Apology depicts a character.204 Alcibiades’ significance in the s was purely symbolic: it did not much matter what Alcibiades was really like as a person, so long as his action and character in relation to the city could be plausibly depicted one way or another. Whereas the Alcibiades speeches are tied to techniques of oratory requiring the distortion and standardization of personality (as encomium and invective demand the assimilation of the subject to a standard list of virtues and vices), in the Apology these generic schemata are either abandoned or reinvigorated through parody. While the presentation of Alcibiades is subsidiary to the demands of a political ideology, Plato’s Socrates explicitly rejects the subjection of the individual to the demands of democracy or even of the city, replacing it with a more personal form of morality.

203 204

Cf. Dihle (: –). On Socrates and Plato’s Apology, see Leo (: ); Dihle (: –).

        Lost Speeches

In analysing the lost Alcibiades speeches,205 which survive only in titles quoted by ancient authors, we must bear in mind the following three factors: First, Alcibiades III was out of Athens for the greater part of his political career, i.e. from   until his death, except for a few months in – , when it is unlikely that he spent time in litigation, or that anyone was in a position to prosecute him. Second, at Isoc. . – Alcibiades IV implies that he has been subjected to several previous trials, and if so there must have been speeches to go with them (there must also have been a prosecution speech for the racing-team trial): several of these may have been circulating in antiquity. It follows from these two factors that Alcibiades IV is much more likely to be the subject of circulating authentic Alcibiades speeches than his father ( judicial speeches from before   are in any case very rare). The final factor to bear in mind is the popularity of invented Alcibiades speeches in the later rhetorical schools.206 If a late fourth-century date for [And.]  is correct (see Appendix  to this chapter), then Alcibiades was a possible theme for rhetorical exercises at a very early date, as we might expect from the rhetorical interest in Alcibiades evidenced by Isocrates in Isoc.  and his other speeches, and by Demosthenes. It is therefore very possible that Alcibiades speeches circulating in antiquity under the names of canonized Attic orators were, like [And.] , not by these authors at all, but later exercises. Bearing in mind the first two factors mentioned above, we should strongly consider the possibility that circulating speeches directed against Alcibiades III rather than his son are later exercises. References to Alcibiades speeches attributed to Lysias are collected in Baiter–Sauppe (–, fragments –). Only three fragments: , , and , are relevant here. Fragment  refers to a speech which mentioned Leuce Acte. This must be Lys. , where Leuce Acte is mentioned in § . Fragment  is from a speech , and fragment a relates to [And.] . A fourth fragment from a speech on Alcibiades attributed to Lysias was found in a manuscript in Patmos, published after Baiter–Sauppe appeared, and this can be found in Thalheim (: , fragment a). 205 On fragments of Alcibiades speeches see also Blass (–: i. ); Dover (: –). 206 See Russell (: –, –); Kohl (: nos. –).



Rhetorical Works

Two fragments are also recorded from a work attributed to Antiphon, which is called by Plutarch (Alc. .) , and by Athenaeus (. b) (Baiter–Sauppe : , fragments –; Blass (: , fragments –). Let us first consider the ‘Lysias’ fragments. Baiter–Sauppe, fragment , from Harpocration, refers to a speech , containing the term µ , a sort of deposit used inter alia in the case of a procedure against the city for false confiscation of property.207 This would fit litigation connected with an attempt by Alcibiades IV to recover the property of his dead father:208 in Isoc. . , he complains that he has been deprived by his enemies of the property the city had given his father in  . Blass209 related the fragment to an attempt by Alcibiades III in –  to recover confiscated property: but Alcibiades hardly had time then for litigating about his house, and had in any case already been compensated for his confiscated property. Baiter–Sauppe, fragment , also from Harpocration, attributes to a speech (without ) a mention of . The were officers whose competence included cases where a person’s citizenship had been called into question,210 so that we could imagine a trial on a charge of, or in which allegations were made of, a false claim to Athenian citizenship, an accusation which again would more plausibly have been made against Alcibiades IV than his father.211 Given that both the fragments from Harpocration may refer to Alcibiades IV, and that they mention relatively unromantic technical matters unlikely to appeal to later composers of rhetorical exercises, these two references have a good claim to come from a real court speech or speeches. Baiter–Sauppe, fragment  contains two references to an Alcibiades speech from Athenaeus, which Athenaeus calls ’ [sc. Alcibiades III] . Both relate to a story in which Alcibiades went to Abydus with his uncle Axiochus and consorted there with the hetaira Medontis. The first of the Athenaeus passages (f–a) gives more details (Axiochus and Alcibiades both married Medontis; later a daughter was born, and the two slept with her as well, each claiming she was the daughter of the other), but otherwise presents the identical story to that of the second passage (de), and it is clear that we are dealing not with two See Harrison (–: ii. –). 209 (–: ii. ). Thus Sauppe (Baiter–Sauppe, ). 210 MacDowell (: –). 211 Alcibiades III was alleged to have fathered various illegitimate children: Alcibiades IV had been out of Athens during his boyhood, and his mother had died soon after his birth. Moreover, [And.] . – alleges that Alcibiades has just had a child by a Melian captive: this child might be Alcibiades IV, who is known to have been born at exactly this time. 207 208

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

separate works, but with one (as in Sauppe’s presentation).212 Since this work is directed at Alcibiades III, and displays an interest in the names and activities of hetairai,213 it might be a later exercise. According to Plutarch (Alc. . –), after the battle of Notium in  , Thrasybulus of Kollytus returned to Athens to present charges against Alcibiades, which included consorting with hetairai from Abydus. This would be the logical dramatic occasion for the speech referred to by Athenaeus. The Patmian scholiast (Thalheim, a) attributes to Lysias in the words (presumably the end of the speech)

· : in Dover’s translation, ‘Go to hell and to Abydus, for now I am tired of abusing you’. Given that allegations concerning Abydus in the fragments are in other cases directed against Alcibiades III, we might expect him to be the addressee of the invective here too, so this work also looks like a later invented speech: indeed, it is hard to believe that this extraordinary outburst is really a piece of classical Athenian rhetoric. We cannot tell how many works attributed to Lysias lie behind these four fragments, though it does look as though there are at least two speeches involved.214 Athenaeus’ reference to ‘the speech against Alcibiades’ does not require us to suppose that there was only one speech, since we know there were already two Alcibiades speeches attributed to Lysias: Lys.  and . Indeed, Harpocration and the Patmian scholiast are clearly aware of more than one Alcibiades speech attributed to Lysias. We can now turn to (Plutarch) or ’ (Athenaeus) attributed to Antiphon. This work contained hostile stories relating to Alcibiades’ youth. He is accused of killing a contemporary in the gymnasium, and of running off with a lover (Plut. Alc. ); after he came of age, the work alleged, he went to Abydus with his uncle Axiochus (as in Lysias, frag. ) in order to educate himself in the licentious practices of the hetairai there. An account of the nature of this work, which can only remain hypothetical, depends on the interpretation of its title:

µ

(i) In favour of the title given by Plutarch is the fact that the fragments constitute abuse of Alcibiades, while there is no suggestion of a charge of slander.215 But the title can hardly be that of a judicial speech at all. Even the theory that it was a ‘pamphlet’ written by Dover’s idea (: ) that they could be split is a red herring. An interest in the doings or sayings of courtesans was typical of Hellenistic literature: Griffin (: ). 214 Sauppe (Baiter–Sauppe, ) and Blass (–: i. ) thought that all references could be traced to the same speech, the . Dover (: –) is more sceptical. 215 Baiter–Sauppe, ; Blass (–: i. ). 212 213

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Rhetorical Works

Antiphon against Alcibiades,216 does not really explain the oddness of the title. can have the sense of ‘invective’ in rhetorical contexts.217 Perhaps, then, the work was a collection of invective topoi or invective fragments,218 which we could imagine as either exclusively devoted to Alcibiades (in which case will be the correct title), or to various figures including Alcibiades (in which case ), which perhaps supplied writers of later fictitious Alcibiades speeches with material. Attribution to Antiphon, who was a contemporary of Alcibiades, and to whom rhetorical collections of other sorts were attributed, would be natural. The work would then be later than the Alcibiades rhetoric of the s (though, as a collection of rhetorical invective fragments relating to Alcibiades, partly a product of it). (ii) In favour of the title given by Athenaeus it can be said that it is harder to believe that became corrupted into ’ than that the reverse corruption took place. Slander is known to have been an actionable offence in Athens. A Solonic law banned abuse of living people in specific situations, including at festival contests,219 an occasion where it is easy to imagine Alcibiades publicly abusing an opponent.220 In the fourth century, the technical term for such a charge was ,221 but Philocleon in Wasps (–) boasts of having got someone convicted on a charge of . A speech accusing Alcibiades of slander may well have attacked his personal life, and it is perhaps a sign of authenticity that all three stories cited from the work relate to Alcibiades’ boyhood or youth. A factor which must be taken into account when assessing the Antiphon speech is that Plutarch refers to it in such a way that suggests that he knew it not at first hand, but through some intermediate source. From the way he mentions [And.] , we may infer he had no first-hand knowledge of this speech either. He gives a garbled version (Alc. . ) of the incident involving the city’s processional vessels described in §  of the speech, and shows no sign of being aware that the rhetorical occasion for [And.]  is the 216 Wilamowitz () implausibly identifies the speech with the Politikos of Antiphon the Sophist. Blass (–: i. ) while disagreeing with Wilamowitz’ identification, took it to be a ‘pamphlet’, as did Dover (: –), dating it to / . None of the fragments presents a chronological objection to the theory that Antiphon is their author. 217 Plato, Theaet. cd; Isoc. Bus. . 218 Cf. Hoyer (: ), who, however, associates the work with the Alcibiades rhetoric of the early th c. This suggestion was also made to me independently by Donald Russell. 219 MacDowell (: ). 220 Cf. his confrontation with Taureas while the two were serving as choregoi: [And.] . –; Dem. . . 221 MacDowell (: ).

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ostracism of Hyperbolus—the very event he is relating at this stage of the Life. This makes it more credible that what he says about the Antiphon speech is also confused. It also raises an important question about the form in which Plutarch accessed the details from these speeches (which intrude so abruptly into the narrative of the Life) and the form in which they were available to the post-classical era as a whole.

        [Andocides] , Against Alcibiades

222

This speech, transmitted amongst the works of Andocides, is a diatribe against Alcibiades set in the year / ,223 on the occasion of the last ostracism held in Athens, which led to the ostracism of Hyperbolus. In  Raubitschek argued that the speech contained historical detail which was so convincing that we should seriously entertain the idea that it is a genuine fifth-century product. But the speech displays features which are very hard to reconcile with this account of its origins. I have discussed the origins of this puzzling work in more detail elsewhere.224 The aim of this appendix is to set out the main conclusions of that discussion for the convenience of the reader. There is no good reason for believing that the speech is by Andocides.225 Ancient citations suggest confusion as to its authorship,226 and the earliest surviving attribution, Plut. Alc. . , appears to ascribe it to Phaeax (one of the leading players in the ostracism of Hyperbolus), without mentioning the name of Andocides at all. The identity of the author of the speech is no longer discoverable, but it does appear that Phaeax is the intended speaker: the details provided by the speaker about his life (§§ –, ) match what is known about the real Phaeax from other sources.227 The most remarkable feature of the speech is that although it is cast as an invective against Alcibiades, the dramatic date of /  means that there is no mention of the crucial events in Alcibiades’ career which took place after that date. This fact is of great importance for the discussion of the origins of [And.] . It rules out the theory that the speech was a contribution to the Alcibiades debates of the s which form the subject of 222 In addition to the bibliography cited in nn. –, see also now the commentary by Ghiggia (). 223 Melos has fallen to the Athenians (§ ) but Alcibiades has not yet left for Sicily. The true date of the ostracism of Hyperbolus is disputed, but Rhodes () uses the speech itself as evidence that the ostracism took place in / . 224 Gribble (). 225 But Furley () attempts to argue that it is by Andocides. 226 [Plut.] Life of Andocides , Harpocration (s.v. µ , ), and Photius (Bibliotheca a) attribute it to Andocides, but Athenaeus attributes it to Lysias (. c). See Blass (–: i. –); Raubitschek (: –). 227 The speaker has been on embassies to Italy and Sicily, and has stood trial for his life, like the real Phaeax (Thuc. . –; Aristoph. Kn. ). The involvement of Phaeax in the final ostracism is also now confirmed by ostrakon evidence.

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this chapter, as it ignores those episodes of Alcibiades’ life (his exile, cooperation with the Spartans, victories in the Ionian war, etc.) which were central to the evaluation of Alcibiades that was taking place in these years. Indeed, considering how quickly the misdeeds of Alcibiades mentioned in the speech were eclipsed by the sacrilege and disgrace of the Herms and Mysteries affairs, it is hard to imagine that the speech would have had much point as a genuine invective against Alcibiades at all after  . The speech’s dramatic date of /  thus suggests two possibilities: either that it is authentic (in the sense of being a genuine product of the fifth century); or that it is a rhetorical exercise by an author prepared to forgo treating the most exciting parts of Alcibiades’ life in order to establish a particular dramatic setting. It is hard to believe that there were formal occasions for pre-ostracism speeches such as that imagined by the speaker,228 or even if there were, that a potential victim would choose to identify himself and two other named individuals as the only possible candidates for it (thus helping to concentrate the vote against himself), as the speaker in [And.]  does. It might still be argued that the ostracism debate is merely a convenient fiction, providing the author of the speech with the occasion for a pamphlet designed to concentrate the vote against Alcibiades in the lead-up to the ostracism of Hyperbolus. Such an account is the most apt, in my view, for providing a plausible fifth-century setting for the speech. The long history of scholarship on the speech suggests that it is not possible actually to refute such an account merely by pointing to historical errors or solecisms.229 Indeed, whoever the author was, he demonstrates an impressive awareness of the details of fifth-century history. In some areas, for example on the victims of ostracism,230 or on certain biographical details about Alcibiades,231 he shows himself better informed than we are. Nevertheless, the way the historical detail is presented in the speech is sometimes hard to reconcile with the idea that it is a speech addressed to a fifth-century democratic audience. Particularly noteworthy in this regard is the treatment of the Athenian empire.232 The speaker argues (§ ) that Alcibiades’ raising of the tribute-assessment was a demagogic measure designed to provide ‘what is most pleasing to the plethos’, and that such measures will lead to a hatred of Athens on the part of the allies which will one day prove disastrous to the city: Alcibiades’ behaviour in this regard is contrasted with the assessment of the just Aristides. The presentation of On this question, see most recently Rhodes (: ). See Raubitschek’s demolition of arguments against authenticity, and Schroff’s () of those of an earlier generation. 230 §§ –, cf. Raubitschek (: –). 231 His activity as public prosecutor (§§ –): Aristoph. Acharn. –, frag.  K.–A; and as tribute assessor (§ ), cf. Raubitschek (: –). 232 See Rhodes (: –). 228 229



Rhetorical Works

the raising of the tribute in this way is surely ill calculated to win the favour of a fifth-century democratic audience. In fact, the idea that the decline of the Athenian empire was to be sought in the actions of post-Aristidean demagogues in search of the favour of the mob is typical of later moralizing analyses (note Plut. Arist. ). There are further traces of this mode of analysis elsewhere in the speech. Alcibiades’ Melian decree is treated as tragic and cruel (§§ –). Even his theft of the chariot-team from Diomedes is developed not as a sign of hybris towards a fellow citizen, but as the type of behaviour which will lead the allies to hate Athens and long for her enemies (§ ). One can point to other aspects and details of the speech which sit uncomfortably with the theory that it is a genuine product of the fifth century. Cumulatively, these inconsistencies weigh heavily against its ‘authenticity’. If the speech is not authentic but composed later, one would like to know when and in what context. Of course, it is impossible to provide any definite or precise answer to this question. Nevertheless, some observations may be made. To begin with, the speech displays many of the features of the genre of historical declamation, as later practised under the Roman empire.233 It founds an invented speech on a historically inspired but nevertheless imaginary occasion; it focuses on the theme of aiming at tyranny which was so beloved of declamation234 (and in particular on the tyrannical Alcibiades, a popular character amongst the declaimers235); it centres on an abstruse rhetorical situation occasioned by an unusual law (ostracism), recalling the various leges scholasticae which provide the inspiration for many later declamations;236 and it demonstates an interest in rhetorical ‘stasis’, i.e. the categorization of rhetoric according to the situation and objectives of the speaker.237 The rhetorical peculiarities of a speech at an ostracism debate, with their odd mixture of accusation and defence, invective, and analysis of laws, provide a unique opportunity for the display of the skill and inventiveness of the ‘academic’ orator, in a way which anticipates the interests of the later declaimers. Yet the speech is clearly distinguishable from later declamation, not only in its superior command of historical detail, but in its avoidance of themes untrue to fifth-century conditions. Whereas later declamations about Alcibiades concentrate unrealistically on Alcibiades’ relationship with Socrates,238 for example, or bring forward implausible episodes (Timon 234 Russell (: –). On these see Russell (). Kohl (: nos. –); Russell (: –, –). 236 Russell (: –). In the case of [And.]  the law, though bizarre, is real, even if the rhetorical occasion probably is not. 237 Russell (: Ch. ). 238 Sopater, RG . , . 233 235

Rhetorical Works



the Misanthrope in love with Alcibiades;239 Alcibiades applies to be torchbearer at the Mysteries240), [And.]  shows such restraint that it even avoids mention of Alcibiades’ infamous erotic adventures (§ ), even though this theme could easily have been developed to suggest his unconstitutional, paranomic tendencies (as we have already seen in this chapter and in Chapter ). As we have already seen, if the speech is not authentic, it must have been composed later than the Alcibiades debate at the beginning of the fourth century, and (if, as seems likely, Plut. Alc. .  is a reference to [And.] ) early enough to have convinced Plutarch or his source that it may have been genuinely delivered by Phaeax. This suggests, broadly, that the speech is a product of the Hellenistic period, and several of its features support this conclusion. To begin with, although the speech demonstrates an interest in fifthcentury realia, those that it mentions relate either to the institution of ostracism or to individuals (especially Phaeax and the many anecdotes recounted about Alcibiades), not to political-military history. There is no discussion of the Argive campaign, for example, as one might have expected, or of the Sicilian expedition which was currently being championed by Alcibiades at the dramatic date of the speech. The decision to opt for a dramatic date of / , before the events of Alcibiades’ lifetime which would really have interested a rhetorician concerned with great themes, is also significant here. Apparently, the interests of this author are constitutional description and biography, rather than political-military history. The lengthy discussion of the purposes of ostracism in which the speech indulges (§§ –) recalls, in tone and content, the theorizing of Peripatetic authors.241 Indeed, the speech is very concerned with developing the sort of self-contained episodes illustrating the lifestyle or character of an individual much loved by Peripatetics. It is structured around such anecdotes in a way which strikes the reader straight away. Hence Burn 242 argued that the speech was constructed from ‘biographical’ sources. Burn’s specific arguments are based on a source-criticism which does not stand up to detailed criticism, but the association of the speech with bioswriting such as that practised by the Peripatetics is a natural one. Later sources traced the origins of historical declamation to the late third century. According to Quintilian (. . ), ‘subjects invented in imitation of the law-courts and of deliberations were introduced among the Greeks around [circa] Demetrius of Phaleron’. Demetrius,243 in addition to his 240 Libanius, frag.  Förster; RG . , cf. . . Libanius, Decl. . Cf. Ar. Pol. a–b, b, Ath. Pol. . ; Theophrastus (fr. B Fortenbaugh with Connor and Keaney (). Cf. also Plut. Arist. . . 242 . 243 Demetrius’ fragments are collected in Wehrli (). On Demetrius, see further Bayer () and Williams (). 239 241



Rhetorical Works

rhetorical achievements, was also a learned and prolific Peripatetic author on, inter alia, Athenian constitutional history (including ostracism), the conduct of statesmen, and types of character. A figure such as Demetrius would be the right sort of author to have composed a work like [And.] . This is not to suggest that Demetrius is actually the author of the speech, but the hypothesis that it was composed by someone with his interests and literary background does provide an account of the origins of the speech capable of explaining the features singled out in this discussion.

 Thucydides

. ‘       ’ Discussing the generalizing and philosophical quality of poetry, Aristotle writes: It is clear . . . that the task of the poet is not to say what happened, but the sort of thing that might happen . . . that is why poetry [poiesis] is more philosophical and serious1 than history, for poetry deals more [µ ] with the universal, history the particular. The universal is the sort of things a certain sort of person will say or do either probably or necessarily, and this is what poetry strives after, adding the names afterwards. The particular, on the other hand, is what Alcibiades did or what happened to him. (Poetics . a–b)

It was apparently Alcibiades’ career above all which suggested to Aristotle the sort of atypical and unrepeatable train of events2 that is impossible to make sense of in terms of general patterns. Scholars have also been quick to see a reference to Thucydides in this passage of Aristotle, an implicit comment on the great historian’s opening claims (. ) that his work exposed explanatory patterns of historical causation. Alcibiades does occupy a remarkably prominent place in Thucydides’ narrative and explicit statements. This might suggest a fascination with the story of a particular outstanding individual which has supervened on the historian’s interest in general historical patterns. This is the theory of Westlake and Hornblower,3 who, in claiming that the event-plot of Alcibiades’ life demonstrates a 1 It is the universal which is the object of philosophy (Arist. Met. b), because ‘the valuable thing about the universal is that it reveals the causes’ (Post. An. a). 2 Cf. Keaney (: ); Lucas (: ). Though Weil : – is cautious: the name of Alcibiades might have been replaced by that of other historical figures. The only other significant mention of Alcibiades in Aristotle is Post. An. b, where he is taken as an example of megalopsuchia. 3 Westlake (); Hornblower (: –).



Thucydides

specificity that disrupts general patterns, echo Aristotle in the Poetics. These scholars argue that Thucydides came increasingly to emphasize the role of the individual in historical causation as the writing of the History progressed, and that this change of mind is perceptible to the reader of the History (the process of composition having left clear traces on the work). The reason for the change was the historian’s experience of the extraordinary and unrepeatable career of Alcibiades. Again, Ivo Bruns, noting Alcibiades’ speech at Thuc. . , claimed that it was highly likely that Thucydides ‘dem Cult des Alkibiades innerlich nicht fernstand’.4 Just as the extraordinary individuality of Alcibiades and the remarkable story of his life were seen as influencing the development of biographical writings (above, Chapter ), so here they are held to have diverted Thucydides’ historiographical purpose. Once again, the great individual is seen as requiring a particular sort of story to accommodate him. The popular ‘cult’ of Alcibiades thus acquires a historiographical dimension; the figure of the great individual who cannot be accommodated in the polis becomes in Thucydides a ‘great man’ in the Carlylean sense. Westlake claimed to detect a difference in the way individuals were treated in the first and second ‘halves’ of Thucydides’ work, that is, that they were more important, more developed, more personalized in the second half. This, he suggested, might be due to Thucydides’ experience of the campaigns of Alcibiades between  and  .5 Westlake’s idea was taken up by Hornblower:6 ‘Perhaps Thucydides’ thinking developed in an unexpected direction, that is towards a realisation of the power for good or damage of an effective and persuasive individual . . . Thucydides progressively abandoned a belief in confident human systems and structures . . . What produced this shift in Thucydides? The answer is Alcibiades.’ Westlake’s thesis raises important questions about the interplay of general and specific in Thucydides, and about the sort of roles played by individuals in the History, which I will consider in §  below. Before moving on to these questions, however, it is important to note that Westlake’s thesis, like many discussions of 4 Bruns (: ): ‘Es ist ja gerade seine Art, die des Menschen, seine natürliche Bedeutung an und für sich, zu würdigen and sie zu bewundern, wo sie sich über das Gewöhnliche erhebt’ (cf. Thuc. . . ). 5 For the division in Thucydides and his experience of the campaigns, see Westlake (: –, ). 6 (: –).

Thucydides



the role of individuals in Thucydides, is founded on certain general interpretative approaches, approaches which are open to question. First, Westlake’s thesis seeks to explain phenomena in the text by grasping straight away for compositional arguments: certain sections which are held to have been written ‘late’ are thought to pay more attention to the causal power of individuals than certain sections held to have been written ‘early’. On this view, our ability to stratify the text of Thucydides into layers of composition can actually allow us to trace the intellectual development of the historian. This sort of methodology is extremely vulnerable. It is unsafe to relate attempts to stratify the text (which may or may not be right, but are always hotly disputed) to a question of such interpretative complexity as the development of the role of individuals in Thucydides’ historical causality. Such a division of the History as Westlake’s into early and late sections is still not capable of securing enough common consent for it to be used as the basis for an argument about the intellectual development of Thucydides. We are simply not in a position to establish an intellectual development for Thucydides such as that argued for so subtly in a recent book on Gibbon by Womersley:7 we cannot determine the stages of Thucydides’ composition as we can for Gibbon. Attempts to do so often, as I will suggest, themselves rely on assumptions relating to the way Thucydides and other ancient writers articulated their narrative and depicted individuals. There are other problems with the Westlake thesis as it stands. Westlake explains away as later additions material in the ‘first’ section of the History which seems to give a large causal role to individuals, in a way which threatens to make his argument circular. It is most unsatisfactory to explain Thuc. . , for example, in this way.8 The importance given to Pericles in this chapter merely reflects and emphasizes his already established crucial role in the events of the first two books (as I will argue below). Again, it is problematic to use narratorial comments on the role of individuals (. , . , . )—ex hypothesi late—as evidence for a theory that Thucydides came to place an increasing emphasis on capturing the 7 (), mentioned in Osborne (). Womersley (esp. pp. –) argues that Gibbon’s prose came increasingly to reflect the belief that the task of historiography was to capture the vital particularity of historical events rather than to reduce this to a readily understandable form by means of the narrating historian’s generalizations. 8 Westlake (: –).



Thucydides

irreducible particularity of events, since it is precisely these passages which suggest the historian’s desire to emphasize the general patterns in his narrative. There is, moreover, a methodological danger in the immediate recourse to compositionalist arguments in order to solve a problem of this nature. The idea that differences in historiographical approach in the History are inconsistencies, explicable by the idea that Thucydides ‘changed his mind’ offer easy solutions to what may be more complex problems. If passage A is somehow different from passage B, one only has to posit that A and B were written at different times. Other types of answer, for example in terms of narrative strategy, or of the developing plan of the whole work, or of the difference of approach required by different sorts of historical material, are not even considered. Such a use of a compositionalist approach leads to a view of the History as a patchwork quilt of inconsistent strategies and opinions. A better methodology is to look first for other types of explanation for such phenomena, and only when these fail, then to consider compositional arguments.9 Similar observations can be made about the use of another methodology used to construct theories about the role of Alcibiades in Thucydides: source-criticism. The theory that Alcibiades (or, in a rarer, more cautious, formulation, someone close to him10) was a source of Thucydides11 was initially devised primarily for historical rather than historiographical reasons: establishing the sources of Thucydides would allow us more accurately to evaluate historically the information he provides. Later, in the grand theory of Delebecque,12 source (combined now with a compositional argument) became another easy method for explaining phenomena in the narrative method of Thucydides. The reason for the unusual parallel narratives in Book  is that those sections of narrative in which Alcibiades is particularly prominent were added later by Thucydides to an already existing narrative after meeting and talking to Alcibiades (Delebecque is even prepared to name the place and time of the meeting13). But the cautious attitude of Thucydides Erbse (: –). Andrewes in HCT v. . Westlake (a: –) makes suggestions as to this figure’s identity. HCT v. , , , ,  considers information in Book  which might stem from an Alcibidean source. 11 See Westlake (:  n. ; a: ) for the history of this idea, whose fullest exponent is Brunt (). See also Westlake (); Erbse (: –). 12 (). 13 –  in Thrace: Delebecque (: ). 9

10

Thucydides



towards his sources suggested by . . – (accurate information was collected only with great difficulty, and the reports of people concerned differed greatly according to the sympathies and memories of those concerned) is, as far as we can see, followed in practice in the History.14 There are no signs of the influence of individuals and the information they provided in the narrative. More importantly however, Delebecque did not first consider other reasons why the narrative of Book  might have been set out as it is, but proceeded directly to the source-composition theory.15 Underlying these methodological approaches to the individuals in Thucydides is the widespread tendency to see Thucydides’ treatment of individuals in terms of his ‘judgement’ on them. The tendency is particularly marked in the case of Alcibiades.16 The assumption of this approach is that the text offers us a final opinion, which though concealed, may be decoded by the scholar.17 If a coherent ‘judgement’ does not emerge, Thucydides is held to have ‘changed his mind’ about Alcibiades,18 and we are back to compositional arguments. Indeed, since the specific claim is that Thucydides has made later interventions in his text in order to give more emphasis to Alcibiades, the theory that Thucydides has changed his mind about Alcibiades and the theory that he has 14 Cf. Westlake (a: –). In Xen. HG, by contrast, it may help to explain Alcibiades’ prominence in the narrative if we adopt the theory that Alcibiades’ cousin Euryptolemus was a source of Xenophon (HG . . ; cf. . . ). 15 Connor (: ) comments on the ‘pernicious effect’ of such theories on the study of Book . On the methodologically similar attempt to explain away features of Herodotus’ account of the liberation of Athens by means of an Alcmaeonid source, see Ubsdell (:  ff.)—‘a hindrance to a proper understanding of what Herodotus was doing in his account of the liberation’ (p. ). 16 Hornblower (: –); Erbse (: –). Scholars have often commented on the opacity of the depiction of Alcibiades and the consequent difficulty of isolating a ‘judgement’. Dover in HCT v.  suggests that the reason Thucydides was forced to encode his judgement about Alcibiades was that he was afraid of alienating his Athenian readership. Pouncey () decides that Thucydides’ ‘full but variously accented account’ (p. ) must be due to ambivalent and unreconciled strands in Thucydides’ attitude to Alcibiades. Von Fritz (a: –) sees Thucydides as unable to make up his mind about Alcibiades. Contrast Connor (: –): ‘We must . . . resist summarisation or the reduction of the work to a series of propositions—Thucydides’ view of imperialism, Thucydides’ view of Pericles or Alcibiades: a search for a summarized judgement is bound to be unsatisfactory. 17 Westlake (: ): ‘Thucydides seldom expresses his own views on any subject in explicit terms: he chooses rather to convey them to the reader in various subtle ways.’ 18 Hornblower (: ;) Dover in HCT v.  ff.



Thucydides

revised his approach to the causative role of individuals are mutually supportive, if not interdependent. .        HISTORY Westlake’s theory inevitably suggests a fundamental question, which, as we saw, was framed by Aristotle in the Poetics: to what extent does historiography present general themes, or to what extent is it concerned with individuals and specific events? Aristotle is not claiming there either that poiesis (‘poetry’) is concerned wholly with the general, or that historiography is wholly concerned with the particular, but only that poiesis is more concerned with (or is in a better position to embody) the general.19 Aristotle’s µ (‘more’—b) naturally extends to both clauses of its sentence. Otherwise, Aristotle would simply be wrong: even poiesis has to concern itself with particular circumstances (Oedipus’ discovery of his true identity), while history would be incomprehensible if it did not appeal to some generalities. Historical analysis of various sorts, for example of causation, appeals implicitly to certain principles of more or less general application, usually in the field of human behaviour. For Aristotle it is not the truth or falsity of the story presented that distinguishes poiesis from historiography, for in the analysis which immediately follows the quoted passage, he regards the mythical plots of tragedy as historical, its individual actors as real people, and not only allows that there is no reason why ‘what actually happened’ could not also be ‘what might happen’, but seems to imply (b) that what has actually occurred might be a more convincing ‘what might happen’ than what has not, since ‘the possible is convincing’.20 What distinguishes poiesis from historiography is the freedom of the poet to construct his work as he wishes.21 20 Von Fritz (b). Cf. Clark (: –). Historiography may be ‘scientific’ (in the Aristotelian sense) in that it may establish truths of general application (de Ste Croix ), but it is never, as Aristotle claims for poetry, informed by these generalities to the extent that one can regard it as ‘adding the names afterwards’. The events with which the historian starts are not entirely organic (Clark : ). Cf. Kitto (: –). Thus Aristotle’s distinction is not between poetry and prose on the basis of form, but and on the basis of plot and the author’s ability to control it (Weil : ). 19 21

Thucydides



Certainly, poiesis too is (usually) about real people, or people regarded as real. But poiesis, as it were, adds the names afterwards—i.e. the constructedness of plot and characters precedes, is more important than, their reality—while history is tied to the actuality of what the real Alcibiades did or what happened to him. Aristotle’s argument in this passage is aided by his choice of terms, for literally means ‘making/constructing’, while (Aristotle uses Herodotus’ word for the historical activity rather 22) suggests the collection of empirithan Thucydides’ cal data (for example, perhaps, the collections of constitutions rather than the Politics). It is not clear that Aristotle meant his choice of Alcibiades as example to be a specific reference to Thucydides.23 Nowhere in his works does Aristotle refer to Thucydides explicitly.24 Aristotle’s reading was wide,25 and there is no shortage of other historians who might have been intended if there is a specific reference: Alcibiades must have figured largely in the narratives of all the continuators of Thucydides.26 When Aristotle in the previous chapter of the Poetics 27 criticizes the sort of plot which merely recounts the adventures of Heracles or Theseus, we do not have to assume that he had a particular play in mind. Moreover, Aristotle is thinking more about Herodotus at this point of the Poetics than Thucydides (b, and perhaps a, and note the use of the word for historiography). Nevertheless, Aristotle points to a problem shared by all historians, including Thucydides: because they are dealing with reallife plots, they are forced to include elements which cannot be But cf. Weil (:  ff.). On in Aristotle see further Louis (). Cf. Weil (:  ff.). Pippidi () argues that Aristotle cannot have meant Thucydides; de Ste Croix () that he did mean Thucydides, but that ‘his disparagement of history is not entirely justified on his own principles, at any rate in so far as it refers to the historian he most had in mind [i.e. Thucydides]’ (p. ); Kitto (: ) argues that Aristotle did mean to include Thucydides and was right to do so. Finley (: –) sees this passage as typical of the disregard in which Aristotle and other literary Greeks held historiography. 24 Weil (: ). On the question of whether Aristotle had read Thucydides, see de Ste Croix (:  n. ). 25 Gomme (: ). 26 Xenophon, Cratippus, and Theopompus, and (unless it is the same as one of these) Hell. Oxy. 27 The remark about Alcibiades surely looks back to these comments in the previous chapter: cf. b– (in composing the Odyssey, Homer did not recount everything that happened to Odysseus). 22 23



Thucydides

assimilated to a general pattern. In Thucydides’ History, although a causative, and thus to some extent, generalizing pattern is allowed to emerge through the use of poietic devices like selection, emphasis, use of speech, the historian sometimes feels obliged to report a particular detail, with no obvious relevance to the causal pattern of the work. Kitto,28 for example, finds in a more or less random chapter of Thucydides (. ) the particularity of a fact which the historian felt compelled to mention, and thus a justification of the thoughts on historiography in the Poetics. Aristotle, whose presentation in Poetics  implies that in what actually happened there are some plots that are more likely or necessary than others, might have added that while some event-plots in Thucydides suggest the necessary, inevitable, or typical (Books  or –), others (Books , ) do not. Thucydides and other historians are thus faced with a dilemma: how to combine capturing historical event in its full particularity (including the specific contingent role of individuals), with uncovering the general principles which lie behind the confusing particularity of those events, and which to some extent determine the behaviour and fates of individuals.29 How does Thucydides balance these priorities in practice? We might identify various strands of historical causation in the History:30 on the one hand generalizations about human behaviour (like those in the analysis of the stasis on Corcyra, or the analysis of the causes of imperialism by the Athenians in Book ); on the other the actions of individuals (a clear example is the influence of individuals in creating the conditions for the Peace of Nicias in . ) ), and in between, the characteristics and pure chance ( of national groups (particularly evident in the first debate at Sparta in Book , for example). Though few would maintain that these strands are actually opposed, there is a large scope for debate about their relationship and their relative weight.31 (:  ff.). Von Fritz (b: ). Cornford () argues that Thucydides presents generalizing semi-religious patterns of causation in the person of individuals: Cleon ‘represents’ Violence or Covetousness, Alcibiades ruinous Hope, Pericles Gnome, as though Thucydides had just ‘added the names afterwards’. 30 Cf. de Romilly (:  ff.). 31 Connor (: ) thinks they are in harmony. Finley (: –); and Hornblower (:  ff., –) see Thucydides as torn or struggling between the truths of poetry (or a hedgehog-like search for single unifying causes) on the one hand, and comprehensive historical reporting on the other. 28 29

Thucydides



If we consider his treatment of individuals, it is clear that Thucydides was not led to narrate a series of otherwise unconnected events by a desire to tell the story of one individual. He conspicuously does not relate the whole story of any of the individuals he describes, but only the bits that are seen as relevant to his story32 (contrast Thucydides’ treatment of Pericles or Archidamus with Herodotus’ of such figures as Croesus or Cyrus). Alcibiades is no exception to this rule. Nevertheless, his prominence in the explicit statements of Thucydides and in the narrative of Books – makes him stand out in a way which needs explaining. This returns us to the theory of Westlake—that Thucydides has radically recast his projection of the interplay of specific and general in order to cope with the case of Alcibiades. It is helpful to make a distinction at this point between the importance of individuals in Thucydides and their prominence. The prominence of individuals relates to their role in the presentation of the narrative, without necessarily carrying implications for their causative power. Thucydides’ methods of narrative are descended, partly through Herodotus, from those of epic,33 which is largely the story of the deeds and speeches of individuals. Thucydides’ narrative, particularly his military narrative, is characterized by the use of individuals, whom one might call ‘actors of focus’,34 to organize the narrative. Thucydidean speeches are normally given by named individuals. It does not follow, however, that the one who acts or speaks also exercises a decisive and individual role on the events described.35 It is not important, for example, that the person who gave the second speech in the Mytilenean debate was called Diodotus: here, it is what is said rather than who speaks that is important.36 To take an example of a rather different sort, it is not crucial that the commander of the Athenians in the Corinthian Gulf in the latter section of Book  should have been the general Phormio: other competent Athenian generals could have taken his 33 Hornblower (: –, –). Bruns (: –, esp. ). Who may often be, but are not necessarily, the same as the ‘focalizers’ as the term is used in narratology. Cf. Connor’s ‘commander narrative’ (Connor : e.g. –, –). Cf. also Heath’s use (: esp. –) of the term ‘focus’ in his analysis of figures in tragedy. 35 On the relative importance of who speaks and what is said in Thucydides, see Pelling (: ). 36 So that we are moving closer to the situation described by Aristotle in the words ‘adding the names afterwards’. 32 34



Thucydides

place. What is thought and done by Phormio is more important than who thinks and acts. The result of these battles is determined by more general factors, especially the superior ingenuity and skill of the Athenians, rather than by the character Phormio,37 despite the focus on him in the narrative. A focus on individual actors may thus actually be associated with the highlighting of general factors. The number of such figures is important here. The use of one actor of focus (Pericles’ influence in Athens at the end of Book  and the beginning of Book ), or two actors of focus, one Athenian, one Spartan (Pericles’ strategic analysis set against that of Archidamus at the beginning of Book ) suggests clearly defined strategic and policy issues as causative factors, projected through the words of an individual (who may or may not himself be causally important). The use of multiple actors of focus is associated with more specific or personal causative factors. Narrative in Thucydides where there is no consistent use of individuals as focuses of speech, thought, and action may suggest that generalized causative factors were not important, and that the events were due mainly to chance, as in the narrative of the Pylos campaign,38 or that there is a lack of direction (the rarity of focalization through Nicias at the end of Book 39). This last example demonstrates the converse proposition: that the importance of an actor is not necessarily evident through his prominence. Where an individual figures prominently it is thus necessary to ask (as I will do below, for example in the case of the Sicilian debate) to what extent this emphasizes general factors (such as the issues raised in the speeches of named individuals) and to what extent it emphasizes the causative power of the individual (arising typically from the way individual figures frame their speech and actions). The classic case of when it is historically important who speaks, acts, or thinks, is that of the ‘great man’,40 who is actually seen decisively to influence or even control events (a version of the type  individual as defined in the Introduction, above). But actors of focus may be ‘important’ in another way: their historical personality (the matrix of characteristics which distinguish this figure from others in the narrative) may exercise a crucial influence on events: here it is individuation (type ), historical characterization, which 37 39

Cf. Hunter (: –). See Rood (: ch. ).

38 40

Cf. Hunter (: –). Carlyle ().

Thucydides



is important. The importance of Churchill in  consisted in his power to generate unity and to direct events. In the abdication crisis of  it made a difference that the prime minister should have been a person like Baldwin, but this was not an example of the determinative influence of a great man. So we need to distinguish between a ‘determining’ importance and a ‘contingent’ or ‘accidental’ importance which is associated with characterization. Differentiation amongst characters will be associated with ‘contingent influence’, rather than ‘great man’ importance. The importance of a contingently influential character arises from his individual characteristics and their interaction with particular circumstances. The great man is characterized by the scope of his ideas and the success of his actions; one is not interested in the idiosyncrasies of character which brought these about. Armed with these distinctions, let us see if we can develop an integrated account of the treatment of individuals in Thucydides in general, and the case of Alcibiades in particular, which does not rely on claims about the relative dates of composition of different parts of the text. .     , .  My starting-point for this investigation is . , the function of which is prima facie a defence of the policy of Pericles. But the chapter also has wider functions.41 . . . after his death his foresight with regard to the war became even more  apparent. For he had told them that if they did not follow an expansionist  policy, looked after the fleet, and did not seek to add to the empire in the war or put the city at risk, they would come through. But they pursued policies which were totally opposed to this advice, and even in areas which apparently had no connection with the war Athenian leaders42 practised politics in pursuit of their own personal ambitions [ µ ] and desire for personal profit [ ], with bad consequences both for themselves and for the allies. When these policies succeeded, they brought prestige and advantage more to private individuals, but when they failed 41 On the role of such ‘narrator interventions’ in general, and .  in particular, see Gribble (). 42 The focus of the third person, which at the beginning of the sentence was on the Athenians in general, shifts here to the individual leaders, as ‘private ambitions’ suggests competing individuals. Cf. Hornblower (: ).



Thucydides

resulted in harm to the city in its war effort. The reason for this was that Pericles by virtue of the authority he exercised through his standing and his judgement, and because of his manifest incorruptibility, could restrain the assembly in a way consistent with freedom. He was not led by it, but rather he led it . . . But those who followed after him, because they were more on a level with each other and each striving to achieve the top position, in turning their attention to the demos and to catering to its pleasures, surrendered control of affairs into its hands as well. As a result, as one would expect in a great city controlling an empire, many mistakes were made, but especially the Sicilian expedition. This was not so much an error of judgement about the people against whom the expedition was directed: it was more that those who had sent it did not make the proper subsequent decisions for those in the field. Because of their personal disputes [ ] concerning the leadership of the demos, they both made the situation in the expedition lose its edge, and between them brought confusion into the city’s affairs for the first time. . . . [But despite the disaster in Sicily, they continued to hold out against their previous enemies and the Persians for several years, and] they did not give in until they had been brought down through falling foul of each other in personal disputes [ ]. So overwhelming where the resources on the basis of which Pericles at that time predicted that the city would easily come through in the war against the Peloponnesians alone.

The last sentence effects the transition back to the time of narration, and the intervention closes as it opens, with the thoughts of Pericles, who has consistently been presented as the individual most able to express and act on the power of Athens, and whose departure (which it is one of the functions of .  to signal and emphasize) is to prove decisive for the future course of the war. The mistakes and quarrels referred to in . . – (‘policies which benefited individuals’, ‘many other decisions but especially the Sicilian expedition’) are not specifically identified. This ‘programmatic’ vagueness is deliberately suggestive: it anticipates the Mytilenean debate in Book , the Pylos debate in Book , and all the events in the subsequent narrative which reveal the basic pattern: individual interests—harmful political division and bad decisions— open stasis. The crucial point of the chapter is that it places Athens, specifically Athenian failures, at the centre of the History’s account of why the war came to the conclusion that it did. And the failure which is emphasized above all is the Sicilian expedition (. . —compare . . , where the pursuit of harmful individualism leading to unPericlean policies also strongly suggests Sicily). Thuc. .  antici-











Thucydides



pates the account of the Sicilian debate in Book , where the interaction between the private ambitions of individuals and the private interests of the citizens turns out to be so important. Although the same tendency was perceptible in other events, Sicily was the most important failure, for it produced the situation where Pericles’ analysis of Athenian power had to be put to the test (. . ). After Sicily, Athens fought on, but it was now a matter of a struggle for survival. Thuc. .  focuses the attention of the History not just on Athens, but on individuals and individualism (i.e. the harmful privileging of private interest in public affairs). After the death of Pericles, individuals competing for power, and motivated by ambition and search for profit, exploited rather than directed the emotions of the Athenians, playing on rather than suppressing their private interests. The result was the pursuit of destructive policies and eventually the ruin of the city. The story of Athens after the fall of Pericles was no longer that of a unified and consistent policy directed by one man, but of individual Athenians and individual competing politicians. The increasing importance of private interests brought a plurality of individual historical actors increasingly into prominence. The vagueness of the phrasing in .  suggests that its aim is to point to general themes, not to provide an exact strategic analysis for the causes of Athens’ failure, or a definitive statement about whether the Sicilian expedition was a good idea or not (hence the careful phrasing in . . ). Even in the narrative and analysis of the later books no simple judgement emerges on these points. The aim of the chapter is rather to introduce programatically general themes: the power of Athens and the role of private interests and individual leaders in ruining the city despite these tremendous reserves of strength. So no specific individuals are named in . . The telescoped or even simplified view of events which .  presents is a result of the limited aims of this narrator-intervention: not to provide on its own a convincing explanation of the course of the war, but (at this crucial point of the narrative) to emphasize the importance of Pericles and the effect of his absence, and to establish a vital theme: individuals and individual interests.43 43 Most of the interpretative problems thought to be presented by this chapter are a result of underrating the importance of its context, and misunderstanding its aims. ‘Thuc. . does not provide an encapsulation of Thucydides’ views about the war, or a resolution to the interpretive problem of the text’ (Connor : ).



Thucydides

The analysis of the Athenian decline after Pericles has two intimately related elements: the growth of harmful individualism in Athenian political life; and the increasing importance of competing individuals. We have already seen the influence of private interests and individualism on Athenian political life at various points in the narrative prior to . : the mention of the Acharnians and the young men as groups with special interests (. . –. ); the suggestion that Pericles might come under attack if his estates are spared (. . ); Pericles’ fear of the Athenians’ own mistakes (. . ). In particular, the Funeral Speech suggests tensions involved in an ideal of polis strength achieved through individual effort: Our public, political, activity is carried on in a free way, and as for suspicion of one another’s daily lifestyle, we are not angry with our neighbour if he does something for pleasure, nor do we direct at him those spiteful looks which, while harmless, none the less cause pain. Yet, although we get along tolerantly in our private lives, a fearful respect prevents us from behaving in a lawless way in public affairs: we listen both to whoever happens to hold office, and to the laws, especially those which exist to help the wronged, and those unwritten laws which it is acknowledged to be shameful to break. (. . –)

The first of these two sentences sees the tolerance of individual behaviour at a private level as contributory to a free political life (indeed in .  and .  freedom of individual expression is seen as leading to the powerful position of Athens in Greece). But this is straight away qualified by the recognition in the second sentence of the danger of such permissiveness for the political life of the city, and of the need for the checks provided by law and an attitude of respect to curb the behaviour of the individual.44 In the anarchy of the plague (. ) the freedom to do something for one’s own pleasure is perverted into an unrestrained self-indulgence. So the narrative of . – has suggested the beginnings of Athenian individualism, the rise of private interests damaging to the state. The occasion of .  is the sending of peace embassies to Sparta out of private interests (. . ), and the fining and tempo44 Again, when the Athenian citizen is described as dedicated to developing himself to the maximum extent, and (. . ) as equipped with grace and versatility, and self-sufficient ( ), it is the city which is seen as the arena for the supreme development of the citizen. But what is to stop the citizen’s quest for honour and for independence in this sense developing in an uncivic direction?

Thucydides



rary deposition of Pericles. Thus this chapter, which emphasizes the importance of damaging private interests in the narrative to come, is itself occasioned by an example of such forces. The second factor highlighted by .  is the increasing importance of competing individuals. Up to this point, Athens and the Athenians have usually been presented as a single actor in the narrative, particularly through the use of Pericles as the spokesman of a viewpoint which we can regard as Athenian. Other features of the presentation also stress unity. There are no paired speeches of Athenian deliberation (as there are for example on the Peloponnesian side), and (with the exception of the examples of disunity noted above) little attention is paid to Athenian internal politics. The speech of the Athenians in the first debate at Sparta, presenting a unified Athenian viewpoint to the outside world, is confirmed in its effect by the preceding speech of the Corinthians, whose generalizations from the viewpoint of an outsider encourage the perception of the Athenians as a single group. Pericles’ speech at the end of the Book  reads like the blueprint of the formal Athenian answer that was eventually made to the Spartans. True, Thucydides chooses to present this speech and not the formal answer itself. This produces a narrative opposition of Pericles on the one hand, and the Athenians as a group on the other, but no other Athenian individuals are mentioned. A very different story of Athenian internal politics in these years could have been told: the one that prevailed both before Thucydides’ version (the popular account of Megarian decrees, Aspasia, offended individuals45) and after (as we can see in the presentation of Plutarch’s Pericles46). In Thucydides, we are aware of the opposition to Pericles, but not the identity of the opponents. We have only to imagine a narrative in which the opposition of Cleon to Pericles is stressed at this point, to see what a different story of the role of individuals in the first two books Thucydides could have told. The description of Athenian politics down to .  thus not only pays little attention to individuals (excluding Pericles), it deliberately suppresses them. 45 Aristoph. Acharn. –, Peace –; cf. Cratinus’ Dionysalexandros (P. Oxy. .). 46 Plut. Per. –, with Stadter (:  ff.). In Plut. Per. . , .  Cleon is identified as one of Pericles’ opponents.



Thucydides

The situation in later books is very different47. After the death of Pericles has been recorded in the narrative, instead of a split between disinterested leader and a not so disinterested demos which can be persuaded to act for the good of the city, there is a new similarity between leaders and Athenians: now both leaders and Athenians are seen to put private interests above those of the city (compare the third-persons of .  with their capacity to indicate both leaders and Athenians). From this point on, no other Athenian politician is allowed to represent an Athenian unified response. After . , and following the thematic programme set out there, we find a new focus on individual competing figures and individual interests (in the Mytilenean debate in Book , the political conflict over Pylos in Book , the Sicilian debate, the Herms and Mysteries affair leading to the recall of Alcibiades, and the stasis in Book ). It is evident then, that the two elements stressed by .  are inseparable. In order to explain the failure of Athens after the death of Pericles we need to look at the splits within Athens, at individuals, and at their historical characters. The analysis of private interests takes us into the personal concerns of the individual actors, so that anti-civic individualism (a harmful form of type ) is closely linked to individuation (type ). As the emphasis on harmful individualism rises, so does the interest in the individual leaders whose characters proved inappropriate for the role of leading the city. We find not simply selfishness, but various sorts of selfishness, and an interest in tracing the failure of Athens partly at least in the specific personal failures of its later leaders. This increasing concentration on individuals is also a natural one from the point of view of literary technique: the general themes with which we are presented at the beginning of the work are not abandoned, but seen increasingly in practice at the level of individual event and the behaviour of individuals. This is not to say that we can regard Thucydides’ work as divided into a first part where the historical actors are cities acting in unison, and a second part in which the actors are increasingly individuals. For one thing, such an analysis would ignore Sparta, particularly the first debate in Sparta in Book , where the identifi-

47

Cf. Connor (: –).

Thucydides



cation of individual leaders at Sparta, and to some degree their characters as well, is important.48 Moreover, the emphasis in .  on the role of individuals in the failure of Athens can be seen as complementary to, rather than inconsistent with, other levels of causal explanation. Other leaders might have forestalled the fall of Athens, but the seeds of the Athenian defeat were already latent in the political system and the characteristics praised in the Funeral Speech: a competitive ethic which sought civic strength through the private efforts of individuals, an active posture in the search for wealth and empire, an almost alarming spirit of daring and indefatigability. The new note introduced at . , and expanded in the later presentation of Pericles’ successors, thus represents a modulation in the pattern of causal structure rather than an about-turn. This shift is occasioned by what Thucydides sees as a shift in the events themselves: after the death of Pericles, it became increasingly important to look at individuals in order to explain the failure of Athens and thus the course of the whole war. We can thus explain the increasing exploration of individuals in terms of factors internal to the work, without having to turn to compositionally based theories of a chronological change in Thucydides’ thinking. We can now turn to consider how Alcibiades fits into the interpretative framework I have identified of a growing concentration on individual Athenian leaders. The discussion falls into three parts: first, the explicit statements in the narrator’s voice relating to Alcibiades (. , . , etc.), second, the overall presentation of Alcibiades in the narrative itself, and third, characterization. .      As we noted above, the analysis of Thucydides’ treatment of individuals is often treated as a matter of isolating ‘judgements’. Special attention is given to certain key passages in an attempt to build up a single and simple authorial view of the character in question. As has been seen, this sort of methodology is associated with arguments that different passages were composed at different 48 Especially the oversimplifying but perceptive Sthenelaidas (. –); cf. Pelling (: ).



Thucydides

times, and that Thucydides can be shown to have changed his mind on certain questions. The texts most often used to isolate Thucydides’ judgements are those passages, such as .  or . , where the historian-narrator comments on events in his own voice (whether this is signalled by use of the first person or not). This approach is typically accompanied by the assumption that such ‘narratorial interventions’ are later comments inserted by the author into an already completed text: the specific context in which such passages appear is not usually considered important. The reference in these passages to events outside the time of the main narrative and the use of the narratorial voice are read as indications that they are later attempts by the author to alter the direction of a text written at some earlier stage. As I argue elsewhere,49 however, such passages should rather be seen as a deliberate technique, perhaps integral to the original plan of the History, intended to alert the reader to important historical patterns at crucial stages of the narrative and to point to understandings which can only be perceived through a contemplation of later events. The interventions are thus narrative climaxes, not authorial asides. In any case, the intimate connection of the narratorial interventions with the surrounding text, as demonstrated for example by de Romilly (), shows that we must at least analyse these passages in terms of the context in which they occur. The date at which the passages were composed does not affect this point, since even if they are later additions, they are so well integrated into their context that we must treat them as integral to the History. Once this is accepted, we can examine the interventions relating to Alcibiades in terms of a planned attempt to build up a developing reaction to a complex figure. Let us return first of all to . , the narratorial intervention where, on the occasion of Pericles’ deposition and death, we are presented with the failure of his successors. It is here also that we can detect the first reference to Alcibiades in the History. As we have seen, the deliberate, telescoping vagueness of .  is designed to refer primarily to a single event—the Sicilian expedition—in a way that suggests a general tendency: the Athenians’ ability to bring themselves to grief through harmful individualism 49

Gribble ().

Thucydides



and internal disputes. But .  directs attention not just to Sicily, but also to Alcibiades. He is the leader who par excellence pursued a policy which was intended to benefit himself, but which when it failed brought harm to the city.50 Indeed, Nicias’ criticisms of Alcibiades in the Sicilian debate seem to paint Alcibiades as the archetypal example of the individualistic tendencies described in . : If there is someone here, who, delighted to be chosen as leader, encourages you to undertake the expedition, looking only to his own advantage (someone, moreover, who is still rather young to be in a position of leadership) so that he can be admired for his horse-rearing, and so that he can support its great expense by getting some benefit from the command, do not accept a situation where this person maintains his personal splendour [ µ ] by putting the city at risk. Remember that such men wrong the public cause at the same time as they use up their personal resources [ ]. (. . –)

Nicias’ criticisms are confirmed, in part, by the narrator in . : Alcibiades believed that the Sicilian expedition would lead to the conquest of Sicily and Carthage: ‘and at the same time he was thinking of his personal affairs [ ], that if he was successful, he would benefit both financially and in terms of prestige. He enjoyed great standing among the citizens, but the desires he pursued were greater than his available resources, both in horserearing and his other expenditure’ (. . ). The explicit statement of the narrator is reflected in Alcibiades’ own speech (. –) which is likewise heavily concerned with private advantage and personal interests. Alcibiades was motivated to speak in this way by his personal rivalry with Nicias (. . ), in other words not just by ) but also by personal rivalry desire for personal gain ( ( µ —. . ). Pericles suppressed private goals and private affairs in his political life (. . ) and castigated those who put immediate personal advantage above the good of the city (. ); he is never seen to be involved in unseemly political struggles with rivals. Alcibiades, in encouraging the Sicilian expedition, not only pursues his own advantage, but speaks in a way designed to please or flatter the demos (cf. . . — ’ ). The Sicilian expedition, encouraged by Alcibiades, is thus the prime example of an expedition which, if it had succeeded, would have 50

Pouncey (: ).

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Thucydides

benefited mainly individuals, but whose failure brought great harm to the city (. . ). But . .  introduces another explanatory theme: the Athenians are said to have made the Sicilian expedition lose its edge by subsequent decisions which had to do with personal attacks in a bid for control of the demos. This again strongly suggests Alcibiades, and is further supported by a comparison with Book : . . . those who had a particular grievance against Alcibiades took up these accusations [those relating to the affairs of the Herms and Mysteries] because he was an obstacle to them in their attempts to get the leadership of the demos firmly in their grasp. They thought that, if they drove him out, they would achieve the top position [ —cf. . . : ‘each was striving to achieve the top position’]. (. . )

There is really nothing else Thucydides could mean in . .  apart from the decision to recall Alcibiades.51 (He cannot mean that the Athenians did not send sufficient logistical support, not only because the narrative makes it clear that they did,52 but also because the context here concerns the struggle for the leadership of the demos). Moreover, those political decisions which seemed to be outside the conduct of the war, but in reality were not (. . ), perhaps suggest the political struggles to oust Alcibiades in  . Thus although Alcibiades is portrayed (already in . ) as exercising a crucial and pernicious influence in encouraging the Athenians to sail to Sicily, the failure of the expedition is associated with his removal from its command.53 The same double-edged analysis of Alcibiades is observable when we come to the narrative of the Sicilian expedition itself. Here, two strands are important.54 First, . . –. .  stresses the Athenians’ ignorance of the size of the island and the resources of its inhabitants, and the speech of Alcibiades relies heavily on misinformation and rhetorical distortion.55 The Athenians are led on not only by folly, but by private motivations (. ). This strand, then, emphasizes ignorance and selfish irresponsibility (especially 51 De Romilly (: ); Brunt (: ); Westlake (: –); van de Maele (: ); Erbse (: –); but cf. Connor (:  n. ). 52 . . , . . , . . ; Westlake (: –); Gomme (: ); Hornblower (: ). 53 Cf. von Fritz (a: , ). 54 Cf. Dover HCT v. –; Liebeschuetz (). 55 Cf. Hunter (:  ff.); Macleod (:  ff.).

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Alcibiades’), and the extent to which the expedition was fatally flawed from the start. Another strand, however, emphasizes the ways in which the expedition was capable of success, at least in the limited aim of bringing the blockade of Syracuse to a successful conclusion: compare . .  (‘to such a point of danger had Syracuse come’); . .  (the Syracusans had given up hope of victory in the war); and . .  (Gylippus had given up hope of saving Sicily). Thuc. . .  discusses the mistakes of the generals in the narrative of the previous year, which implies at least that it is worth looking at strategic questions in any analysis of why the expedition failed. This strand, then, is interested in the specific reasons for the expedition’s failure, especially the internal dispute which removed Alcibiades and left Nicias in sole charge: . .  points the finger at Nicias,56 and the general picture in the narrative of Books  and  is that Nicias was the wrong general for the expedition. There is no logical inconsistency between these two strands:57 even if the expedition was undertaken without the right sort of debate and without proper knowledge, it does not follow that it was also doomed to fail. Alcibiades may have been as capable of carrying out his plans, given the proper chance, as he was skilful at concealing the true dangers of the expedition from the assembly. In fact, if one thinks in terms of the thematic analysis of . , the two strands are actually complementary: the harmful privileging of priand µ ) leads on the one vate interests ( hand to Alcibiades’ misleading advice as to the scale of the opposition and the Athenians’ ‘selfish’ readiness to believe him (cf. . ), and on the other to the disputes for political supremacy which caused the removal of Alcibiades and crucially weakened the Athenian command. Nevertheless, some commentators58 have detected a shift of emphasis in Thucydides’ thinking, founded once again on a supposition about the composition of the History. They claim that whereas .  emphasizes the expedition’s chances of success, the narrative of Books  and  talks about it as though it were doomed Dover in HCT iv. –. Cf. Dover (). Cf. de Romilly (: )—‘one cannot insist too strongly on the absolute coherence to be found between [. and the account of the expedition in Books  and ]’. 58 e.g. de Romilly (); Westlake (: ); Dover in HCT v. . 56 57

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to fail. Thuc. .  must therefore represent a different stage of Thucydides’ thought from Books  and . We have already seen that it is not the case that .  talks only about the expedition as capable of success, whereas Books  and  only give the impression that it was doomed to fail. The inherent flaws of the expedition were already suggested by . . , while I have just pointed to passages in Books  and  which talked about the expedition as though it were capable of success. It might be argued that . .  implies a more sanguine view of the chances of the expedition’s success than is typical of Books  and ,59 but this is natural in the context of the argument that Thucydides is trying to formulate at this point. The purpose of . . – is to emphasize the damage done to Athens by the internal disputes following the death of Pericles. In the context of such an argument, it is appropriate to stress that the expedition might have succeeded but was undermined by internal disputes (. . ). In the narrative of Books  and , on the other hand, where Thucydides is concerned with building up an impression of the reasons why the expedition failed, it is inappropriate explicitly to stress that it might have succeeded. In Books  and , another factor comes into play, namely the tendency of ancient narratives to describe a catastrophe in such a way that a sense of the approaching disaster is incorporated from the start (cf. Herodotus’ account of Xerxes’ expedition against Greece). Such a presentation does not mean that specific reasons for failure are not also examined ( just as Herodotus also examines the specific reasons for Xerxes’ failure). However much we may get a sense that the Sicilian expedition is doomed to fail in a narrative sense,60 we are still encouraged to look for the reasons for its failure in specific causes, and the possibility is also left open 59 ‘it was not so much an error of judgement about the opposition against which they set out; but more that the ones who had sent it did not make the proper subsequent decisions for those who had gone out’. But this sentence does not rule out an explanation in terms of the inherent folly of the expedition. In phrases of the form ... (‘not so much X . . . as Y’) in Thucydides, the explanation in the ‘not so much’ clause is not rejected but overshadowed by the explanation in the ‘but rather’ clause, which may be a newer or more subtle one (see Westlake : –). Although . .  appears to refer to the expedition as a flawed departure from the wise policy of Pericles, by the time we get to . . , Thucydides’ argument has moved on, and he brackets the ‘inherently flawed’ explanation by the ‘not so much’ phrase. 60 This feature of Thucydides’ narrative, which exists alongside more conventional types of causation, is well brought out by Cornford (: –; cf. Hunter : –).

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that if things had been different, the expedition might have succeeded (for example, had Gylippus not arrived when he did, or had Nicias not been left in virtual sole charge of the expedition). In dwelling extensively on the conflict of Nicias and Alcibiades and the affair of the Herms and Mysteries, Book  is consistent with the implied counterfactual of . . , ‘if the Athenians had not been so riven by individualistic internal disputes in / , the Sicilian expedition might have succeeded’.61 Any difference of emphasis between .  and Books  and  is thus a perfectly natural one, not an inconsistency of the sort which would lead us to suspect a change of mind. So the double analysis of Alcibiades’ importance (instigator of inherently flawed expedition, cause—through his deposition—of potentially successful expedition’s failure) is reflected in the two strands we have identified in the narrative of the Sicilian expedition. It is clear how Alcibiades’ selfishly motivated advice can be seen as undermining the expedition from the start, but in what sense could the failure of the Sicilian expedition be said to be a result of (or at least associated with) the removal of Alcibiades from its command? In . . , Nicias is blamed for two things: the strategic mistake in the winter of  , and the failure to stop Gylippus entering the city at the beginning of summer  , an event which is given considerable attention in the narrative (. –), and whose results are seen as crucial (. . ). After his arrival, Gylippus becomes the director of Sicilian operations, as well as actor of focus in the narrative that follows. Now Gylippus would not have arrived at the crucial time he did if it was not for the influence of Alcibiades speaking in the Spartan assembly. This, together with the fortification of Decelea, is the purport of his advice to the Spartans in the winter of  , highlighted in the long speech standing on its own at . – (cf. . .  ‘send what is even more important, a Spartiate man’), and the Spartans would have continued delaying and procrastinating if they had not had this decisive advice from Alcibiades (. . , . . ).62 Moreover, the strategic mistakes 61 Cf. Bodin (). Van de Maele () finds extensive support in Books  and  for the implication of .  that the recall of Alcibiades was responsible for the failure of the Sicilian expedition. Cf. Connor (:  n. ). 62 Cf. Bodin (): Alcibiades transforms vague plans and procrastination into a plan of action. The damaging effect of the occupation of Decelea is also underlined in the narrative: . . , . . .

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exposed in . .  might never have been made if Nicias was not in virtual sole command.63 It is made clear that Nicias did not believe in the expedition from the start and was temperamentally unsuited to lead it, possessing none of the qualities of daring and resilience necessary for such a venture. Then, crucially, at .  (cf. . . ) Nicias’ timorous prevarication prevents the expedition from returning home. Thucydides in .  does not explicitly say, or even compel the conclusion, that the expedition would have succeeded if Alcibiades had shared the command.64 But Alcibiades, who is made spokesman of the expedition twice in Book  (. –, . –), is its sponsor and guiding light.65 His removal from the command, and his defection to the Spartans which resulted, are crucial factors in the expedition’s failure. If . .  suggests the key importance of Alcibiades, this is even more true of . . Like . , .  picks up certain issues which dominate the narrative at that point and fixes them as a recurring theme of central importance. In .  the theme was the selfish individualism of the Athenians (which we had seen demonstrated in their refusal to shoulder the hardships of war and their deposition of Pericles) and that of the post-Periclean leaders. In . , the theme is a similar one, but more specific: the relationship between Alcibiades and the Athenians. Having told us that Alcibiades spent more than he could afford on horses and other expenses the narrator continues, unexpectedly and provocatively: Later this [i.e. Alcibiades’ private financial problems] was one of the main causes of the downfall of the Athenian state. For the many, fearing the magnitude [megethos] both of the paranomia he displayed with respect towards his own body66 in his lifestyle, and of the spirit [dianoia]67 with Cf. Dover in HCT v. –; Erbse (: –). Contra Dover in HCT v. – (cf. Dover : ). Thucydides’ avoidance of the straight counterfactual suggests that he thought such a formulation too blunt and oversimplifying. The author ‘leaves us free to conclude’ that the expedition might have succeeded if Alcibiades had been left in charge (Pouncey : ). 65 It is true that the strategy proposed by Alcibiades in .  is not the policy of boldness and surprise commended in . . . But van de Maele (:  ff.) argues that Alcibiades had already begun to turn away from his own plan and towards that of Lamachus before his recall to Athens: this was the sort of imaginative flexibility which could have made the expedition a success. 66 On the significance of this phrase see Ch.  above, pp. ‒. 67 Like megethos and paranomia in the same sentence, this is a tyrannical key word: cf. Ch. above, pp. ‒. 63 64

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which he performed every single thing he got involved in, came to believe that he desired tyranny, and became his enemies [ µ , ‘declared war on him’68], and even though on a public level his conduct of 69 military affairs was excellent [ µ 70], aggrieved as individuals on a private level with the way he conducted himself and handing over affairs to others, before long they brought down the city [ , the same word used of the ultimate fate of Athens in . . ]. (. . –).

Scholars have debated whether Thucydides is referring to the deposition of Alcibiades in  , or that in  . But we do not have to choose between these alternatives: the language of .  aims at a formula capable of expressing both events.71 On both occasions, the ambivalent relationship between Alcibiades and the Athenians was to prove catastrophic (the first deposition leading, albeit indirectly, to the failure in Sicily, and the second to the final defeat at Aegospotami): history seemed to be repeating itself. Moreover, the inability of the Athenians to decide about Alcibiades one way or the other (recall the crucial question put to the poets at the end of Aristophanes’ Frogs) was constantly working to disable Athenian policy: in the Herms and Mysteries affair, in the political disturbances of  , and (outside the narrative) in the division between city and fleet in the years – . Like . , this chapter thus presents the reader, at a crucial time, with a sudden Gomme (: ). Dover in HCT v.  prefers (MSS ). Brunt (: –) on the significance of the phrase. It is hard to interpret without knowing how Alcibiades would have been depicted in the narrative of – . 71 Contra Brunt (: –) and Hatzfeld (:  n. ), who argue that Thucydides cannot be referring to   at all, Dover (HCT v. –) is probably right to conclude that the two verbs and suggest the final defeat of Athens ( elsewhere implying a final destruction), and the second deposition of Alcibiades shortly preceding this defeat (this deposition too was brought about by his private excesses: Plut. Alc. ; D.S. . . ). Moreover, µ looks as though it refers to events after the time when our text of Thucydides comes to an end (Dover in HCT iv. –; cf. Delebecque : ): Alcibiades’ military reputation rested on Cyzicus and the following campaigns (cf. Isoc. . –). But Thucydides must also have intended that the reader think of the similar deposition of  , leading to the catastrophic failure in Sicily, particularly since the context of this passage is precisely a report of the debate on this expedition, setting out the tension which later led to Alcibiades’ removal from its command. In view of . . , which depicts the failure of the expedition as nothing short of catastrophic, as well as the clear concentration on this failure as decisive in the fall of Athens in . , seems capable of referring to Sicily as well. Thucydides has expressed himself in such a way as to suggest both depositions. 68 69 70

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perspective of the course of the rest of the war. The suggestive or compressive vagueness of the language (like the vague phrasing of . : ‘in other things, but especially the Sicilian expedition’) is intended to allow the pattern in events to be perceived. We do not know exactly how Thucydides would have developed this train of events, because, in contrast to other important individuals in the History, whose death closes their presentation (Pericles,72 Cleon, Demosthenes, Nicias), that of Alcibiades is a fragment, breaking off before the narration of the more important section of his career. The anachrony of the narratorial interventions, however, encompasses the whole of Alcibiades’ career: we are forced to read passages like .  without narrative which might have been an essential complement. So .  once again emphasizes the central importance of Alcibiades. But Alcibiades is not said to have brought about these remarkable historical effects deliberately through his own stature or influence: rather, his behaviour, his character, and the reaction it aroused in the Athenians led to a crucial ambivalence in Athenian policy at times of key importance, and to disaster on two occasions. In other words, Alcibiades’ importance is of the ‘contingent’ rather than the ‘great man’ variety. Moreover, .  relies on general themes and a scheme of causation with which we are already familiar from . : the decay of political life and the privileging of private interests over the public good, on the part of both leaders and the Athenians.73 Just as the ambivalence of the third person (‘they’) in . . , which hovered between reference to the Athenians and their leaders, suggested the double-sided nature of the process of political decay, so here the careful phrasing of .  implicates both Alcibiades and the Athenians in the two depositions and the crucial weakness they caused. Against this background, Alcibiades is seen to be a specific example of wider tendencies, the damaging rise of private interests, and the breakdown in political leadership. Although .  has an importance which goes beyond its context, we cannot tear it from its place in the narrative as though it were an independent and removable judgement.74 The form of the inter72 Though Pericles’ significance is always being redefined in the light of subsequent events, and this may be true to a lesser extent of the other characters too. 73 On the role of private interest in Alcibiades’ political activity, see Macleod (: esp. ); Connor (: –, esp. , ); Pelling (: ). 74 On the connections of .  with its context, and its effects on that context, see Connor (: –).

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vention is in fact an expanded character introduction.75 Thuc. . .  reacts to Nicias’ allegations about Alcibiades (. . ) and explicitly confirms them: Alcibiades really did want the command as a way of financing his extravagant personal life. But this is qualified: he also really did believe he could conquer Sicily and Carthage for the city. Furthermore, the narrating voice emphasizes that it was Nicias, for all his criticisms of Alcibiades about reducing political affairs to a private level, who had first made accusations of a private kind against his rival (. . ). The mention of the debts Alcibiades had incurred in horse-rearing, which led him to covet the generalship of the expedition partly as a way of rescuing his own financial situation (. . ), colours Alcibiades’ presentation of the glory of his Olympic victory at the beginning of his speech, especially as he claims there that his racing activity benefits the city. The final sentence of the intervention (. . ) stresses Alcibiades’ excellence as a director of military affairs, despite the hostility he aroused on ‘private’ grounds. The claim of Alcibiades that his extravagant private life does not damage his ability to benefit the city (. . ) is also confirmed in advance (though the fact that Alcibiades goes on to refer to the unsuccessful Mantinean campaign complicates this question). In other words, the narrator’s voice in .  mediates between the two sides in the debate, balancing the claims of the two opponents. The chapter is thus integral to its context in Book . It follows that it is not a later addition to the text, or rather that it is not a later addition imperfectly integrated with the surrounding text.76 At the same time, it suggests a wider perspective which enables us to see the debate not just in terms of the risky Sicilian expedition and Alcibiades’ flawed advice, but also as typical of Athenian political life in the rest of the war, in particular the reaction to Alcibiades and its disastrous consequences. As in the case of the presentation of Pericles in . , .  does not shrink from comment on Alcibiades, but once again this 75

On character introductions in Thucydides, see further below. Some see .  as a late attempt by Thucydides to alter the emphasis of an already composed narrative in order to give an increased prominence to Alcibiades (e.g. de Romilly : ; Dover in HCT v. –). But Alcibiades’ role in Books  and  is vital (Herms and Mysteries affair, speech to Spartans), even if it is not quite the role one might first think of when reading . . Moreover, the emphasis of .  is more the future importance of Alcibiades than his importance in the narrative of the Sicilian books. The passage draws a general pattern out of a decisive ‘moment’ of the narrative (the destructive relationship between Alcibiades and the Athenians). 76

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comment develops naturally out of a context of narrative and speech (in . . : ‘the Athenians thought Pericles was the best leader they had, and they were right, for . . . ’; Here: ‘Nicias claimed that Alcibiades wanted the command for his own private motives, and he was right, but . . . ’). The themes which both interventions treat are for the most part already dominant in the text out of which they arise: it is their future effects, and their inherent historical significance, revealed only by hindsight, which the interventions reveal. Indeed, it is only by setting them against subsequent events by means of a narrative anachronism that this historical significance could be revealed. Once again, this passage reflects the double-edged depiction of Alcibiades noticed in the discussion of .  and the Sicilian expedition. Once again, the author-narrator’s commentary cannot be reduced to a simple judgement. Alcibiades encouraged the Sicilian expedition for personal reasons, on the basis of a demagogic appeal to the people, but he is also said to be excellent at military affairs. Despite Alcibiades’ faults, it is the Athenians who are said to have rejected Alcibiades and ruined the city, just as the failure of the Sicilian expedition was associated with the removal of Alcibiades from its command. This double-edged analysis is reflected in the other interventions relating to Alcibiades. In working to undermine the Peace of Nicias (. . ) Alcibiades was motivated by personal pique and a desire for honour, but also by the conviction that alliance with Argos really was the best thing for Athens. The point of this remark is not so much to state a fact about Alcibiades’ psychology as to influence reader-reaction, consistently with the double-edged attitude towards Alcibiades of . . Similar is . . –, which again reveals no new factual information. When Alcibiades restrained the fleet from sailing against the government of the Four Hundred at Athens, This seems77 the first occasion,78 and as important an occasion as any, that he benefited the city . . . There was not another person alive who would 77 Reading (Classen). (MSS) would suggest a desire on the part of the author to distance himself from a direct judgement, but it would require rather than (HCT v. ). 78 [B] rather than [cett.]. would suggest that there were other specific figures who might have been expected to render service to Athens on that occasion ( ), which is not the case (the statement that no one else would have

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have been capable of restraining the mob at that time. He, however, both dissuaded them from their plan to sail on Athens and, by his angry rhetoric, turned them aside from their personal [ ] feelings of anger against the ambassadors, and diverted them from their course.

At first sight this passage seems to be taking a strongly negative line, even if it is not a particularly outrageous claim in itself (Alcibiades’ only substantial action on behalf of the city up to this point was his Argive strategy, and even he could not claim that this had resulted in any specific benefit for the city79). But here again the negative comment is balanced with the words ‘and as important an occasion as any’, perhaps implying that we will see more occasions where Alcibiades will benefit the city in the narrative that comes, and is furthermore followed by the claim that no one else could have performed the task of restraining the mob. Even here, however, the praise sounds double-edged, the tone almost ironic: having extraordinary powers of persuasion with the mob is an ambiguous virtue. The point of this passage becomes clearer against the background of .  and . . In these passages, Alcibiades seemed to have put personal benefit above the good of the city, and to have encouraged the Athenians in a dangerous undertaking by pandering to their private interests. It is in this context that his restraining the fleet can be called the first occasion on which he had benefited the city. Here for the first time Alcibiades conforms to the proper Periclean separation between public and private: instead of pandering to the mob, he uses his rhetorical talents to restrain them from their private ( . . ) desire to avenge themselves on the Four Hundred, so that the proper relationship between political leader and demos (suppression of private interests, leading rather than being led) is restored. Perhaps, as in been able to restrain the mob is general and potential). The same objection applies to reading in the same sentence as masculine. Note however that Plutarch (Alc. . ) appears to have read . 79 I doubt whether it is useful to try to reconstruct Thucydides’ ‘judgement’ of the Mantinea campaign (de Romilly :  ff.; Westlake : –), but Thucydides does say that through it the Spartans redemonstrated their military superiority (. . ), and Alcibiades’ description of it in . .  is clearly a rhetorical attempt to make the best of a bad show. Westlake (:  n. ) thinks the statement that Alcibiades benefited the city for the first time is only intended to apply to the narrative of the previous few months. In any case, there is no inconsistency with µ in . , since this must refer primarily to Alcibiades’ military activity after  .



Thucydides

Plutarch,80 this incident would have initiated a new stage in the presentation of Alcibiades, in which more obvious services to Athens would be prominent (we have been led to expect a narrative in which he demonstrates his skill in the direction of military affairs). We do not know, because shortly afterwards the complex and developing story of Alcibiades and his relationship with the Athenians breaks off. In all these passages, if the analysis cannot be reduced to a simple judgement, if there are various and even conflicting elements, this does not mean that Thucydides has changed his mind, or that he cannot make up his mind about Alcibiades. The analysis is forthright (it certainly should not be confused with sitting on the fence), but complex. .  ’  Many commentators have found it impossible to reconcile the two sides of the presentation outlined above: they perceive a contradiction which shows that Thucydides has at some stage changed his mind about Alcibiades, or they argue that the different notes struck in the narrative are evidence of ‘a confusing ambivalence’, caused by Thucydides’ fascination with a seductive figure, perhaps after meeting him and deciding to use him as a source.81 One response to such misgivings is to point out that, to a certain extent, this sort of multivocal presentation can be paralleled in the depiction of other figures in the History. The case of Nicias is an instructive comparison. In . . , though we are told that Nicias had enjoyed more success as a general than anyone else, he is also said to have put the avoidance of risk above all other goals, in the hope of going to his grave with the reputation of never having brought the Athenians to grief. This passage, itself a double-edged evaluation, can be set beside . .  (on his strategic mistakes), . .  (on his excessive superstition), and . . , (on his ‘virtue’, however exactly this passage should be interpreted). Nicias is certainly not univocal: there is plenty to set beside his ‘wise adviser’ 80 In Plut. Alc. . , Alcibiades’ acting like a ‘great leader’ on this occasion serves as a turning-point in his career, introducing the period of his greatest successes and glory. 81 Brunt (: : Thucydides fell under the charm of Alcibiades’ personality); Delebecque (: –); Pouncey (: –).

Thucydides



rightness in the Sicilian debate. Contrast the more univocal depiction of Pericles: we are told much the same sort of thing about him whenever there is comment by the narrator. If the presentation of Alcibiades and Nicias is more multivocal than that of Pericles, this is partly because, as we saw above, post-Periclean leaders required a more complex evaluation (it was precisely the virtue of Pericles that only his public persona was relevant). It is important to remember that as a contemporary historian, Thucydides was writing about figures whose reputation was still disputed, or who were perhaps still alive. Though Thucydides saw the aim of his historiography as causal history illuminating human behaviour, rather than the preservation of the reputation of men lest it be forgotten,82 his role as provider of an authoritative account of the years of the war nevertheless put him in a decisive position for mediating the reputation of individuals whose role in the war was particularly controversial.83 That is why the depiction of such figures is characterized by a variety of carefully worded, balanced narratorial inventions mixing more positive with more negative analysis (sometimes at the level of the individual paragraph). If the presentation of Alcibiades is more complex and multivocal than that of other characters in the History, this is surely because Alcibiades himself aroused the most passionate and polarized reactions. The narratorial analysis of Alcibiades must be seen as a reaction to the contemporary rhetorical debates raging about him. The carefully-weighed, almost tortuous phrases of the narratorial interventions (in such contrast to the effortless and simplifying rhetoric of the orators) are surely influenced by the need to find a way of negotiating the competing and polarized rhetorical presentations of the historian’s own day. We have already seen (Chapter , Sections –) some of the ways in which Thucydides interacts with the rhetorical debate surrounding Alcibiades, and we can now extend this with a few more examples. Alcibiades was widely suspected of aiming at tyranny, a charge denied by Isoc. , where it is claimed that though Alcibiades might have had a tyranny if he had wanted one, he 82 Though the comparison of Thuc. .  and Hdt. .  suggests similarities of aim as well as differences. 83 Cf. Thuc. . . : the immediate reaction of the Athenians on learning of the fate of the Sicilian expedition was to blame their leaders. Thuc. .  suggests that Thucydides’ depiction of Pericles took place against a background of hostile public opinion.



Thucydides

turned it down out of a fundamental sense of equality (§ ). In Thucydides, the question of aiming at tyranny is dealt with, but indirectly. Alcibiades’ speeches show contempt for the principle of equality (esp. . . –). Thuc. .  sets out exactly what it was about Alcibiades’ ‘tyrannical’ attitude that the Athenians feared, but does not exempt the Athenians from a certain paranoia in their reaction to these qualities in him (this is filled out in the digression on the Peisistratids, . –). According to Isoc. . –, Alcibiades was single-handedly responsible for turning round the affairs of the city between  and  , while Lys.  claims he was not even capable of undoing the harm he had already done to the city (§ ). We do not know how Thucydides would have treated Alcibiades’ later military career, but there is already a hint of a double-edged approach. Although Alcibiades is said to have been an excellent director of military affairs, his boasts about his strategy at Mantinea ring somewhat hollow: he was proficient at putting the best possible gloss on his military achievements. A fundamental point of the controversy against the background of which Thucydides had to depict Alcibiades was the question of his allegiance to the city and the democracy.84 While Isoc.  claimed that Alcibiades inherited an ancestral friendship with the demos (§ ), that he shared in the same good luck and misfortunes as the demos throughout his career (§§ –), and was the only one to fight on its behalf rather than his own (§§ –), Lys.  depicts an ancestral hostility between the demos and the family of Alcibiades (§ ), culminating in Alcibiades’ betrayal of the city to the Spartans in   and again after Aegospotami (§§ –). In Thucydides, Alcibiades did not care what sort of regime existed at Athens so long as it was to his benefit (. . ). The democratic family tradition in Isoc.  is portrayed in Alcibiades’ speech to the Spartans in Book  as a tradition of leadership of the city and hostility to tyrants, but only faute de mieux loyalty to the democracy, which Alcibiades describes as an acknowledged form of madness (. .  Alcibiades’ distinction between the demos and the polis would be impossible in a democratic context85). Alcibiades’ speech Cf. Xen. HG . . . In his speech before the Spartans in Thucydides, Alcibiades claims to be , but hostile to the democracy. Contrast Isoc.  and Lys. , where allegiance to the city is identified with friendship to the demos. 84 85

Thucydides



to the Spartans is thus used by Thucydides to expose the flexibility of his political allegiances. The exaggerated loyalty and disloyalty of the Lysias and Isocrates speeches is replaced in Thucydides by a realistic appraisal of Alcibiades’ egoism. As we have seen, the reaction to Alcibiades was characterized not just by controversy, but by overt polarization: depending on your point of view, Alcibiades was either the saviour of the city or its pariah. This called for an analysis which was even more multivocal and difficult than usual. It is instructive to compare Thucydides’ depiction of Alcibiades with Herodotus’ depiction of similar individuals who had aroused a variety of reactions in their lifetimes.86 Miltiades (another great Athenian general with tyrannical tendencies) is depicted as the hero of Marathon, even while his two trials for treason are stressed.87 Herodotus emphasizes the wisdom and foresight of Themistocles (a national hero with an Alcibiadean tendency to go over to Athens’ enemies) at the moment of his treacherous deception of the Athenians.88 The depiction of these figures in Herodotus reflects the popular tradition of them as men whose capacity for good and evil as demonstrated by their actions was itself the best evidence of their greatness. Thucydides’ depiction of Alcibiades, on the other hand, shows the influence of the remarkable controversy which was the unavoidable background of that depiction, but is not marked by that tradition of admiration for the man capable of exciting such reactions which would later emerge, for example in Demosthenes . Rather, it is strongly realistic, evaluating and exposing Alcibiades’ character, motivations, and weaknesses as a political actor. Nevertheless, contemporary claims of Alcibiades’ great-man status89 do find a reflection in Thucydides—in the mouth of Alcibiades himself. I know that men like this [i.e. men like me], all those who through their brilliance in some area have stood out above others, are resented during their own lifetimes, especially by their equals, but to a lesser extent also by the others with whom they have to do; but they bequeath to subsequent 86

Ubsdell (). The two trials frame the narrative of the Marathon campaign: Hdt. . , . –, with Ubsdell (, –). 88 . . , with Ubsdell (: ). 89 Cf. [And.] . ; Xen. HG . . –. 87



Thucydides

generations a desire to pretend relationship to them, even where none exists, and to their country, whatever it may be, the desire to make the sort of boasts which imply that the person is not some outsider or miscreant, but one of them, and that his deeds were noble. This is what I aim at. (. . –)

The context of this speech, a work of history which will help determine and preserve his reputation, give an ironic dimension to Alcibiades’ words. But we have already begun to see how the History undermines such claims. We know that the Sicilian expedition will fail, partly as a result of the misguided and selfish advice of Alcibiades himself, and partly because of the removal of Alcibiades from the command (. ), for which he himself is largely to blame. The placing of the claim to great-man status in Alcibiades’ own mouth in this way is a master stroke. It is not merely that his words are undermined by their context: the narrator has just told us (. ) that Alcibiades’ grand designs will end up in failure for himself and failure for the city. It is also that it is precisely the attitude of overbearing and uncompromising egoism which these words reveal that will lead to his downfall. Thucydides’ presentation, in particular the prefixing of .  to Alcibiades’ speech, takes Alcibiades’ great-man pretensions out of the metaphysical domain, and recasts them as issues of character. The obstacle to Alcibiades’ realization of his vision of himself is the insistence of the democratic city on the subsidiarity of individual to community and its fear of domination by an individual of superlative power and ambition. In . . –, the subject of the first long sentence is Alcibiades, who spent too much on horserearing and other expenses, and to whom a tyrannical behaviour and attitude is attributed in . . . But in the second sentence it is the Athenians who are the grammatical subject,90 they who ‘brought the city down’, and they who are made responsible for ignoring the public good of the city by deposing Alcibiades out of annoyance with him on an individual basis ( emphasizes the intrusion of the individual Athenian and his private reactions into the political domain). The digression on the Peisistratid tyrants in Book  (. –) is closely related to the critical evaluation of the Athenian reaction to Alcibiades in . . This episode is introduced in order to explain why the Athenian reaction to the 90

Cf. Pouncey (, ); Connor (: –); Forde (: , cf. ).

Thucydides



Herms and Mysteries scandals, and to Alcibiades in particular, was so excessive, and why it was expressed in terms of a fear of tyranny. The tyranny of the Peisistratids was a mild one, beneficial to the city (. . –), and it was a private quarrel which led to the estrangement of the tyrants from the people, and their expulsion. This is obviously relevant to the case of Alcibiades, whom the Athenians rejected because of their ‘private’ antipathy towards him, with disastrous consequences for the city (. . ). In the witch-hunt for conspirators in   it is the Athenians themselves who behave in a repressive and tyrannical way.91 The reaction to Alcibiades seems to be typical of a wider Athenian distrust of great individuals, which has very destabilizing consequences: Themistocles,92 the Peisistratids, Pericles (.  continues the analysis of . ). The story of Alcibiades is extraordinary in a sense, but in another sense is subsumed under more general causal patterns, in which the importance of the individual leader is vitiated by the power and temperamental nature of the Athenian assembly. Nevertheless, Thucydides also emphasizes those aspects of the behaviour and speech of Alcibiades which suggest a desire for an unequal or even tyrannical position in the city. In his insatiable ambition, and financially ruinous lack of control over his own person, Alcibiades fits the tyrant type,93 and his excessive speech at . – is designed to illustrate the sort of tyrannical dianoia which led the Athenians so to fear him. The question of how to deal with the tyrannical individual in the city is thus not resolved by the tyrant digression:94 rather (as in the discussion of Alcibiades in Frogs), it is left open. Once such powerful figures have arisen in the city, it may be just as dangerous to remove them as it is to allow them to stay. The potential benefit their successes may bring the city must be balanced against the polis-threatening private power such success puts into the hands of the individual. 91 . . —. . . They are described as harsh and suspicious (. . –, . . ). Cf. Connor (: –), and n. . 92 . –, seen by Bury (: –) as intended to be compared with the case of Alcibiades. Cf. also Woodhead (: ). 93 Like the tyrannical man in Plato’s Republic, he is dominated by paranomia (d–e), by an uncontrollable eros (ab), and by the need to find a financial way of catering for his lusts (d). 94 Cf. Connor (: ). Palmer () sees the digression on the Peisistratids as intended to convey the message that the Athenians should have accepted Alcibiades as tyrant; Liebeschuetz too (: –) sees in the digression an ‘implicit moral’ regarding Alcibiades, and cf. Vickers ().



Thucydides .    

In studying the narratorial interventions, we have already considered the important role given to Alcibiades in Thucydides’ account of the Sicilian expedition. There, Alcibiades’ prominent position was seen to be related to a more general thematic: the rise of harmful private interests and the breakdown of the relationship between leader and led, resulting in bad decision-making and fatal political weaknesses at key moments. We must now turn to consider the prominent role played by Alcibiades elsewhere in the narrative, first in the account of the breakdown of the Peace of Nicias in Book , and secondly in Book . As in the case of the suppression of the opposition to Pericles in Books  and , the presentation of Athenian politics in the years –  in Book  is a selective, even a polemic picture. The more radical enemies of Alcibiades are reduced to a faceless group, for whom Alcibiades represents an obstacle to the leadership of the demos (. . ).95 After they succeed in displacing him, neither they nor their activity comes within the purview of the History. We do hear that Androcles was one of the opponents in / , though not from . , but from . . , as a part of the narrative of  . Mention of the ‘wretched’ Hyperbolus is reserved for an aside in Book  (. . ). The effect of Thucydides’ presentation is to schematize Athenian politics in these years in terms of an opposition between Nicias and Alcibiades. Material which relates to the activity, or even the existence, of other political figures is for the most part ignored. The failure to mention the ostracism of Hyperbolus (the dismissive mention of Hyperbolus in Book  only underlines this silence) is the most dramatic example of this tendency. To see the oddness of this omission we only have to compare Thucydides’ account with that of Plutarch in his Nicias or Alcibiades,96 where a narrative of the ostracism (the information carefully gathered from some non-Thucydidean source) is seen as a crucial episode in the story of – . Indeed, Andrewes argues plausibly that Alcibiades’ role in the ostracism may have helped to bring about the estrangement between Alcibiades and the demos.97

95

Cf. HCT iv. .

96

Plut. Alc. , Nic. .

97

HCT v. .

Thucydides



This selective presentation is certainly related to Thucydides’ prejudice against a certain type of radical leader, but it also serves the purpose of providing the reader with a readily comprehensible binary picture of Athenian political life. A mass of policies and leaders is simplified into the choice between a peace-loving and relatively quietist policy represented by Nicias, or an aggressively imperialist, anti-Spartan policy represented by Alcibiades (especially in .  and the Sicilian debate in Book ). One could afford to ignore the despised radical leaders all the more safely because they tended to champion the same policy as Alcibiades. Thucydides’ pursuit of this binary, agonistic schema may help to explain the omission of the ostracism of Hyperbolus. An account of the ostracism would have illustrated the struggle between Alcibiades and Nicias, and between an aggressive and a quietist policy: but these issues were covered anyway by the Sicilian debate.98 It would also have illustrated the struggle between Alcibiades and his ‘radical’ democratic enemies; but Thucydides was not interested in these (contemptible) third parties: he was prepared to pack them under the rubric of the conflict between Alcibiades and the demos. The ostracism must have centred on the suspicion of Alcibiades aroused by his ‘tyrannical’ tendencies, as in [And.] : but these issues too were covered by the Sicilian debate (.  and Alcibiades’ speech), which may have taken place not long after the ostracism.99 By treating these issues in the context of the Sicilian debate at the beginning of Book , Thucydides puts the analysis of the Sicilian expedition firmly into the context of disastrous personal political disputes, as it was in . . The origins of the expedition are depicted as rooted in Athenian internal politics, especially in the conflict between Alcibiades and the Athenians, just as to a certain extent its failure will be. An account of Athenian politics focusing on two leading actors offers more scope for the depiction of personal and policy conflict than the unitary presentation of the Periclean years. But the picture is still highly schematized. Nicias and Alcibiades are used as convenient actors of focus in a thumbnail sketch of politics between  and  . 98 Cf. Raubitschek (: , ). On representative selectivity in Thucydides’ account of internal politics, see Andrewes in HCT v. –. 99 Moreover, if, as seems likely, pace [And.] , there was no formal debate associated with ostracism (Rhodes ), an account of the ostracism would not suit itself to the dominant presentational strategy of the History for political controversy.



Thucydides

It may help to bear in mind this ‘representative’ role of Alcibiades as historiographical spokesman for a theme or tendency when we turn to consider his prominence in the narrative of Book  . It is here above all that some scholars have felt that Alcibiades has been accorded an importance which he does not deserve.100 Above all, the key events in this book appear to be traced to his activity. Despite the high Spartan morale and enthusiasm and desire to bring the war to a close at the beginning of Book  (. –), the Athenian victory at Spiraeum (. –) plunges them into a typical despondency and they almost do not dispatch the ships they were going to send to Ionia (. . ). As in . – and . , it is the intervention of Alcibiades, through Endius (. . ), which turns Spartan dithering and inaction into positive activity. When he sails to Ionia with Chalcideus, his persuasive influence is crucial (. . ), helping to bring about the revolt of Clazomenai and Erythrae,101 and leading to the successful opening of a Spartan second front in Ionia. In . –, an Athenian reinforcement and counter-attack has forestalled the revolt of Lesbos, and is about to retake Miletus. If this had been achieved it might have resulted in the rest of the revolt against Athens collapsing ‘easily’ (thoughts of the Athenians, . . ). At this point a force of fifty-five ships arrives from the Peloponnese and their swift action to intervene in the siege is related to the advice of Alcibiades, whom we see riding out himself to tell the commanders that ‘if they don’t want to see the situation in Ionia and the situation as a whole ruined, they should come to the aid of Ionia and not stand by and watch it cut off ’ (. . ). Once again, though Alcibiades provides neither the plan nor the action, his persuasive powers provide the decisive impulse. The narrative of events in chapters – is presented in two chronologically overlapping sections, first the public and military events (. –), and then the intrigues centring on Alcibiades, which were going on in the background (. –. ). This method of presentation allows narrated events of the first section to be explained retrospectively by means of the intrigues in the second, Brunt (: e.g. ). Later (. . –), Alcibiades’ connections amongst the Milesians are instrumental in persuading the city to revolt from Athens shortly before the arrival of the Athenians. 100 101

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in particular the advice of Alcibiades to Tissaphernes.102 Above all, Tissaphernes’ policy with regard to the payment of the Peloponnesian fleet is retrospectively explained through the strategic considerations presented by Alcibiades (. –), who is called Tissaphernes’ ‘instructor in all matters’ (. . ). This double narrative, which also occurs in . .  ff., is a logical way of ordering a confused body of material in which action is taking place in several theatres, and the action in one theatre is linked in complex ways to that in another. The chapters dealing with intrigue and political event are also used to provide important background relating to the strategic interests of all parties and their interplay. The narrative of the political strife in Athens associated with the Revolution of the Four Hundred in .  ff. is also focused through the activity of Alcibiades. He both helps to set in motion the antidemocratic movement (. . ), and paradoxically, after being dropped by the conspirators (. . ), is instrumental in leading the opposition to it on the part of the fleet at Samos. As we saw above, it was his action which decisively prevented the fleet from sailing on the Peiraeus, which would have destroyed the whole Athenian war-effort (. . –), an event singled out by Thucydides in a narrator intervention. Alcibiades’ movements can be accounted for almost continuously in Book . Particularly noteworthy here is . . , where after Alcibiades has come to warn the Peloponnesians of the danger threatening Miletus, we are informed of his movements since we last encountered him in Miletus in . .  (‘for he had been present at the battle and had fought together with the Persians and Tissaphernes’).103 However, this fullness of description is characteristic of the depiction of Alcibiades only in Book : with the 102 This strategy was the basis of the theory of Delebecque (building on the one hand on compositionalist analysis of Book  such as that of Wilamowitz (), and on the other on Alcibiades-as-source theories such as that of Brunt () ) that Thucydides had inserted into an original narrative a new narrative based on information he had received from Alcibiades himself. Far more fruitful analyses of Book  in terms of narrative strategies are those of Connor (:  ff.), emphasising Thucydides’ experimentation in narrative technique; Erbse (: –), concentrating on typical characteristics of Thucydidean (and ancient) methods of narrative; and Tim Rood will have much to say on this topic in the book version of his  thesis (forthcoming). For the question of the state of completeness of Book  see Erbse (), replying to Andrewes in HCT v. 103 Cf. . . , detailing his movements after jumping ship in Thurii, . . –, until he arrives in Sparta.

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exception of . , we are not told anything about Alcibiades’ activity between his speech in Sparta in the winter of –  and his advice to Endius in the summer of   (. ).104 Is this narrative concentration on Alcibiades in Book  a reflection of his importance, in the sense defined above (Section ) and if so, is it of the great-man or contingent variety? To answer this, we may start by noting that Alcibiades’ influence in Book  is achieved almost exclusively through advice to or persuasion of others, or through appearances and images. Typical is . . –, where Alcibiades is said to have convinced Endius that the cities will be easy to persuade, because he himself will ‘appear more persuasive than others’. Alcibiades’ indirect influence is often described by use of the words (‘persuade’) and (‘instruct’),105 as he advises the action either of the Spartans or of Tissaphernes. This concentration on the effect of appearances, creating impressions, was already noticable in Alcibiades’ speech in the Sicilian debate in Book : As a matter of convention such deeds [Olympic victories] bring honour, but in practice they produce at the same time the suggestion of power. Or again, within the city, it is natural that the splendour with which I carry off choregiai or whatever else should arouse the envy of the citizens, but to foreigners this too gives the impression of strength. (. . )

Alcibiades’ political behaviour in Athens, like his manœuvring in  , is seen as the projection of images.106 Elsewhere too, Alcibiades’ particular gifts are those of a dissembler, a persuader, and an instigator of action. In the conference of the generals in Sicily (. –), Alcibiades prefers a strategy of diplomatic persuasion, in contrast to the bold, decisive strategy (apparently commended by the narrator) proposed by Lamachus.107 Alcibiades stands in stark contrast to a character like Brasidas, a man of action ( ), who exercises a decisive influence on the course of events through acts rather than words. 104 The attempt to reconstruct his activity in this period was left to later historians: Westlake (). 105 : . . , . .  (twice), . . , . .  (twice), . . , . . . or : . . , . . , . . , , . .  and cf. .  (µ ). 106 Macleod (: ), concluding: ‘In short he deals above all with semblances’. 107 We might expect the narrative of the battle of Cyzicus and the campaigns of –  to have qualified this picture of Alcibiades in keeping with . .  ( µ —‘his excellent conduct of military affairs’).

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The Spartans’ decision to send Gylippus to Syracuse and fortify Decelea (. –) is traced to Alcibiades, who is allotted a crucial speech. But the Spartans are said already to have been planning to invade Attica: This was the speech of Alcibiades. The Spartans had been themselves intending to campaign against Athens even before this, though they were still procrastinating and looking around. But now they got fresh encouragement [ ] after hearing all this spelled out in detail by him and thinking that this advice came from someone with absolutely accurate knowledge. (. . –)

The role of the Corinthians and the Syracusans in encouraging the Spartans is also stressed (. . ). Even the policy of establishing forts in Attica had already been considered.108 This pattern is repeated in .  where we again find Alcibiades advising the Spartans to fortify Decelea: ‘The Spartans were also preparing the invasion of Attica, as they had already decided, and following the proposals of the Corinthians and the Syracusans [a reference to . . ] . . . Alcibiades too was enthusiastically encouraging [ µ ] them to fortify Decelea and not relax in their prosecution of the war.’ In both passages, the force of Alcibiades’ activity is not so much to tell the Spartans things they had not thought of before (though the plan of sending a Spartiate to Sicily, and the choice of Decelea as a site for fortification are put forward as his ideas—. . –) but to provide the decisive impetus (cf. . . ) which the Spartans are so often seen to be lacking in the History, and to stop their ‘delaying and looking around’ (. . ). Crucially, Alcibiades’ advice was so influential because it came from someone who seemed to be in the best position to know (. . ), the former leader of the Athenians’ own grand expedition.109 . .  and . .  on µ . It is odd to be told in the context of winter /  that the Spartans were already ‘applying their minds’ (. . ) to the fortification of Decelea, considering that no action was taken to achieve this end until the following summer (Wilamowitz :  ff.). Dover in HCT iv.  points out that a reason is provided for the delay in fortifying Decelea in . . : the Spartan lack of morale before the Athenians had broken the truce. But the inclusion of a full speech of Alcibiades as early as .  is still a deliberate attempt to emphasize his influence (cf. Erbse : –). The intention seems to be to link the action and course of the next book to the advice of Alcibiades at an early stage, and to do so in emphatic form with a speech. 108 109

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Again, in the account of the revolution of   in Book , it is emphasized (. . ), that it was not Alcibiades who set the revolution in motion (‘for the most part, the impetus to overthrow the democracy came from [the ringleaders at Samos] themselves’). In the game of appearances and deception played by the revolutionaries against the Athenian demos, Alcibiades puts himself forward as a smokescreen and tool of persuasion (. . ), and is used as such by the conspirators (. . : ‘they said that the King would be their friend and would provide money if Alcibiades were recalled and democracy abandoned’; . : ‘they said that if they recalled Alcibiades and instituted a different sort of democracy, it would be possible to have the King as ally and to defeat the Peloponnesians’), but he takes absolutely no part himself and is soon dropped by the conspirators as ‘not a suitable person for an oligarchy’ (. . ). Phrynichus observes, and the narrator confirms (. . ), that oligarchy and democracy were all the same to Alcibiades, so long as he could use the situation to get his hetairoi to have him recalled. The alleged decisive importance of Alcibiades in   rested on his influence with Tissaphernes and the Persians: Peisander claims (. . ) that Alcibiades is the only man alive capable of bringing Persian help to Athens. But the narrative in Book  comes increasingly to expose the unreality of this influence. Alcibiades may be called Tissaphernes’ ‘instructor in all matters’ (. . –), but Tissaphernes is not necessarily a willing pupil. In .  Alcibiades advises him not to support one or the other side, but to use each side to wear down the other. But this is the logical policy for Tissaphernes to pursue in any case, and the argument that the Athenians are more trustworthy allies than the Spartans is seen by Phrynichus in the following chapter (. . ) as unlikely to convince Tissaphernes: it was inconceivable that a Persian leader (Phrynichus talks about the King, but the same considerations apply to Tissaphernes) would consider allying himself at this stage with the Athenians, his traditional enemies, whom he did not trust, and abandon the Peloponnesians, who by now had managed to acquire a fleet equal to that of Athens, and the control of several important cities. The self-projection of Alcibiades to the Athenians as someone capable of bringing Persian support is thus set against Phrynichus’ realism in . . The exact degree of Alcibiades’ influence on Tissaphernes is not clearly resolved in the narrative: Thucydides, unusually, refuses to

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commit himself as to Tissaphernes’ real motivation:110 ‘Tissaphernes was of the same mind [ ] for the most part, as far as one can judge from his actions at least. For he attached himself to Alcibiades’ credit, as though he thought the advice he gave on these matters was good, and made insufficient payments to the Peloponnesians’ (. . ).111 But as Book  progresses, the influence of Alcibiades with Tissaphernes is increasingly presented as a projection without real substance. When Peisander and the other representatives of the oligarchs come to negotiate an agreement with Tissaphernes (. ), Alcibiades is forced, in the face of Tissaphernes’ unwillingness to come to any such agreement, to keep up an elaborate charade: ‘Finally at the third meeting, fearing that he would be found out as having no influence at all, he began to demand that the king be allowed to build ships, and sail along his own coast’. Similar is Alcibiades’ reported speech before the fleet on being recalled: ‘he encouraged in them hopes on a large scale for the future, and outrageously exaggerated [ µ ] the extent of his own influence with Tissaphernes’ (. . ). And again after this meeting, Alcibiades tells the Athenians that: first of all, since he had been chosen general, he would sail to Tissaphernes and deal with matters of war. And he went off straight away from this assembly, to give the impression that he was consulting with him about everything. At the same time he wanted to give himself more importance in the eyes of Tissaphernes, and to show that he had now been chosen general, and had the power to do him both harm and good. Alcibiades had got into the position of using Tissaphernes to frighten the Athenians and the Athenians to frighten Tissaphernes. (. . –)

In . , Alcibiades again goes off to see Tissaphernes, in connection with the Phoenician ships which were being prepared for service in the Greek war, promising the Athenians in Samos that he would do them a great and certain service: either he would himself bring the Athenians the Phoenician ships, or he would at least stop them going to the Peloponnesians. He had See Griffith (: –); Westlake (b). Note the ambiguity of this passage, which might mean either ‘Alcibiades advised Tissaphernes, and Tissaphernes followed this advice’, or ‘A’s advice in fact coincided with T’s already-formulated plans, giving T confidence in A’. Is the focus of merely on Tissaphernes’ thoughts or on his actions? (Cf. Classen: ‘und wirklich ging T auf diese Gedanken, diesen Plan, ein’). 110 111

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probably [ ] known for a while that Tissaphernes had no intention of bringing the ships, and wanted to discredit him as much as possible before the Peloponnesians for his friendship with himself and with the Athenians, so that Tissaphernes would be forced for this very reason to incline more to the Athenian side.

These last examples show particularly clearly how Alcibiades was surviving by projecting images of himself to the various sides,112 while Tissaphernes acted as his own interests demanded. The perception of his influence with Tissaphernes is what is important— just as this perception had been a key element in the course of the revolution in Athens. It weakened Spartan morale (. . ), as Alcibiades had intended. But the reality of that influence is exposed by the narrative. The line taken here towards Alcibiades’ influence with Tissaphernes is probably leading towards the episode, which lies just outside the scope of the completed narrative of Thucydides, where Alcibiades is imprisoned by Tissaphernes and is forced to make an undignified escape.113 The aim of the narrator in describing the strategic selfprojections of Alcibiades in   is to expose the truth behind the illusion (characteristic is the use of the focalization through Phrynichus in .  to provide a ‘realistic’ commentary on Alcibiades and his plans). Nevertheless, this should not be automatically identified with hostility to or criticism of Alcibiades. Certainly, Alcibiades is playing his own game, and aims to benefit no one other than himself (hence the narratorial comment at . . ) but there is also admiration for his skill in manipulating those around him, and for the complexity and daring of his intrigues (cf. . : ‘And Alcibiades, playing for such big stakes as he was, enthusiastically reasserted his attempts to persuade Tissaphernes’). In the episodes of Alcibiades’ deception of the Spartan ambassadors in . –, for example, or of the Athenian delegation to Tissaphernes in . , Alcibiades takes on the role of the Odyssean or Themistoclean trickster, equipped with cunning intelligence. The narrator lingers on his actions partly out of admiration for the depth and intricacy of his intrigues, and partly out of a desire to explain to the reader the true story behind his manœuvrings, which is perceptible to the historian-narrator alone. This tendency has 112 Alcibiades practised a ‘politics of appearances’ (Forde : ); cf. Westlake (: —‘make believe’). 113 Xen. HG . . .

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apparently led to an exaggeration or distortion of Alcibiades’ involvement in these affairs: his deceptive role in the Book  episode is opaque,114 that in the Book  story seems unnecessary.115 Yet even if we do not need to see it as straightforwardly critical, this insistence on Alcibiades’ deceptiveness and the bogus nature of his claims to influence sits uncomfortably with the theory that Thucydides was led to give excessive prominence to Alcibiades because he was personally so impressed with him.116 As we saw in Chapter  above, the most exaggerated claims were made for Alcibiades’ effect on events in the Ionian War: the speaker of Isoc. , for example, alleges that Alcibiades, through his advice to Tissaphernes, had turned around the war for Athens (§ ). This view of Alcibiades is reflected in the claims made by characters in Thucydides Book , as when Peisander tells the Athenians that Alcibiades is the only man alive capable of securing the support of the king (. . ). But Thucydides’ narrative and narratorial interventions tend to expose such claims, especially the statement that Alcibiades’ actions in . .  were the first time that he had really benefited the city. Alcibiades’ influence on events is seen largely as a mirage, and his motivation as almost exclusively egotistical.117 Apart from Alcibiades’ advice to the Spartans (. ) and his restraining of the Athenian fleet (. . ), the reader might conclude that the course of events in Book  would have been more or less the same without Alcibiades. Indeed, one of the reasons for Thucydides’ concentration on Alcibiades is apparently the desire to expose the real nature and extent of Alcibiades’ influence on the events of / , in the face of claims like those of Peisander and Isoc. . In addition, Alcibiades fulfils an important narrative role in Book . Hatzfeld (: –); Brunt (: –); Hermann (: –). Wilamowitz (: –); HCT v. –. Herodotus’ description of the treacherous motives for the advice of Themistocles at .  is perhaps an instructive comparison. 116 Brunt (: ); Delebecque (: –); Pouncey (: –). 117 Cf. Erbse (: –). In arguing against Alcibiades-as-source theories, Erbse points not only to the uncomplimentary presentation of Alcibiades (cf. Westlake a: ), but also to the way Alcibiades is presented through the eyes of others, esp. in .  and . , and to the fact that in .  Thucydides is unsure ( ) whether Alcibiades was informed about Tissaphernes’ plans or not (though cf. Westlake a: ). 114 115

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First, Alcibiades was a highly perceptive participant in the decisive intrigues of /  and this made him a very useful actor of focus, a figure to whom speech and thought could be attributed which revealed or illuminated the strategic issues underlying the narrative (the Spartan reaction to the Athenian moves in Sicily in  , the interests of Tissaphernes and the Persians). This helps to explain why advice is often attributed to Alcibiades which the recipients could easily have thought of, or had already thought of, themselves. Second, Alcibiades is the only actor who has contact with all sides, sometimes in series (as when he is exiled from Athens and goes over to the Spartans, in Book ), and sometimes concurrently (when he is negotiating with the oligarchic revolutionaries at the same time as advising Tissaphernes, or when he is general of the democratic Athenians at Samos while simultaneously continuing to behave as the friend of Tissaphernes). He could thus be used to connect the disparate strands of the complex story. Here again he is an actor of focus, but in the service of the narrative thread, rather than the thematics, of the History. The activity of Alcibiades acts as a single story for the reader to focus on in a narrative which is fragmented into theatres in complex relationship to each other. Thus in . –, the connection of that segment of text dealing with the strategic considerations on the Persian side with the preceding narrative is assisted by introducing it as the continuation of the story of Alcibiades. The transition to the beginnings of the oligarchic revolution in Samos in the next chapter (.) is more easily effected because it can be seen as an offshoot of the activity of Alcibiades. Alcibiades’ importance throughout the History is never that of the Periclean or Churchillean ‘determining’ type, but rather of the ‘accidental’ sort. The qualities he displays are not those of the great man who exercises a decisive influence on history, but rather those of the man who influences historical events in a way not foreseen or intended by himself. The persuasive ability and manœuvring skill demonstrated by Alcibiades in Book  constitute a kind of selfish ingenuity and opportunism rather than the far-sighted political understanding of a Pericles. Alcibiades’ importance, then, arises from the peculiarities, or rather the deficiencies, of his character. It is time to consider the characterization of Alcibiades in more detail.

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.    Historical plots normally avoid the sort of personal detail which might provide a sense of fully developed human character, but which is unlikely to contribute to the understanding of historical event. This is especially true in the case of Thucydides, whose historiography, like the discourse of democratic Athens,118 preferred to exclude the private,119 and who is so concerned to distinguish his historiography from the work of poets (. . , cf. . . ). The result of this approach was an austerity in stark contrast to the style of Herodotus’ historiography, which provides a wealth of detail about the personal stories of the colourful and influential figures of the archaic society he describes. Moreover, Thucydides avoids characterization by direct means:120 even his characterintroductions and analysis of individuals are given the appearance of simple facts. But even if we cannot experience Thucydides’ actors fully as human characters, this does not mean that there is no characterization.121 This would be to overlook those features of presentation which, although they touch an area of action which is predominantly public, serve to create a sense of the ways a character is different from others and thus individuated in the type  sense. It is clear, however, that there is considerable variation in the degree of individuation of the characters in the History. At the very least, there is usually an interest in the sort of action which is typical of a character: Sthenelaidas, Brasidas, Alcidas, Phormio. Pericles, on the other hand, is represented by Thucydides as having succeeded in banishing private affairs and personal concerns from his political behaviour, thus approximating to the ideals both of Athenian democracy and of Thucydides’ political-military historiography. The episode (. . ) in which Pericles volunteers to hand over his estates to the state (to make them ‘public’) is designed to illustrate this feature of Pericles’ statesmanship. If Pericles stands out as an individual, it is in a type  sense: he is distinctive for his outstanding authority. But the political behaviour of Pericles’ successors was determined by ‘private ambitions and 118 119 120 121

Humphreys (: ch. ). The second of Bruns’s Stilgesetze: (:  ff.). The first of Bruns’s Stilgesetze: (: ). Hornblower (: –).

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private gains’ (. . ). This is why it is necessary to break the usual rule about the exclusion of private detail, and mention, for example, Alcibiades’ racing debts and the paranomia he displayed ‘towards his own person’ (. ). We are told much more about the personal motivations of Pericles’ successors, (especially in the sense of private motivations), and, at least in the case of Nicias and Alcibiades, we learn much more about them as political actors from their speeches:122 in their cases we can sense an individuation.123 Contrast the introduction124 of Pericles, ‘a man who was at that time the first of the Athenians, a [or ‘the’] most capable speaker and man of action’ (. . ), with those of Alcibiades, which are the most developed of all in providing information about the private concerns and personality of an individual: a man at that time still young by the standards of any other city, but held in honour because of the standing deriving from his ancestors. He really thought it was better to move closer towards the Argives, but his motivation for opposing the peace also included rivalry and pride, because the Spartans had made the peace through Nicias and Laches, overlooking him because of his youth, and not honouring him for the ancient proxenia which his family had once held. This position had been renounced by his grandfather, and he himself had intended, through his attentions to the prisoners from the island [i.e.those captured on Sphacteria], to revive it. Considering himself slighted in every way, his first course of action had been to oppose the peace, claiming that the Spartans could not be trusted . . . and now . . . he immediately sent privately to the Argives, telling them to come with the Mantineans and Eleans to seek an alliance. (. . –)

In order to understand Alcibiades’ political action, we need not only to understand the burning ambition of a young man, and the resentment of an aristocrat who thinks himself dishonoured (thus Alcibiades illustrates the generalization about µ (‘personal rivalries’) in . . ); we also need to be told, in an anachrony, about an incident in Alcibiades’ ‘personal’ life: how he had been snubbed by the Spartans two years previously. This issue also predominates in his self-defence before the Spartans in . , 122 Cf. Tompkins (: ): the speeches ‘mirror the personal traits which proved to be historically important’. 123 I am not sure that arguments about the development of techniques of characterization in the th c. (e.g. Pearson ; Hornblower : –) are helpful for explaining the presence or absence of characterization in Thucydides: it is more fruitful to look at his historical and literary purpose. 124 On character introductions in Thucydides, see Griffith ().

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where Alcibiades presents Mantinea as a punishment inflicted by him ( ’ µ —‘at my hands’) on the Spartans for personal wrongs. Contrast Pericles’ conspicuous exclusion of his guestfriendship with Archidamus from the public sphere. The narrator’s comments in this introduction are illustrated by Alcibiades’ political methods in the story which follows, of the deception of the Spartan ambassadors, where private manoeuvres rather than open debate are used to impose a personal agenda on the city’s policy.125 These observations are even more applicable to the case of Alcibiades’ second introduction in . . Here, the narrator judges that in order to understand the significance of Alcibiades’ speech in the Sicilian debate, we need to be told about his personal rivalry with Nicias, his ambition to be general, his hopes of personal gain from the leadership of the expedition, his axioma (‘standing’) in the city, his sexual excess, and even his personal finances.126 The political characterization achieved is thus quite individuated and personal: we can sense the burning ambition and hybristic excess of a young and ultra-successful aristocrat.127 In a work of literature, the characterization of any one figure is connected to that of the other figures: the deficiency of a character-trait or quality in one figure is often made apparent by its possession by another or others,128 and the whole network of characterization thus created is closely related to the central themes of the work. In Thucydides, the idea of a network of comparative characterization is reinforced not only by the narrator’s comparison of Pericles with his successors in . , but also by the words of Pericles himself in his last speech: And yet in being angry with me you are angry with a man who is, I think, the inferior of no one both at recognizing what is necessary [ ] and expressing it, and who is also patriotic [philopolis] and above financial temptation. For the man who recognizes something but does not explain it clearly is in the same position as if he had not thought of it in the first place: Cf. Ostwald (: –). The extremity of Alcibiades’ behaviour and its effect on events compelled mention of these details: Bruns (: –); Fuqua (: ); Griffith (: ). 127 Contrast Cornford (: –), who sees Alcibiades as a quasi-religious stereotype representing typical qualities like Apate, Elpis, and Hybris. Cornford may be right to stress this sort of metaphysical overdetermination in Thucydides’ historiography. But whether or not Alcibiades represents such religious forces, he is also a realistic, individuated character comprehensible in human terms. 128 Bal (: ch. ). 125 126

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and the man who has both abilities, but is hostile to his city, is equally incapable of giving any advice in a spirit of good will. And if this quality too is present, but he is overcome by bribes, he might sell everything else for this one vice. (. . –)

This passage encourages us to consider how subsequent leaders matched up to the standard set by Pericles. It is instructive to set Alcibiades in particular against this Periclean standard. He is intelligent, but this takes the form of a ruthless ingenuity. Many intrigues and stratagems are attributed to him,129 but not real foresight. For example, his insights into the necessity of empires to keep expanding (. . –) are valid, but conceal the other side of the picture—that there is also a time for even the most adventurous imperial powers to be inactive—which was so well brought out by Pericles. An ability to see (‘the appropriate arguments’) and express them is thus true of Alcibiades only in a more limited rhetorical sense: as an ability to find those arguments, or that side of the argument, which best suit his own case.130 Alcibiades is not depicted as vulnerable to bribes, but neither is he ‘above financial temptation’.131 His desire for money (he hoped to benefit financially from the Sicilian expedition) is subsidiary to another quality, his burning philotimia, which is just as damaging to his ability to act as the disinterested adviser of the city. Alcibiades is not philopolis (‘patriotic’) either, though he presents himself as possessing this quality (. ).132 His action in exile may have been dictated by his desire to return to Athens, but he is not 129 Especially the deception of the Spartan ambassadors (. –); cf. also .  (collusion with Endius to get the credit for the revolt of Ionia); . – (plan to get back to Athens using his influence with Tissaphernes; . – (intrigues with Phrynichus); .  (‘deceit’ of the Athenian delegation to Tissaphernes); .  (plan of Byzantine complexity in connection with the Phoenician ships). 130 Cf. Theophrastus, frag.  Wehrli (perhaps thinking of Alcibiades’ speeches in Thucydides): ‘Alcibiades was more capable than any other orator of finding and inventing ’. 131 Thucydides’ description (. . ) for the imperviousness of Pericles to bribes. 132 Here, verbal correspondences encourage the comparison of Alcibiades with Pericles. Alcibiades’ repeated use of the word philopolis to describe himself recalls the only other use of the word in the History, in the Funeral Speech of Pericles (cf. Erbse : –). The schema of the great man who is hated by contemporaries but recognized by posterity, applied by Alcibiades to himself, had been used by Pericles—for Athens (. . ). Further correspondences: Gomme (: ); de Romilly (: –).

Thucydides



deterred by the necessity of doing great harm to the city in order to achieve this end: this underlines the problem of a concept of (‘patriotism’) which is fundamentally self-centred.133 Alcibiades has an inadequate conception of the city as a place to which he owes his loyalty regardless of how he himself may be treated (. . ); he views the city and the civic sphere primarily as an arena for the pursuit of his personal goals. Whereas Pericles argued that the good of the individual was dependent on that of the community, Alcibiades suggests that the city will benefit from his own private activity.134 True, Alcibiades is not motivated purely by a personal agenda. In championing the policy of alliance with Argos, he is moved not only by the private factors mentioned in . , but also by the belief that this really is the best policy,135 and he is also apparently convinced that the Sicilian expedition will make Athens complete overlord of Greece (. ). But he sees these ventures in much the same light as his Olympic competition, as a chance for the city to benefit from his own talents and splendour. While Pericles says the same thing on every occasion (or claims to—. . ), Alcibiades’ speeches are characterized by an extreme capacity for adapting himself to the character of his audience. He is the only figure in Thucydides to speak before both the Athenians and the Spartans, and he addresses both groups with equal facility. To the Athenians he stretches out the hope of ruling Greece: ‘we will either add these peoples to our empire and probably rule [ ] all Greece, or we will harm the Syracusans’ (. . ). To the Spartans he offers the prospect that, ‘you will overthrow the power of Athens both present and future and afterwards you yourselves will live safely and lead [ ] all Greece on the basis of co-operation, through free will and not by force’ (. . ). The hopes are carefully tailored to the audience in each case: for the Athenians infinite empire ( ), for the Spartans the secure hegemony of Greece. At Athens, Alcibiades was able to perceive and present to the Athenians their own national character. In Sparta, he claims never to have been taken in by democracy, which he now describes as ‘recognized by everyone to be crazy’. He had gone 134 Macleod (: ); Pouncey (: ). See Ch.  above, § . Cf. . . : Alcibiades’ advice to Tissaphernes was motivated by his desire to secure a return to Athens, but he also thought it the best advice; . .  (Alcibiades hoped to conquer Sicily and Carthage, and at the same time looked for personal reward). Cf. de Romilly (: –). 133 135

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Thucydides

along with the constitution only to preserve the status quo, and the attitude of his family is now presented as a Spartan-sounding opposition to tyrants. Alcibiades demonstrates an alarming facility in redefining words and concepts to suit his own purpose: leading the Athenian democracy becomes a Spartanizing opposition to tyranny; giving damaging advice to your country’s enemies is portrayed as patriotism. Thucydides endorses Phrynichus’ judgement that the only thing that matters to Alcibiades is his personal aims (. . ). The flexibility of Alcibiades’ allegiance (as distinct from the pursuit, however vehement, of a chosen allegiance, whatever it may be) is a disturbing character-indication in Greek eyes. This characteristic will go on to become crucial in later depictions of Alcibiades as the kolax, or flatterer.136 Perhaps the most distinctive and carefully drawn feature of Thucydides’ Alcibiades is his unquestioning faith in his own abilities and his own right to command and to enjoy superiority over others.137 A fair portion of all three of his speeches (including the speech in oratio obliqua in . –) is devoted to talking about himself. This is partly because he is often forced into a position of self-defence, but self-defence rapidly becomes little more than an excuse for elaborating on his own qualities and achievements. In .  self-defence following the criticism of Nicias turns into an advertisement of his recent Olympic victories, his position of superiority in the city, his lamprotes (‘outstanding brilliance’), and his achievement at Mantinea. In . , his self-justification before the Spartans becomes a story of ‘our’ (Alcibiades is referring primarily to his maternal Alcmaeonid ancestors) central importance in the city. Addressing the assembly in Samos in .  he begins by ‘blaming [everything] on the bitter personal experience of his exile,138 and lamenting his own fate’. Here, Alcibiades’ selfcentred speech is used as a device of characterization, in much the same way as Plato uses revealing speech to characterize his speakers: ‘the historian is unmasking his character’.139 The impression of a man whose action is above all directed by a personal agenda is reinforced by the profusion of personal pronouns and first-person 137 Cf. Macleod (: –). Cf. Ch.  above, § . Following the translation of HCT v. . This seems to imagine a defence along the lines of Isoc. . –: after his exile at the hand of his enemies, Alcibiades was driven to act against them, but had no personal antipathy to the city. 139 Macleod (: ), on a different point. 136 138

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verbs,140 and, as Tompkins141 has shown, by a distinctive, smoothflowing paratactic style, suggesting an excess of self-confidence. Alcibiades’ speeches are further characterized by boasting overstatements:142 ‘assembling the most powerful forces in the Peloponnese . . . I forced the Lacedaemonians to fight for everything on one day at Mantinea’ (. . ) (the Mantinean policy was a failure). Compare the exaggeration of the importance of his family’s role in Athens at Sparta (‘we were the leaders of the whole state’); or his speech to the assembly at Samos: ‘he outrageously exaggerated [ µ ] the extent of his own influence with Tissaphernes’ (. . ). This self-obsession is crowned by Alcibiades’ identification of himself (. . ) as one of those great historical individuals who may be hated in their lifetime, but after they are dead achieve eternal glory. As we noted above, it is precisely Alcibiades’ uncompromising and unaccommodating estimation of himself that will lead to his personal failure. The character revealed by Alcibiades’ speeches allows us to see why he acted in the way he did, and how this caused events to turn out in the way they did. Thus characterization is not undertaken for its own sake.143 It serves historical ends, illustrating and supporting the theme of the rise of damaging personal interests after Pericles. In this analysis, the depiction of individual character is closely related to the depiction of harmful individualism: both are seen as equally inappropriate in a political context.144 The depiction of Nicias, who is also allowed to emerge as a distinctive political personality, is parallel to that of Alcibiades. The qualities he displays often suggest a dialogue of comparison and contrast, not only with those of Pericles, but also with those of Alcibiades.145 Like Alcibiades, he is devoted to honour, and so in a 140 In . .  eight personal and personal possessive pronouns and seven firstperson verbs. In . –.  thirteen first-person pronouns or possessives (including the plurals used for himself and his ancestors) and eight first-person verbs (again including plurals). 141 Tompkins (: –). Fuqua (: –) claims all characters in Thucydides are stylistically characterized. 142 Cornford (: ) regarded them as very unlikely to have appeared in a real speech of Alcibiades. 143 Contra Fuqua (:  ff.). 144 This reflects a more general Greek distinction between the statesman who offers advice altruistically, and the demagogue who pursues a personal agenda by appealing to the emotions of his audience: cf. Ober (:  ff.). 145 For the contrast in their speaking styles see Tompkins ().

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Thucydides

sense ambitious, but his only ambition is to die leaving behind him the reputation of never having harmed the city (. . ). Unlike Alcibiades, he is excessively cautious, timorous, superstitious.146 But like his rival, he makes the good of the city subsidiary to his own. Nicias is not philopolis either, but while it is characteristic of Alcibiades to justify displays of personal aggrandizement on the grounds that they may also bring benefit to the city, it is typical of Nicias to argue (. . ) that a good citizen is one who thinks first of his own person and belongings. Alcibiades’ essential lack of is typified by his attempt to win a return to the city whatever harm it may cost her (. . ), while Nicias’ is seen in his unwillingness to lead back the Sicilian expedition out of fear for his own personal fate (. . ). Partly because both the virtues of Nicias and his faults can be seen as originating in the same fearful, worthy, unadventurous psychology, the impression is created of a rounded political personality. Once again, however, characterization serves historical ends: the point of this careful depiction of Nicias’ irresponsible caution is to allow us to see why the Sicilian expedition came to the disastrous end it did. Nicias’ individual character-traits, like Alcibiades’, are character-faults, dangerous in a political context. This brief analysis of the characterization of the post-Periclean leaders confirms the main thesis of this chapter. The depiction of Alcibiades in terms of a falling-off from a Periclean ideal of civic leadership is hardly consistent with the idea that Thucydides was overcome by admiration for him. Far from forcing Thucydides to realign his idea of historical causation, Alcibiades appears to confirm and continue an analysis (integral to the design of the whole History) of the decline of Athenian leadership due to the personal failings of its leaders. Since the History traces Alcibiades’ disastrous political career to his own deficiencies, it is hard to believe that Thucydides saw him as a ‘great man’, in the sense of a powerful director of historical events. Once again we are left not with Alcibiades the extraordinary individual, unlike any other in the History, but rather with an outstanding example of a wider pattern of Athenian political decay. Thucydides’ concentration on Alcibiades’ character is thus subsidiary to a wider political-historical interest. Nevertheless, by 146

Bruns (:  ff.); Connor (:  ff.).

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breaking away from the stereotypical characteristics of the great individual, Thucydides presents us for the first time with a realistic, comprehensible Alcibiades, exposing himself through first-person speech. It was the Socratics, and Plato in particular, who would take up the task of constructing Alcibiades the real individual.

 Plato and the Socratics

.     As tyrant or democratic hero, saviour of the city or its greatest enemy, Alcibiades is depicted in most of the texts examined so far in a way which discourages moral or psychological analysis. The depiction of Alcibiades as a moral agent, shaped by choices made especially in his youth, which was to distinguish the later Alcibiades tradition from that of other fifth-century figures, derives above all from the Socratics. Nevertheless, their portrayal is still very much a reaction to the political controversy excited by Alcibiades which has been investigated in earlier chapters. In this chapter we will see how the Socratic Alcibiades acts as a bridge between this world of the city and philosophy. Alcibiades was much depicted by the Socratics,1 in works most of which now survive only as mere titles or meagre fragments. Works entitled Alcibiades were attributed to the Socratics Euclides,2 Phaedo of Elis,3 Antisthenes,4 and Aeschines of Sphettus (in this last case, more substantial fragments have survived).5 The only dia2 Suidas s.v. Euclides, D. L. . . Cf. de Romilly (,  ff.). Suidas s.v. Alcibiades, cf. D. L. . . On Phaedo: Wilamowitz (). Alcibiades also appeared in Phaedo’s dialogue, the Zopyrus (D. L. . ; Cic., de Fato ). 4 Frags. of Antisthenes in Caizzi (). On Antisthenes’ treatment of Alcibiades see Joël (: ii.  ff.); Dittmar (:  ff.); Chroust (:  ff.); Rankin (: –, –). Momigliano (: ) claims Antisthenes’ work could be described as ‘a book, perhaps a dialogue, on Alcibiades’, and cites the opinion of Mullach (Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, ii: (–) ) that it was a biography. Antisthenes mentioned the name of Alcibiades’ nurse (frag.  Caizzi) and described him as ‘handsome throughout his life’—citing the evidence of his own autopsy (frag.  Caizzi). To infer from this that Antisthenes’ work was biographical in character seems to me to go far beyond the fragments. 5 These were expanded in  by the publication of a new papyrus: see Grenfell et al. (: –); and Berry (). Dittmar (, published before the papyrus find) presents a reconstruction of the dialogue which is extremely conjectural, particularly in its tendency to see other texts as dependent on, or refering to, Aeschines’ Alcibiades. Other works dealing with the Alcibiades of Aeschines since Dittmar are: 1 3

Plato and the Socratics

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logues actually entitled Alcibiades to survive intact are two of uncertain authorship preserved in the Platonic corpus (known as the first and second Alcibiades). Alcibiades also appears in the Protagoras of Plato, and, most famously, in his Symposium. The surviving works and fragments suggest that there was a considerable overlap, at least, in the range of themes and issues which the character of Alcibiades suggested to Socratic authors. But in their attempts to reconstruct the lost works, scholars have sometimes supposed a degree of interrelationship between texts dealing with Alcibiades which goes far beyond the available evidence.6 In this chapter I do not intend to become involved in any attempt to reconstruct a lost genre of Alcibiades writing. Instead, I want to focus on the origins of the Socratics’ interest in Alcibiades, the relation of their depictions to those we have already examined, and the contribution of the Socratics to the developing image of Alcibiades. I will also be concerned above all with Plato; this despite the fact that Plato’s presentation of Alcibiades is strikingly oblique: the only depiction of Alcibiades of any length in Plato is in the Symposium, and there Alcibiades’ dealings with Socrates are filtered through the medium of a drunken speech of Alcibiades delivered long after the events it describes. Plato’s authorship of the first Alcibiades, which depicts Alcibiades conversing with Socrates at length in a more conventional protreptic mode, has sometimes been defended, but the considerations against the authenticity of the dialogue, which I set out in the Appendix to this chapter, are weighty. (The second Alcibiades is universally acknowledged not to have been written by Plato.7) Nevertheless, the author of the first Alcibiades was clearly steeped in Plato, and, as I will argue, A. E. Taylor (: –); Gaiser (: –); Field (:  ff.); Slings (: –); Döring (). Alcibiades also featured in the Axiochus of Aeschines (frag.  Dittmar). 6 Scholars speak overconfidently of ‘the Alcibiades literature of the fourth century’ (Chroust : , , , etc.), a formulation which seriously underestimates the potential for differences of character and purpose among works which happen to choose Alcibiades as a character. Typical of this style of scholarship is the very questionable claim that conversations in the Memorabilia of Xenophon are actually ‘Alcibiades dialogues’ with the names altered (Dittmar :  ff.; Chroust : –; Joël : ii. , seeing the character of Antisthenes in Xen. Symp. as an Alcibiades ‘substitute’). 7 Heidel (: –); Taylor (: , –). The authenticity of the work was already questioned in antiquity (cf. Athenaeus, e). Its topic is the fit subjects for prayers to the gods, and it contains little of interest from the point of view of the depiction of Alcibiades.



Plato and the Socratics

sometimes presents themes from Platonic dialogues in starker and clearer form. The attraction of Alcibiades for the Socratics was of course his fame, and the fascination and controversy his character and career continued to exert. Depiction of Alcibiades offered a way of propelling Socratic philosophy overtly on to the political stage. The confrontation between Alcibiades and Socrates was used to illustrate the direct political relevance of Socratic ethical analysis, and the consequences of the failure to pursue philosophy. As we shall see, the lead for the Socratics’ focus on the Alcibiades–Socrates relationship was partly given by their opponents through the charge that Alcibiades (together with Critias) was the prime example of the youth ‘corrupted’ by Socrates. In depicting or discussing Alcibiades, the Socratics respond to these charges, and take part in the postwar debate of public trial and published speech (about Alcibiades, Athens, the causes of the failure of the imperial project) which was examined in Chapter . Despite this constant intersection with the political level, not all Socratic depictions of Alcibiades are simply apologetic.8 In some texts, the first book of Xenophon’s Memorabilia, for example, the apologetic purpose is clearly paramount. But in Plato, the role of Alcibiades goes beyond simple apology for Socrates. Rather, Alcibiades becomes a means of exploring the relationship between philosophy and political life and between the philosopher and the city. Central to the story of Alcibiades was the fact that it ended in disaster for himself and for Athens. Many Socratics traced Alcibiades’ fate to a moral failure caused by his unwillingness to examine his life and to ‘take care of himself ’. This interpretation gave rise to a type of protreptic dialogue (the first Alcibiades of the Platonic corpus, the Alcibiades of Aeschines) in which a young, impressionable, and vain Alcibiades is made by Socrates to realize his fundamental lack of self-knowledge. Alcibiades is overcome by Socrates in argu8 Cf. Chroust (: —‘Without doubt the whole “Alcibiades literature”, of which the Platonic and probably the Xenophontic Symposium are just two instances, is essentially a literary reaction against the common belief, manifest in the of Polycrates, that Socrates must be held responsible for the muchadvertised depravity of Alcibiades’); and Field (: —‘The general lines of their [the Socratic writers’] defence seem to have been the same in all cases. They represented Socrates as above all anxious for the conversion of Alcibiades to a proper frame of mind, and they tried to show that the evil in the career of Alcibiades was due to his own natural tendencies.’)

Plato and the Socratics



ment, and his subsequent failure to heed Socrates’ words merely adds to this failure. The protreptic conversation is thus reassuring from the Socratic point of view. But Alcibiades’ apostasy can also be seen as disturbing: it draws attention to the failure of the philosopher to convince his young interlocutor and to improve the people he associates with. This general problem is explored by Plato in the Gorgias and Republic, two dialogues where, I will argue, the figure of Alcibiades can be strongly felt in the background. It is possible, then, to distinguish two strands in the Socratic depiction of Alcibiades. First, protreptic, in which the superiority of the philosophical over the political is reflected in the submission of Alcibiades to Socrates. And second, a depiction which is strongly influenced by the charge of corrupting the young, and explores more generally the role of the philosopher in society. . :     The classic appearance of Alcibiades in the Socratics is in a protreptic dialogue9 in which a young Alcibiades is dramatically confronted with the inconsistencies of his life in such a way that he comes to realize that he must pursue the life of philosophy (characterized by ‘knowing oneself’ and ‘looking after oneself’) recommended by Socrates. Alcibiades is suited to this type of dialogue above all because of his natural brilliance, that quality which makes him stand out above other men, and which formed the centre of the encomiastic presentation of Isoc. . Thucydides too stressed Alcibiades’ extraordinary ambition, his military talent, his great standing in the city, and that more-than-normal quality (megethos—. . ) demonstrated in his private life and public actions. The protreptic first Alcibiades begins by establishing this quality: You say that you are the inferior of no man in any respect. Your advantages are great; in fact there is nothing in which you are wanting, starting from your body and finishing with your soul. You believe first of all that you are extremely beautiful and physically powerful—and it is clear to anyone just by looking at you that you are not wrong—then that you are from the most vigorous family in your city, which is the greatest city in Greece, and thus 9

On the Socratic tradition of protreptic see Gaiser (); Slings ().



Plato and the Socratics

have a great number of powerful friends and relatives from your father, and just as many and just as good from your mother: if ever you want something, they would be ready to serve you. (Alc. I a–b)

A similar group of extraordinary qualites is attached to Alcibiades in Plato’s Symposium10 and in Antisthenes.11 But the Alcibiades of protreptic is also proud (‘the inferior of no man in any respect’), disdainful (Aeschines’ Socrates says that he would happily have criticized even the twelve gods12), and above all complacent: If [contemporary politicians] were educated, anyone wanting to compete against them would have to learn and practise, as though he were entering a competition against athletes. But as it is, when they too have gone into politics as amateurs, what is the point of taking all the trouble to learn and practise? For I well know that, in phusis at least, I will be far and away their superior. (Alc. I b–)

This recalls Xenophon’s description of the Alcibiades who associated with Socrates: because of his beauty he was hunted by many grand women, and because of his dunamis in the city, and with the allies, he was flattered by many powerful men. Honoured by the demos, and achieving supremacy with ease, like athletes in sporting competitions who achieve their supremacy easily and neglect their practice, so he too neglected himself. (Xen. Mem. . . –).

Thus Alcibiades’ superiority in external advantages conceals, and is partly responsible for, an inferiority of philosophical ‘training’ and self-knowledge. This is the attitude which must be broken by the protreptic conversation. It is his extraordinary natural gifts, together with the complacent unwillingness to examine himself or the assumptions which these gifts induce, which make Alcibiades ready for the reform of protreptic. But Socrates perceives that Alcibiades’ advantages are not just physical and external, but also internal (‘starting with your body and finishing with your soul’—Alc. I b). It is his possession of the sort of outstanding phusis that is suited to philosophy Beauty: d–e, cf. a, c–; friends and wealth: c–d. Antisthenes said (frag.  Caizzi) ‘that Alcibiades was strong and manly and uneducated [ ] and daring and handsome throughout his life’. 12 Aesch. Alc. frag.  Dittmar. Here, typically for Alcibiades, self-confidence overflows into sacrilege. 10 11

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

which induces Socrates’ eros for Alcibiades in the first Alcibiades, not his physical beauty (e). In his long speech in praise of Eros in the Symposium, Socrates describes how the man pregnant in soul will seek first a beautiful body in which to give birth, then a soul which is noble and of a good nature (b–). The lover will choose not just any soul as the recipient of the philosophical speeches he wishes to sow, but only that soul in which the words may take root and grow.13 Consistent with this eros theory of philosophical dialectic, the Socratics are unanimous in interpreting Socrates’ eros for Alcibiades as an attraction towards his philosophical potential, and a desire to improve him. Thus Aeschines makes his Socrates say: Because of the eros which I happened to feel for Alcibiades, I had undergone precisely the same experience as Bacchae. When Bacchae are inspired by the god they draw up honey and milk from wells where others are not even capable of drawing water. In the same way I, although not in possession of any teaching to pass on to a man and thus improve him, nevertheless thought that by associating with Alcibiades I would, because of my eros, make him better. (Aesch. Alc. frag. c Dittmar)14

The Socratics’ Alcibiades is thus a powerful and talented figure, induced by the baser attractions of socially defined success to neglect philosophical self-examination. He closely resembles the philosophical phusis in the Republic whom many have seen as modelled on Alcibiades.15 Socrates describes (Rep. d–c) how this figure is corrupted (like Xenophon’s Alcibiades) by the submissiveness and flattery of those who want to use him for their own purposes, and how this leads him to direct his ambitions in a worldly rather than a philosphical direction. Like the Alcibiades in the protreptic of the first Alcibiades (e–c), the philosophical Cf. Rep. d. Cf. also Xen. Mem. . . ; Plato, Symp. d–e; [Plato] Alc. I e–. 15 See the notes of Adam () on Rep. c (‘it has long been admitted that this picture is drawn chiefly from Alcibiades’), d, b, and also his notes on b, a. See also Robin (: pp. c–ci); Lee (:  nn. –); Hatzfeld (: –); and C. C. W. Taylor (: —‘a clear allusion to the career of Alcibiades and his relations with Socrates’). As Adam notes (on c), Plutarch’s description (Alc. . ) of Alcibiades’ natural abilities and the corrupting effect on him of flattery recalls Plato’s description of the philosophical character and its decline in Rep. But as Adams (on c) stresses, the philosophical phusis is not to be too closely identified with Alcibiades. Lee (:  n. ), noting Plato, Letter , b—b, suggests that Plato was partly thinking of his own experience in his portrayal of the philosophical type. 13 14

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phusis becomes complacent and excessively ambitious: ‘won’t he be sure to be filled with boundless ambition [elpis] and think himself capable of running the affairs of Greece, and the barbarians besides, and won’t he become very high and mighty and full of senseless ostentation and inane pride?’ (Rep. c–d).16 If someone tells the philosophically gifted youth that he lacks understanding and will never achieve it unless he works for it like a slave, he will find this advice most unwelcome (d–): this too suggests the Alcibiades of Plato’s Symposium, and the Alcibiades of Aeschines.17 Later in the discussion of the philosophical phusis in the Republic we read: ‘from such men [i.e. such philosophical phuseis] come those that have done the greatest harm to cities and to individuals, as well as those who have done the greatest good, if they happen to incline in this direction. A small phusis never inflicts great deeds either on individuals or cities’ (Rep. b–).18 The Republic’s philosophical phusis and the Alcibiades of protreptic are both marked by an alarming ambitious energy. In the Platonic first Alcibiades, Socrates tells Alcibiades: If I saw, Alcibiades, that you were satisfied with the advantages I have just set out, and thought you should live out your life in this way, I would long ago have given up my eros. . . . [But as it is,] it seems to me that if one of the gods were to say to you, ‘Alcibiades, would you prefer to live having what you now have, or to die on the spot if you could not achieve greater things?’ I think you would choose to die. In fact I will tell you the hope [elpis] for which you live . . . You believe, as soon as you appear before the Athenian assembly . . . you will show the Athenians that you are worthy to be honoured more than Pericles or any of the men of the past, and that having shown this you will become the most powerful person in the city, and if you are the most powerful man in Athens, then also in the rest of the Greek world, and not just in the Greek world, but also among the non-Greeks who live on our continent. And again if this same god were to say to you that you were restricted to exercising power here in Europe and you would Translation adapted from Lee (: ). P. Oxy. , frag. , lines  ff.; frag. , col. , lines  ff. Cf. also Xen. Mem. . .  (perhaps with an eye to Alcibiades and Critias): ‘The most gifted [ ] youths, and those most ardent of soul µ ], capable of doing whatever they attempt, if edu[ cated and taught how they should behave, become excellent and useful men: their good deeds are very great and very many in number. But untrained and untaught they become utterly evil and harmful . . . because of their greatness and vehemence they are irresistible and uncontrollable: for this reason their evil deeds are very great and very many in number.’ Cf. also Plato, Grg. e–a. 16 17 18

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

not be able to cross over into Asia and get involved in affairs over there, once again I do not believe that you would wish to live under these conditions alone, if you could not fill the whole world, so to speak, with your reputation and your power [dunamis]. (Alc. I e–c)

In a passage like this, the Socratic Alcibiades can clearly be seen as a version of the extreme and transgressive Alcibiades of rhetoric and historiography, the great individual in the city (the choice of life offered by the gods reminds us of a mythical hero like Achilles). Not only does Alcibiades have that unprecedented ability and dunamis which make him ‘stand out from others’, but as in Thucydides’ depiction of Alcibiades,19 these gifts are associated with an alarming, potentially tyrannical ambition,20 capable of bringing either great harm or great good to the city. The Socratics thus enthusiastically appropriate the figure of the great individual, whom they associate particularly with Alcibiades, for themselves.21 Such a figure stands in particular need of dialectic and self-analysis in order to channel his talents and energies safely in a positive direction. At the same time, the depiction of such a great individual preferring the intensity of philosophical enquiry to the ultimate prizes of honour in the city is the supreme advertisement for philosophy. In Plato, philosophy is transgressive, demanding a renunciation of traditional assumptions about moral and political life: the heroic individual is its appropriate flagbearer. For the Socratics, it is precisely the great individual’s insatiable desire for something outside himself (his eros) which makes him so suited to the practice of philosophy and such a suitable object of the eros of the philosopher. In the protreptic dialogue these abilities and this ambitious energy are redirected towards internal goals. The interlocutor is shown that the true challenge and the true victory is over himself. 19 Dupréel (: ) thinks of the Socratics as drawing on Thucydides for their portrayal of Alcibiades. Rather, both authors are drawing on a common pattern of character. 20 Thuc. . . , . . . Cf. Xen. Mem. . .  (Alcibiades and Critias were ‘by nature more ambitious than anyone in Athens, wanting that everything be done through themselves and that they become more famous than anyone’); Alc. II ab; Plato, Symp. ab. For the violent reaction of Alcibiades when he feels his honour has been slighted, see Plato, Symp. d–e; Thuc. . . –. 21 Cf. also Antisthenes’ treatment of Alcibiades, which emphasized his physical beauty and compared him with Achilles (frags. ,  Caizzi), but also his paranomia and immorality (frag.  Caizzi).

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The Alcibiades of the classic protreptic is young,22 still impressionable, and susceptible to the arguments of the philosopher, as in the Alcibiades of Aeschines and the first Alcibiades. He is led by stages from material ambitions—honour, power, social position— to a search for the improvement of the internal self, such as can only be achieved through dialectic and a willingness to apply its results to one’s own life,23 and he is exhorted to have the courage to stand up to the attractions of a career of public honour which compels the individual to submit himself to the city and adopt its character. He is made to see the error of his previous ways in a more or less sudden and humiliating revelation, leaving him open to Socrates’ philosophical ideas: But by the gods, Socrates, I have no idea what I am saying myself, and it looks like I have been in a most disgraceful condition for a long time without knowing it. (Alc. I d–). placing his head upon my knees he wept for despair, thinking he was not even close to Themistocles in his preparation. (Aesch. Alc. frag.  Dittmar)

The protreptic Alcibiades dialogue is thus reassuring. Socrates emerges victorious from his encounter with the most brilliant politician of his day. Our knowledge of Alcibiades’ subsequent weak-minded turning-away from philosophy merely reinforces this victory. We are left to reflect on the superiority of the philosopher to the politician, and to the fickle democracy he represents, so that the philosopher is vindicated against the society which put him to death. The brilliance and alarming ambition of Alcibiades is even magnified, in order to make Socrates’ confrontation with the political world all the more spectacular, and his victory all the more significant. In Plato, however, and to a certain extent even in the first Alcibiades, this picture is more complex. In these works, protreptic is mixed with an additional element: reaction to, and reflection on, the trial of Socrates and the charge of corrupting the young, a charge with which Alcibiades had become closely associated. 22 Aeschines frag.  Dittmar (where Alcibiades is called µ —‘lad’; Alc. I d (Alcibiades is ). 23 On Alcibiades in protreptic see Dittmar (: –); Gaiser (). On protreptic in Plato, Gaiser (); Slings (: –).

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

. ’ , ,        The ultimate origin of the charge made against Socrates of corrupting Alcibiades was the real historical association of the two men. This has sometimes been doubted. Noting that the evidence all dates from the fourth century ,24 mostly from the Socratics themselves, some scholars have suggested that the relationship was invented to increase Socrates’ stature, as the followers of Diogenes invented his association with Alexander.25 The comparison is instructive: we have already seen the readiness of the Socratics to magnify the encounter of Socrates and Alcibiades. But the association between Socrates and Alcibiades is far better attested, and inherently far more likely than that between Diogenes and Alexander: it is taken for granted by a wide variety of authors, both friendly and hostile to Socrates. Moreover, Xenophon in the Memorabilia (. ), replies at some length to the charge (the origins of which will be examined below) that Socrates corrupted Alcibiades and Critias. Xenophon makes his extreme distaste for these figures clear, so we may presume that if he could possibly have done so, he would have denied that an association existed, but instead he accepts the association as a fact and argues that Socrates did improve Alcibiades.26 24 The character of Pheidippides in Aristophanes’ Clouds seems to recall Alcibiades (Süvern :  ff., though he is careful not to talk in terms of an identification of Pheidippides with Alcibiades; and see now Vickers : –.), but it could also suggest many of Socrates’ young aristocratic associates, and it is significant that there is no suggestion that Pheidippides is a political figure. There is no other text linking Socrates to Alcibiades in surviving comedy (Hatzfeld : , ): cf. Ath. .  ff. where it is claimed that there is no reference to the erotic relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades in any comic poet. 25 Joël (: ii. –), attributing the origin of the association to Antisthenes. (Cf. also Dupréel : ). On Diogenes and Alexander see Cic. Tusc. . ; Dio Chrysostom, Or. . 26 This shows that Isoc. Bus.  (‘you gave Socrates Alcibiades as a pupil, yet no one ever recognized him as being educated by Socrates’) should not be taken to suggest that no one knew at all about the association before Polycrates mentioned it (pace Joël : ii. –; and cf. Dupréel : –; Brickhouse and Smith : –). If it had been possible to deny the association itself, then Xenophon would have done so. Isocrates’ emphasis in the passage is on the words ‘pupil’ and ‘educated’ (Hatzfeld :  n. ): he means that it was a grave strategic error in an invective of Socrates not only to link him to the fabulous Alcibiades, but actually to make him his teacher. Isocrates also had personal reasons for downplaying the link: his admiration for the superlative Alcibiades made him loath to admit that Socrates was responsible for his brilliance: ‘was der gewesen ist, darf keinem aufs Konto geschrieben werden’ (Philippi : ).

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There is, however, still room for debate about the exact nature of this relationship. Socratic writers, especially Plato in the Symposium, suggest that as a boy Alcibiades was very much in Socrates’ company, so much so that there were jokes about an erotic relationship, but that at some stage Alcibiades made a decision to reject Socrates and what he had to say. In the Symposium (dramatic date  ), Alcibiades depicts himself (a–c) as constantly avoiding Socrates’ company since the time of Socrates’ rejection of his advances when he must have been about  or  (i.e. in about  ). This version of events may be close to the truth, though the jokes about Socrates’ erotic pursuit of Alcibiades seem to have continued long after   (Prt. a–c).27 The trial of Socrates in   was an action of considerable importance for Athens politically and ideologically.28 It was initiated by Anytus, one of the leading figures of the restored democracy, and Socrates’ close association with the enemies of the democracy, particularly members of the Thirty such as Critias, was certainly an essential background and contributory cause of the charges.29 Forty or fifty years later, Aeschines the orator could still say to an Athenian jury (. ): ‘you put Socrates to death . . . because he was shown to have been the teacher of Critias.’30 The Socrates trial thus had a similar political dimension to that of the trials of Alcibiades IV (Chapter , above). More generally, many Athenians believed, probably correctly,31 that Socrates’ publicly declared beliefs were deeply opposed to the basis of Athenian democratic political life, including its religious 27 Cf. also Grg. c–d (discussed below), where Socrates himself jokes drily about his pursuit of Alcibiades. 28 On the importance of the trial of Socrates for Athenian ideology see Treves (: esp. –), and for Athenian politics Strauss (: –). 29 Brickhouse and Smith (: –, citing other discussions) take issue with the idea that the trial of Socrates was politically motivated and regard the failure of Socrates in Ap. to mention Alcibiades and Critias as evidence that neither they nor any specific figure was in the mind either of the prosecutors or of the Athenian public at the time of the trial (they do not believe that the Amnesty would have hindered the prosecutors from bringing in these figures). But even if Socrates was not specifically on trial for his association with Critias and Alcibiades, the formulation of the charges, together with Aesch. . , show that the origins of the trial were firmly located in Socrates’ perceived association with figures thought of as overthrowers of law, democracy, and religion. It is the specific association with anti-democrats and tyrants which gives rise to the general charges of atheist and amoral teaching. 30 Not ‘Critias and Alcibiades’, perhaps because Alcibiades was still a controversial figure, and Aeschines wanted an example of a straightforward villain. 31 Cf. Plato, Ap. e–a.

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aspect. The charge made against Socrates at his trial suggests, and jurors probably believed, that Socrates preached a sophistic relativism and atheism (like that of Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds) which led to the cynical, ruthless, and irreligious approach to politics demonstrated by Critias and his like. We saw in Chapter , above, how the s were apparently characterized by intense suspicion of the aristocracy of birth, members of which had plotted the overthrow of the democracy. This suspicion seems to have been extended to the sophists, who were perceived as the educators of these men. According to Xenophon (Mem. . . , cf. Xen. Ap. ), the charge against Socrates read: ‘Socrates is guilty of not recognizing [ µ ] the gods the city recognizes, and bringing in new deities instead: and he is guilty of corrupting the young’. The core of the charge is the corruption of the young, in the sense that it is Socrates’ turning of young Athenians into tyrants opposed to the political and religious basis of Athenian life which is the evidence for, and occasion of, the charge of religious deviance (cf. Plato, Ap. ab): Socrates’ ‘teachings’ are inferred from the results on his ‘pupils’, vaguely defined as ‘the young’. The vague formulation may have suggested to the jurors those sophistic-influenced young aristocrats who had conspired against the democracy, while staying within the rules or the spirit of the Amnesty and its subsequent provisions.32 In the Apology (cd and a–b) Socrates addresses himself to the charge of the prosecution, but without mentioning the names of specific persons, a point which would have some force whether the Apology is thought of as being mainly Socrates or mainly Plato. At ab–, he even challenges his accusers to produce in court a person who will testify to having been corrupted by him, or the relatives of such a person: perhaps an attempt to bring the underlying political agenda of the prosecution out into the open. It is possible, then, that the prosecutors did not mention any specific ‘corrupted’ figures in their speeches. They did not intend to become involved in specific attempts to prove that it was Socrates who corrupted such-and-such a person, or to give the impression that Socrates was on trial for his association with the figures of the Thirty. What counted was that Socrates was still preaching his malicious doctrines to the impressionable youth of 32 Brickhouse and Smith (: –). For the various provisions of the Amnesty, see And. . –, esp. .

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the city: as for the corrupted figures, everyone knew the sort of person who was intended. As far as Alcibiades was concerned, the prosecutors may have refrained from bringing in a figure whom some on the jury may have regarded as a hero. Even ten or so years later, Isocrates could still claim (Bus. –) that it was a mistake for Polycrates specifically to have named Alcibiades in his Accusation of Socrates. Mention of Alcibiades could cut both ways. The controversial execution of Socrates was followed by an exchange of published speeches imitating the speeches given at the actual trial—works like those which followed the trials of Alcibiades IV. Plato’s and Xenophon’s Apologies were just two of the versions of Socrates’ defence produced by the supporters of Socrates,33 while the execution of Socrates was justified in the Accusation of Socrates ( : perhaps Prosecution Speech against Socrates) by Polycrates. Though often thought in antiquity to have been the actual speech of Anytus at the trial in  , it is clear that the work was composed later, as a rhetorical ‘version’ of Anytus’ speech.34 Polycrates referred anachronistically to later events, praising Conon for the rebuilding of the Long Walls in / , and mentioning Thrasybulus, and apparently contrasting these leaders with the politicians Socrates had ‘educated’.35 It is hard to judge the nature of the Accusation of Socrates. Polycrates was a figure otherwise known for frivolous sophistic exercises such as encomia of Clytemnestra, mice, pebbles, and (perhaps) a pot.36 The Accusation of Socrates is criticized by Isocrates in the same breath as Polycrates’ paradoxical defence of Busiris, a foreign villain from Greek myth. But Isocrates was himself capable of writing both serious and frivolous works and we do not need to assume that the Accusation of Socrates was of the same 33 Xen. Mem. .  refers to the others who had already written on the topic. One defence speech was attributed to Lysias: Giannantoni (– I C ). 34 Humbert (: –); Chroust (: –); Treves (: ). 35 Mention of Conon and the rebuilding of the Long Walls: Favorinus apud D.L. . . . Possible contrast with Critias and Alcibiades: Libanius, , pp. – Förster (on the difficulties in using this evidence, see below). Cf. Treves (: ). 36 Clytemnestra: Quint. . . ; Mice: Arist. Rhet. b, cf. a–; pebbles and pots: Alexander, peri rhet. aphar. . .  Spengel. I am most grateful to Niall Livingstone for these references, and for discussion and advice about Polycrates.

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sort as the other works of Polycrates we hear about: indeed, in view of the political and even philosophical implications of the subjectmatter, it is likely that it was a very different sort of work. That Polycrates engaged in the startling anachronism of mentioning Conon and the Long Walls suggests that his aim in composing an accusation of Socrates was not only to advertise his own rhetorical talents, but to justify the restored democracy, its practices and its statesmen (including of course the ‘speaker’ Anytus), against critics in general, and Socratic works like the Apology of Plato in particular.37 Polycrates, like Isocrates, Plato, and most sophists, will have believed that the special skills he taught were useful in the political sphere, and been keen to demonstrate this in his writings. It is significant that whereas Isocrates emerges as the champion of Alcibiades and implictly defends Socrates (his earlier associate), his rival Polycrates declares himself against Alcibiades (see below) and for Conon, Thrasybulus, and Anytus, and defends the execution of Socrates. Nevertheless, one should be cautious about believing that Polycrates’ work was treated so seriously that any reference to the accusers of Socrates in Socratic or other works must be a reference to the Accusation of Socrates. It is commonly argued, for example, that the first section of Xenophon’s Memorabilia (. –) is a reply to Polycrates’ Accusation, and that Xenophon’s many references there to ‘the prosecutor’ ( ) are to Polycrates. It has also been held that the fourth-century  rhetorician Libanius, in his Defence of Socrates, knew, and was replying to, Polycrates.38 More recently it has been pointed out how unsafe it is to assume that these works respond exclusively to Polycrates,39 or to use them in order to reconstruct Polycrates’ Accusation. There is, however, at least one point of the content of the Accusation on which we can be sure. Polycrates made an issue of Socrates’ association with Alcibiades. This we know from Isocrates’ Busiris: ‘Having 37 For Polycrates’ pamphlet as a ‘democratic’ response to Socratic dialogues, see Humbert (, –). For its political significance, see Treves (: –, –). 38 For the theory that Xenophon and Libanius are replying to Polycrates, see Markowski (); Chroust (: –); Treves (: ); Joël (: ii. –). 39 Livingstone (: –); and on Libanius, Russell (: –). Russell notes that it would be contrary to the normal practice of declamation to respond to just one literary text, but allows that some of the specific points in Libanius’ speech appear to come from a literary source, which may be Polycrates’ Accusation.

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Plato and the Socratics

undertaken to write a prosecution of Socrates, you gave him Alcibiades as a pupil, as though you wanted to write an encomium of him’ (Isoc. Bus. ). The same accusations are attributed by Xenophon to ‘the prosecutor’: ‘The prosecutor claimed that Critias and Alcibiades, having become the companions of Socrates, did terrible harm to the city’ (Mem. . . ). Compare also Libanius, Defence of Socrates , pp. – Förster: ‘In calling Socrates the teacher of evil deeds, men of the jury, and saying that he corrupted the young, Anytus could mention no one except Alcibiades and Critias.’ It seems, then, that Polycrates mentioned Alcibiades and made much of his case. Thus, whether or not Alcibiades was mentioned in the original trial, Isocrates, Busiris  suggests that it was above all through Polycrates that the charge of corrupting the young came to be seen as the charge of corrupting Alcibiades in particular. Through the Accusation of Socrates, the debate surrounding Socrates became entangled with that around Alcibiades (see Chapter  above), which was occurring at roughly the same time. Moreover, Polycrates appears to have joined Alcibiades’ name closely with that of Critias.40 Libanius (in the passage quoted from above) goes on to object to the placing of Alcibiades, the city’s benefactor, in close conjunction ( ) with Critias, its obvious enemy, while Xenophon, defending Socrates against the charges of ‘the prosecutor’, treats the cases of Alcibiades and Critias together, using the dual case (Mem. . . –). According to Xenophon (Mem. . . ) the prosecutor claimed that Socrates: ‘made those who associated with him despise the established laws, saying that it was stupid that the city’s officials should be appointed by lot. . . . Such talk, the prosecutor claimed, encouraged the young to despise the established constitution and turned them into men of violence [biaioi]’. Libanius too, in his Defence of Socrates, says that Socrates’ prosecutor claimed that Socrates taught men to be ‘tyrannical and intolerable and to despise equality’ (§ , p. ); that he was a hater of democracy (misodemos) and that he encouraged those he associated with to regard the democracy as ridiculous (§ , p. ). According to Libanius, the prosecutor ‘went through all those who had not associated with sophists, maintaining that they had been good men: Miltiades, 40 Perhaps, as Gigon (: ) suggests, as particularly representative figures of the democracy and the oligarchy.

Plato and the Socratics

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Themistocles, Aristides’ (§ , p. ); and that he contrasted Critias and Alcibiades with Thrasybulus and Conon (§ , p. ); that he ‘dared to call Socrates tyrannical’ (§ , p. ); and that he accused Socrates of ‘oath-breaking, stealing, and violence’ (§ , p. , compare § , p. ). A very similar attack on Socrates was made, according to Plutarch (Cato, . ), by Cato the Elder, who called Socrates: ‘a chattering and violent [biaios] man who tried as best he could to tyrannize over his native city, abolishing its customs and encouraging his fellow citizens to adopt opinions which were contrary to the laws.’ Some of this is doubtless the result of the declaimer’s tendency to develop the defence of Socrates according to the declamatory schema of a defence against ‘aiming at tyranny’.41 Nevertheless, it is plausible that Polycrates accused Socrates of inducing Alcibiades and Critias to overthrow the established constitution and set up ‘tyrannical’ regimes. Alcibiades and Critias could be treated in the same breath as men who had done especial harm to the city, in contrast to the statesmen of the democracy, who followed the laws of the city rather than the theories of the sophists, and who had restored democracy and empire rather than destroying it. So we can see how Polycrates’ specific introduction of Alcibiades into the charge against Socrates made sense as part of a coherent rhetorical strategy. It is also plausible (though because of uncertainties of chronology and the loss of most of the Socratic Alcibiades dialogues, we cannot be sure) that Polycrates’ concentration on Alcibiades was partly a reaction to Socratic works which were already presenting Alcibiades associating with Socrates.42 This would help to explain Polycrates’ focus on Alcibiades despite the danger (emphasized by Isocrates) that this might reflect well rather than badly on Socrates. It is likely enough that Polycrates’ work was also a contribution to a literary debate with rival sophists, one of the focuses of the debate being the reputations of the associates and ‘pupils’ of Socrates. In any case, we do not have to see all Socratic writing about Alcibiades as a reaction to the Accusation of Russell (: ). Joël (: iii.  ff.) went so far as to argue that Polycrates’ work is an accusation not of the historical Socrates, but of the literary Socrates created by the Socratics, specifically Antisthenes. This goes too far, but as Joël points out, Polycrates must have relied primarily on the works of the Socratics for his information about Socrates’ teaching, and he may well have incorporated a response to these works in his Accusation. 41 42

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Polycrates. As we have seen, there were already good reasons for the Socratics to play up the association. Nevertheless, Polycrates’ definitive association of Alcibiades with the city’s charges against Socrates had an important influence on the depictions of Alcibiades by the Socratics. Xenophon in the Memorabilia openly defended Socrates against the charge of corrupting Alcibiades: he and Critias associated with Socrates only for short-term career-oriented benefit, and would rather have died than live the life of virtue advocated by Socrates (. . –); moreover both men had been improved while they were with Socrates, but became dissolute again afterwards. In contrast to Libanius, who distinguishes the cases of Critias and Alcibiades and defends the career of Alcibiades,43 Xenophon puts Alcibiades into the same category as Critias, a representative of the worst excesses of democracy, just as Critias stands for the worst features of oligarchy (. . ). Xenophon also avoids using the words (‘teach’) or (‘teacher’), preferring (‘associate with’) and µ (‘companion’):44 Socrates never claimed to teach anyone. This is also the defence offered by Socrates in Plato’s Apology: ‘If one of those [who listens to my conversations] turns out virtuous or the reverse, it would not be right to hold me responsible, since I never promised anyone any instruction, nor taught anyone’ (b–). Xenophon, who does not mention Alcibiades elsewhere in his Socratic writings, appears to regard his association with Socrates as an embarrassment. Plato, by contrast, is free in his mention or depiction of Alcibiades, as he is with other notorious associates of Socrates such as Charmides or Critias. Though the aim is not to exonerate these figures,45 it is not immediately clear how we should react to such depictions.46 Plato’s approach to the charge of corrupting Alcibiades requires closer investigation.

Libanius, Defence of Socrates –, pp. – Förster. µ : . . ; µ : . . ; : . . , . . , . . . 45 Treves (: ) sees the early dialogues of Plato as ‘overflowing with praise’ for these figures. But note Prt. a emphasizing the immorality of Alcibiades. 46 Gigon (: ) claims that the reader of Plato would never guess the controversy these figures had excited, and that ‘Platon selbst zeigt sich erstaunlich gleichgültig gegen die Vorwürfe des Polycrates’. His claim is endorsed by Dodds (: ). 43 44

Plato and the Socratics

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. , ,       Plato’s Gorgias (and later, in another way, the Symposium) contrast with the straightforward protreptic dialogue that results in the sudden and complete conversion of the interlocutor. In his earlier dialogues Plato eschewed simple protreptic,47 in favour of the more problematic and thought-provoking elenchus, in which Socrates professes to be just as unable to come to an answer as his interlocutor, and the conversation ends aporetically. The Gorgias, in contrast to other Platonic dialogues, does develop into a sort of protreptic,48 but one which is conspicuous for the failure of Socrates really to convince Callicles, despite using every sort of means of persuasion at his disposal.49 This failure is related to the character of Callicles himself, who is possibly an older, and certainly a more hardened and more serious opponent than a figure like the young Alcibiades of protreptic. This failure to convince is all the more remarkable because of the clear references in the Gorgias to the trial of Socrates. Callicles declares that if Socrates were ever put on trial in Athens, he would have no chance of defending himself adequately (a–b, e–c). Socrates agrees, adding (b): ‘Suppose somebody says that I corrupt the young by confusing them . . . then I will be incapable either of saying what the truth is or anything else.’ The course of the dialogue, particularly the conversation with Callicles, mirrors the trial of Socrates itself, becoming a trial or agon of two opposing ways of life, represented in the recurrent metaphor of the agon between Amphion and Zethus in Euripides’ Antiope.50 The 47 Cf. Slings (:  ff.). Presuming Alc. I is not by Plato, it is interesting that Plato never wrote an Alcibiades (cf. Dittmar :  n. ; Humbert :  ff.), or even depicted Alcibiades at protreptic age. One reason may be that the association of Alcibiades with the simple protreptic dialogue discouraged Plato from using him as a main interlocutor. 48 Though Socrates’ enthusiasm to persuade Callicles is partly due to a desire to defend his own way of life against Callicles’ attack. 49 Cf. Rutherford (: , ). 50 Grg. e–c, e, b–e; cf. also cd. Fragments of the Antiope are collected in Kambitsis (). The Antiope presented an agon between the two brothers Amphion (a musician and proponent of the contemplative life) and Zethus (a herdsman and proponent of a life of action). At the end of the play, Amphion’s position was justified, like Socrates’ in Grg., when Hermes predicted that his music would build the walls of Thebes (frag.  Kambitsis). On the Antiope and Grg. in connection with the choice between a life of political involvement and a life of apragmosune, see Carter (: –).

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idea of a choice between a life spent in, and governed by, philosophy, and a non-philosophical life (pursuing honour in society, or pleasure, or leading an ‘unexamined life’) is also closely related to protreptic,51 and is important in Alcibiades dialogues.52 But in the Gorgias it is not just the agon of two competing types of life but the actual trial of Socrates which underlies the conversation. This gives the protreptic a bitter, even a tragic, edge. For Socrates loses the battle to convince Callicles, just as he will fail to convince the Athenians and be put to death, his defeat in the dialogue prefiguring his death at the hands of the city, an event which hangs over the whole dialogue. These references to the trial also set the Gorgias firmly in the context of the debates for and against Socrates which were raging in the s.53 Unfortunately it is not possible to determine the exact place of the Gorgias within the literary exchanges of the Socratics and their opponents. It is usually argued that the Gorgias and Polycrates’ Accusation of Socrates are intertextually related on the grounds that Libanius’ Defence (§ ) shows that both texts referred to the same fragment of Pindar,54 but scholars disagree about which is replying to which. The Gorgias is certainly a reaction to the various charges of Socrates’ opponents, even if not specifically to Polycrates’. But in contrast to Xenophon’s Memorabilia, for example, the reaction to this controversy goes beyond mere defence of Socrates. The Gorgias, of course, does justify Socrates, by setting the ‘loss’ of his trial in a wider context which allows us to see how it is a sort of victory (as in the Amphion–Zethus agon, or the myth at the end of the dialogue). But the development of the trial as a metaphor in the dialogue and the tragic note turn apology into 51 Particularly in Prodicus’ story of the choice of Heracles: Xen. Mem. . . – = Prodicus, frag.  DK. 52 In Alc. I, it gradually becomes clear that Alcibiades is being presented with a choice between a career of public ambition and a life of caring for himself. Alc. II concerns what sort of life we should pray for. In Plato, Symp., Alcibiades is confronted with the choice of ‘the honour of the many’ or the speeches of Socrates. Note also Xen. Mem. . . , with Gigon ad loc.: if Alcibiades and Critias were presented with a choice between living as Socrates did and dying on the spot, they would have chosen the latter. 53 These debates had already made the trial a symbolic forum for competing philosophical and political positions. Plato’s metaphorical development of the trial in Grg. merely goes a stage further. 54 Frag.  Bowra: see Dodds (: –, –); Humbert (: –); Treves (: –), and the works cited by these scholars. But Russell (: –) denies that this is a necessary implication of the Libanius passage.

Plato and the Socratics

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a reflection or exploration of the role of the philosopher in society. This is typical of a wider tendency of Plato constantly to confront the execution of Socrates and his failure to convince, in order to create a disturbing undertone in his dialogues,55 through oblique references to the trial. It is in this context that we should see the selection of interlocutors who were known to have come to a bad end.56 The Gorgias also addresses the charge of corrupting the young. Again, the purpose is partly apologetic: far from corrupting the young, Socrates is depicted as doing his best to persuade Callicles towards a life of virtue, and to overturn the sort of amoralist Might is Right arguments that were commonly associated with Socrates (as in Aristophanes’ Clouds). Socrates is portrayed as the only man in Athens who really tries to improve the citizens, which makes him the only true politikos in the city (d–). The others with a claim to this title merely corrupt the citizens by offering them superficially attractive goals (e–a). It is precisely for this attempt to improve the citizens that Socrates will be put to death (d–d). Still, despite his insistence on results as evidence of moral improvement (e–c, b–d), Socrates fails to turn Callicles towards virtue or philosophy: despite being defeated in argument, he remains obdurate in his beliefs that the strong should rule. At the beginning of the dialogue (a), Socrates had asked Gorgias whether and how a teacher makes his pupils better. In contrast to protreptic, the dialogue produces no simple answer to this question. Socrates’ failure to convince Callicles leaves us uncertain how one is to go about teaching others wisdom.57 Like Xenophon’s Memorabilia, then, the Gorgias takes up the theme of the justification of Socrates, and addresses in particular the charge of corrupting the young. This supports the idea that both the Gorgias and the Memorabilia are responding specifically to Polycrates’ Accusation of Socrates. Further support comes from the hints that Callicles, the dominant interlocutor of the second half of the dialogue, is in some way similar to Alcibiades. Alcibiades is 55 The Apology, Euthyphro, Phaedo, and Crito are all set in the immediate context of the trial. Other dialogues contain some reference to Socrates’ trial and death, e.g. Meno, where Anytus quarrels with Socrates and walks off in a huff (e–a, cf. c–). 56 Cf. Rutherford (: –). 57 This question was hotly debated by the contemporaries of Socrates and Plato. See e.g. Guthrie (–: iii. –).

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mentioned on two occasions in the dialogue. These puzzling references reinforce the subtle connections between the Gorgias and the trial of Socrates. The first mention is at c–d, after the refutation of Polus. At this point, Callicles breaks in and asks Socrates whether he is really serious about the arguments he has developed. Socrates replies with a long speech which sketches the basis of the confrontation that is to take up most of the rest of the dialogue. He notes that without a certain fellow-feeling among individuals it would not be easy for one to make his position clear to another. He and Callicles share this fellow-feeling, he claims, for each has a double eros, Socrates for Alcibiades and for philosophy, and Callicles for Demos the son of Pyrilampes and for the demos of the Athenians.58 Callicles is forced to keep changing what he says in response to the fickle moods of his two loves. He will therefore be able to appreciate that unless he can change what Socrates’ lover, philosophy, says, Socrates will not be able to change what he says either. This puzzling reference to Alcibiades is particularly notable in view of the way the Gorgias shadows the trial of Socrates and the charge of corrupting the young. It is not enough to point out that the erotic relationship with Alcibiades was a current joke against Socrates.59 In bringing in a reference to Alcibiades at this point, Socrates seems already to be hinting that he fears his attempt to win over Callicles will end the same way as his similar attempt with Alcibiades.60 For the reader, the mention of Alcibiades introduces 58 The basis of Socrates’ irony against Callicles here is the claim of democratic politicians in comedy, and perhaps in real life, to be lovers of the demos (Aristoph. Knights , , ; cf. Connor :  ff.). The claim to be an erastes of the demos is a neat illustration of the sort of slave-like pandering Socrates later argues is necessary in democratic politicians, and underlines the contrast with the Socratic philosphical erastes. The conceit that Callicles was really in love with Demos, son of Pyrilampes, is an additional refinement. 59 Dodds (: ). The surface point of the passage is a typical Socratic irony about his relationship with beautiful boys (cf. Vlastos :  ff.). But that does not explain the point of introducing this joke or irony precisely here. Rankin (: ) comes closer to capturing the complexity of the passage when he calls it a ‘jokingly interwoven contrast between physical and spiritual . . . [an example] of Socratic irony with simultaneous deployment of different levels of meaning’. 60 Indications of time in Grg. are so inconsistent that one can hardly speak of a ‘dramatic date’ (Dodds : –). Nevertheless, given that we have just been told that the action takes place in the year after the trial of the Arginousae generals, i.e.   (e–b), we may be meant to think of Socrates’ eros for Alcibiades, and his philosophical contact with him, as a thing of the past.

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for the first time the overtones of the trial and execution of Socrates which are to be so important later on.61 Callicles is probably a real figure,62 but he is also representative of others of his generation.63 This representativeness is helped by his relative anonymity. Plato did not choose Alcibiades or Critias as interlocutor in this dialogue, as he might have done, but a less wellknown figure. Yet we are encouraged to see Callicles as suggestive of these and other ‘corrupted’ personalities by the way the dialogue seems obliquely to refer to the charge of corrupting the young. The choice of Callicles as interlocutor is thus deliberately challenging to the reader, encouraging and yet discouraging an association with specific better-known figures. Foremost among these is Alcibiades,64 so prominently mentioned at the start of the conversation with Socrates. The link is reinforced by a later passage in the Gorgias: ab. Here Socrates points out that (would-be) politicians like Callicles are themselves liable to be arraigned before the demos, thus pointing in turn to the vulnerability of Callicles’ own way of life: ‘And perhaps, when they lose even those possessions which they held in the past in addition to those they have gained, [the Athenians] will seize on you, if you are not careful, and my friend [hetairos] Alcibiades as well, although you were not responsible for the damage, but perhaps co-responsible [ ]’ (a–b). This suggests that Callicles too, if he is a real figure, went on to suffer a similar, if less spectacular, fate to that of Alcibiades (an early death would explain why he left no mark on the historical record65). But if these two passages encourage us to see a link between Callicles and Alcibiades, they just as strongly discourage a direct identification of the two figures,66 for if Alcibiades 61 Cf. Dodds (: ): ‘to drag in two allusions to “my friend Alcibiades” may appear positively foolhardy, when one of the counts in the new accusation [i.e. that of Polycrates] was that Alcibiades was Socrates’ pupil.’ 62 Dodds (: ), pointing out that this is normally the case in the dialogues of Plato. On Dodds’s suggestion that Plato intended to suggest in Callicles the sort of person he himself might have become, see Rutherford (: ). 63 On Callicles as representative of a certain class of young Athenian nobility, see Dodds (: –); Ostwald (:  ff.). On Callicles and the position he represents, see Menzel (). 64 Cf. Hatzfeld (: –); Ostwald (, ); de Romilly (, –). 65 Dodds (: ). 66 First suggested by Gomperz (: –) and Apelt (:  ff.; cf. the introduction to Apelt ). The case for the identification of Callicles with Alcibiades is now fully set out in Vickers ( (I am most grateful to Michael Vickers for discussion of the Gorgias). Humbert (: –) saw Callicles as a

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is mentioned in the dialogue as a separate figure, rather like Callicles but distinct from him, then it is clear that we are not encouraged to see Callicles as simply standing for Alcibiades.67 Callicles is like Alcibiades in that having heard and rejected the words of Socrates, he goes on to an ambitious public career, which will (or may) end in disaster not only for himself but also for the city (defeat in the Peloponnesian War, loss of empire, stasis). This outcome is traced not only to the decision of Socrates’ interlocutor to follow a career of superficial fame rather than philosophy, but to the political degeneracy of the city (which encourages the moral failure of its politicians just as much as they in turn corrupt the city). In this opening-up of the question of responsibility for the loss of empire, we draw closer than ever to the debates of the s. Whereas Polycrates apparently contrasted the generation of sophist-educated dissolutes who destroyed the city with the true statesmen educated only in the laws of the city, who brought about the rebuilding of the walls and the restoration of naval power, Plato’s Socrates refuses to distinguish amongst leaders of the Athenian demos: all are guilty of offering the citizens the superficial goals of walls and dockyards and other rubbish (Grg. a–), packaged in attractive but corrupting rhetoric inspired by the sophists, rather than attempting to improve their souls. He refuses to trace the city’s failure simply to leaders at all, but links it to a moral failure in which both political leader and demos take part, leaving Alcibiades and the other leaders of his day ‘co-responsible’. This recalls Thucydides’ careful sharing of the blame for the eventual disaster between leader and led, Athenians and Alcibiades, in .  or . .68 Both authors draw on the figure of the demagogue, representative of Polycrates himself. It is true that Callicles, like Polycrates, acts as the opponent of Socrates and of philosophy as a guide to political action, and that he acts as his ‘prosecutor’ in the metaphorical trial of the dialogue. But unlike Polycrates, Callicles is young and worth saving: he is a figure of ‘corrupted’ youth rather than one of Socrates’ accusers. 67 Other factors discourage the identification: Callicles is represented as violently opposed to Socratic philosophy, whereas Alcibiades is attracted to it. We cannot imagine Alcibiades brutally putting down Socrates with a simple ‘Might is Right’ argument. 68 But Plato draws no distinctions amongst democratic politicians, especially not between Pericles and his successors: all are demagogues. On links between Thucydides and Plato (who never mentions Thucydides), see Rutherford (: –); Hornblower (: –); de Romilly (: –).

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as developed especially in comedy, a figure who is at once the corrupter of the demos and a product, even a victim, of the democratic system. The city gets the leaders it deserves.69 Callicles also resembles Alcibiades in other ways. Like Alcibiades, who is always changing his mind (a–b), Callicles too is in a state of unstable disagreement with himself (‘Callicles will never agree with Callicles’—b–), and as the dialogue progresses, Socrates remarks on the many changes of mind which he is forced to resort to in order to save his position.70 But despite Alcibiades’ fickleness, which contrasts so strongly with Socrates’ other love, philosophy, Socrates declares himself to be in love with him. Why? Those familiar with the Socratic protreptic conversation and the Socratic eros theory of the dialectic impulse will know the answer: Socrates loves the good things in Alcibiades’ soul, and burns to turn him to self-improvement.71 Eros functions as a metaphor for Socrates’ quasi-political involvement in the city,72 his desire to save his interlocutors’ souls from neglect: it covers the sort of activity on which Socrates bases his claim to be the true politikos (d–). Perhaps, then, there is a suggestion that there is a kind of inconsistency in Socrates too: between his practice of philosophy, and his ‘political’ involvement in the affairs of the Athenians (suggested by his love of Alcibiades), an inconsistency whose effect is observable in the Gorgias itself, forcing him into uncharacteristic and unphilosophical ways of speaking.73 Socrates demonstrates a similar care for Callicles, too, though talk of eros would be out of place (a significant difference which emphasizes the point that while Callicles is similar to Alcibiades, he is certainly not identical). The ambition, intelligence, and intellectual honesty74 demonstrated by Callicles recall Alcibiades, and make him in some respects the right person for philosophy, something of a philosophical phusis. In emphasizing that Callicles is a 69 It is common to blame the citizens themselves for the rise of a tyrant. Thus [And.] . – blames the Athenians for allowing the rise of Alcibiades. 70 Grg. b–c; b–c. 71 Cf. Aeschin. Alc. frag.  Dittmar, lines –, where Socrates explains how he expects his eros for Alcibiades to make him better. 72 Cf. Xen. Symp. . : Socrates was the co-lover ( ) with Athens of those who were good by nature and zealous in their pursuit of virtue. 73 See Rutherford (: ) for a slightly different view of this passage. 74 When Socrates declares (d–d) that Callicles is the perfect interlocutor, he is only partly ironic.

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lover (even if only for the demos), Socrates hints at the Alcibiadeslike misdirected ambition in Callicles which makes Socrates interested in him as a subject for philosophy. Hence when Socrates says that he and Callicles share a special affinity (d–) he is not necessarily being ironic. The themes of this section of the Gorgias are picked up in the first Alcibiades, a work which is apparently strongly influenced by the ideas of Platonic dialogues like the Gorgias and the Symposium. The Socrates of this dialogue tells Alcibiades: I was your only lover; the others are all lovers of what belongs to you [i.e. your body]: what belongs to you is coming to the end of its season, but you are just beginning to bloom. And now if you are not corrupted by the demos of the Athenians and grow uglier, I will certainly never leave you. This in fact is what I am especially afraid of, that you might become a lover of the demos and be corrupted. Many noble Athenians have already suffered this fate, for the demos of great-hearted Erechtheus has a fair face. (e–a).

Both the philosopher and the young interlocutor are ‘lovers’: indeed this is the basis on which the attempt at protreptic is built, for it is the drive to be better than others, and the hatred of subservience, which will shock the interlocutor into discovering his true state. What perverts the interlocutor from the philosophical self-improvement he so badly needs is the corruption of his eros into an ‘eros of the demos’. It is thus society itself and its values which ‘corrupt’ (diaphtheirein—the word used in the charge against Socrates at his trial) the young, not the philosopher. There is another source of affinity linking Socrates and Callicles in the Gorgias: both are likely to suffer the same fate—death or exile at the hands of the Athenians. Of course this similarity only underlines the contrast between the two: Socrates’ death at the hands of the Athenians will be a sign of his refusal to adapt himself to the Athenians or to pander to them through rhetoric, while the fate of Callicles (whatever it will be), will, like that of Alcibiades, demonstrate the futility of the political way of life. On the other hand, there is a sense in which the fates of Alcibiades or Callicles and Socrates really are similar: all are victims of the corrupted public life of the city. The irony of the shared fate of philosopher and interlocutor is picked up in Socrates’ closing words in the first Alcibiades: ‘I am filled with dread, not out of any lack of confidence in your phusis but when I consider the force exerted by the city: I

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am afraid it may prove too powerful both for you and for me’ (Alc. I e–). In the first Alcibiades as in the Gorgias, Socrates and his interlocutor are set in a complex relationship of similarity within difference.75 Though opposed in character and beliefs, they are united not just by their eros and dialectic, but by their shared experience at the hands of the Athenian demos.76 Once again, the author of the first Alcibiades is apparently inspired by themes from Plato. But in this more straightforward protreptic conversation, these pessimistic and troubling notes are delayed until the end, so that they do not influence the bulk of the dialogue. In the Gorgias too, apology for Socrates is combined with a kind of protreptic. The philosophical and apologetic purposes of the dialogue are in this way closely linked. But in the Gorgias we are made aware from the start of Socrates’ failure to persuade and his eventual execution. The effect is to make both apology and protreptic more complex and disturbing. Why does the philosopher fail to persuade? Only at one point does Callicles give any real indication that the arguments of Socrates are making an impression on him: . Somehow or other what you say seems right to me, Socrates, but—and my experience is that of many others—I am not completely convinced by what you say. . That is because the love of the demos which is present in your soul is putting up a resistance to me. (c–)

This passage addresses fundamental problems. First, dialectic as practised by Socrates (Socrates’ ‘iron-bound chain’ of argument: e–a) is not apparently an effective persuasive tool. Callicles sees Socrates’ practice of it as a form of logic-chopping which should not be allowed to overrule common sense (c–d, b–). In fact, as the conversation progresses, Socrates resorts to a variety of alternative methods, including parables and myths (the story of the pitcher-bearers, the myth of the soul’s fate after death), in order to get Callicles to grasp psychologically and emotionally the points he has reached dialectically and logically.77 75 Similarities between Socrates and his interlocutor are also noticeable in the case of Theaetetus (Theaet. d) and Phaedrus in the Phaedrus (cf. Coventry : –). 76 Cf. Friedländer (: ): ‘This prediction connects, in an ironic paradox, the career of Alcibiades and the death of Socrates.’ 77 Thus Dodds (: ) takes c– as expressing ‘Plato’s recognition that basic moral attitudes are determined by psychological, not logical reasons. . . . That is why Callicles remains unconvinced to the end.’

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Socrates is alarmed to find that he is resorting to persuasive methods, such as long speeches, which are similar to the methods he decries in others (d–e; cf. b–). But not even this is effective. There is a more fundamental problem: the pressures on the individual to conform to the democratic city78 (‘eros for the demos’), and the attraction of the honour offered by a public career are so great that the interlocutor is unable to accept Socrates’ genuinely radical critique of the city and its way of life. The course of the conversation in the Republic is partly governed by the need to respond to this failure of philosophy to convince. The Republic begins with a dialogue recalling the Gorgias in which a figure (Thrasymachus) who argues for the rule of the stronger and the non-philosophical life is refuted. But like Callicles in the Gorgias, Glaucon and Adeimantus fail to be convinced by the logic of Socrates’ argument on its own (ab, b). In this case, however, Socrates seeks a way out of the aporia by imagining a radically different society, consideration of which might allow his interlocutors to overcome the difficulty of perceiving the worth of philosophy and justice while the means of perception is hampered by absorption in a corrupted society. At b–c Adeimantus raises the objection that most people who listen to philosophical arguments feel themselves outwitted but not convinced. Socrates’ reply takes us back to the Gorgias. The true philosopher is unable to be useful to society because society is constructed in such a way as to be incapable of listening to him (Rep. e–d), and he may even be put to death for what he says (c–); those who are equipped by phusis for philosophy and might become true philosophers are corrupted by the education provided by society (d–c), and by the assembly place echoing with shouts of approval and disapproval (b–c). It is not the sophists who corrupt such a figure, but the people who accuse the sophists, the citizens themselves (a–b). Once again, the role of the philosophical phusis in the Republic parallels that of Alcibiades in other works, this time in its illustration of the problem faced by the philosopher of making himself heard by the young in the face of the powerful value-system of the city. Once again, the conception of the philosopher’s role is influ78 Socrates makes it clear that no matter how much Callicles may declare himself to be a radical opponent of the values of the city, he is at least as committed to them as anyone else.

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enced by the trial of Socrates. There is no simple protreptic available. Alcibiades becomes a symbol not of the victory of the philosopher but of his difficulty in convincing others, and the hostile reaction of the city to this ‘political’ involvement. The pessimistic conclusion of the Republic (in keeping with the view of that dialogue that existing society must be jettisoned altogether) is that no teacher has a chance of persuading the philosophical phusis against the powerful attraction of the city. The Alcibiades scene in the Symposium is also influenced by the association of Alcibiades with the charge of corrupting the young on the one hand, and by the protreptic conversation on the other. Instead of protreptic itself, the Symposium presents an older Alcibiades79 describing protreptic conversations between himself and Socrates like that in Aeschines’ Alcibiades, which have taken place in his youth. He relates how Socrates reduced him to tears (e), apparently of inspiration rather than despair as in Aeschines80) and forced him to admit that he ought to ‘look after himself’ (a–) and that his life was not worth living in his present state (a). Whereas the protreptic Alcibiades dialogue is haunted by the prospect of Alcibiades’ future rejection of philosophy, the Symposium’s relocation of the action to a time long after Alcibiades has been subject to Socrates’ speeches and rejected them places the focus squarely on the difficulty of philosophical persuasion and the problems, even the tragedy, of the philosopher in society. The Alcibiades episode in the Symposium is usually seen as apologetic, on the grounds that it depicts the ‘real’ nature of the relationship between Alcibiades and Socrates.81 This is clearly true, in a sense: Alcibiades tells ‘the truth’ about the marvellous self-control Socrates displayed in their dealings, and Socrates’ 79 On the significance of the difference of Alcibiades’ age in the various depictions, see Bruns (: –). 80 See frag.  Dittmar. 81 Cf. Gomperz (: –); Robin (: pp. x–xi, xcviii–xcix); Hatzfeld (: ); A. G. Bury (: pp. lii, lxiv–lxv); and Chroust (: ). Robin (: pp. x–xi); and Dodds (: ), see c– (‘My eros for this man has been no small nuisance to me’) as a reference to the importance of Alcibiades for Socrates at his trial and particularly in the Accusation of Polycrates. A. G. Bury (: pp. xvii–xviii) believes, on the basis of Symp. b, that the dialogue is Plato’s response to an earlier hostile account (perhaps Polycrates’) of a banquet at which Socrates and Alcibiades were present, arguing that Plut. Mor. d suggests that there was another symposium work in existence in which Alcibiades was the host.

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virtue in general. The apologetic level is underlined once again by references to the trial of Socrates. Alcibiades’ speech (which in other ways too plays with the notion of genre82) is not only an epainos, or speech of praise, but also, like the work of Polycrates, a kategoria, an accusation or prosecution speech against Socrates. Thus the trial of Socrates is imagined in advance, on charges of hubris and hyperephania, insulting pride, with Alcibiades as prosecutor:83 And you cannot deny the truth of this [i.e. his account of Socrates’ resistance to his attempts to seduce him] either, Socrates. Despite the way I had acted, this man [ ‘the defendant’] proved himself so superior to me and despised me and ridiculed my beauty and insulted [ ] me—and in that very area in which I particularly prided myself, gentlemen of the jury (you are the jury in the trial of Socrates for insulting pride)—for you are to know, by the gods and goddesses, that having spent the night with Socrates I got up for all the world as though I had been sleeping with a father or older brother. (Symp. c–d).

As in the Gorgias, Alcibiades’ appearance in the dialogue thus helps to prefigure the trial of Socrates. As in the Gorgias, or the Republic, Socrates is actually on trial for his virtue, which some people found intolerable. In particular, Socrates’ ‘corruption’ of Alcibiades, of which he will later stand accused, is revealed by Alcibiades himself as an attempt to improve his soul. In the same vein, Alcibiades goes on to describe how Socrates’ ability to bear extremes of heat and cold on campaign caused the soldiers to look askance at him as though he was despising them (b–c). Socrates’ attempts to improve his interlocutors—or rather, to encourage his interlocutors to improve themselves—lead to the charge of corrupting them. This irony is apologetic in tendency. But Alcibiades’ speech also intersects with another theme familiar from the Gorgias: whether it is possible to inculcate philosophy, knowledge, and virtue in others. Socrates’ speech in praise of Eros had outlined a path through which souls may draw close to philosophical knowledge, above all the idea that an older, more experienced partner can help steer a younger one to knowledge, a process 82 For attempts to see Alcibiades’ speech as playing with the genres of tragedy, comedy, and satyr play, see e.g. Krüger (: –, –); Bacon (); Nussbaum ( ,  n. ); Rutherford (: , –). 83 As Rosen notes (: ), Alcibiades stands for Athens in the mock-trial he sets up in Symp.: cf. Robin (:  n. ).

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in which knowledge is inspired rather than taught. The speech of Alcibiades which immediately follows this speech presents Socrates as a sort of embodiment of the philosophical eros Socrates himself had just described,84 and to this extent it confirms and supports Socrates’ speech. But Alcibiades, whose late entry causes him to miss Socrates’ speech, and whose drunken and unruly behaviour stands in stark contrast to the tone of that speech, appears also to have failed even to recognize exactly what it was that Socrates was offering him. The debased erotic deal Alcibiades offers Socrates involving his own body links the Alcibiades episode to Socrates’ vision of philosophical eros,85 which Alcibiades has missed by arriving late to the symposium, just as he has ‘missed’ it as a youth. Rather than a complex ‘erotic’ ascent towards philosophy, Alcibiades, hopes to acquire what Socrates has by means of a simple exchange (a, ef). He thus fails to grasp precisely the point that knowledge cannot simply be learned or passed from one to another.86 To this extent, then, the speech introduces a most disturbing note, making us wonder to what extent the ideal of the philosophical-erotic ascent described by Socrates can ever take place in practice. This is in keeping with the action of the rest of the dialogue, where Socrates’ strangeness and philosophical intensity creates a distance between himself and his companions, even though, like Alcibiades, they find something deeply attractive about his words. The primary reason for Alcibiades’ refusal of the message of philosophy in the Symposium is (as in the Gorgias and the first Alcibiades), ‘eros for the demos’,87 as it is for Callicles,88 but in this 84

A. G. Bury (: pp. lx–lxiv, lxvii); Robin (: pp. ci ff). It is significant that Symp. is apparently unique in linking Alcibiades’ rejection of Socrates and his philosophy to Socrates’ rejection of his erotic advances. 86 Cf. Robin (: p. ciii). Socrates had already remarked that wisdom does not simply flow automatically from the wiser to the less wise (de). Cf. Rutherford (: –, ). 87 Gagarin (: –), drawing on Vlastos (: –) (and cf. Halperin : ), see Socrates as guilty of a ‘failure of love’, leading to Alcibiades’ negative reaction and rejection of philosophy. But Alcibiades’ speech appears rather to put the blame for the failure to persuade on the acculturation of democratic Athens, and the attraction towards the life of honour (cf. the fate of the philosophical soul in Rep.). 88 Like Callicles, Alcibiades is unable really to understand what Socrates is saying. Cf. Rosen (: ): ‘Alcibiades [in Symp.] is the supreme example of the fact that the triumph of philosophy is something other than the triumph of logos alone.’ Cf. also Dover (: ), arguing that for Xenophon in Mem. and Plato in Symp., 85

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case the psychology of the figure who rejects philosophy is set out in its full complexity by the figure himself in a self-aware but also self-conscious analysis: Alcibiades describes how he is pulled by two powerful urges, one for philosophy and the other for the ‘honour of the many’. even now I am conscious that if I was prepared to stop and listen to him I could not hold out . . . He forces me to admit that although I am still deficient in many ways, I neglect myself, and instead look after the affairs of the Athenians. And so, forcing myself to block up my ears, I run away, as though it was the Sirens I was fleeing, lest I sit there beside him and grow old . . . He is the only person before whom I feel shame. For I am conscious that there is no way for me to deny that I should do as he bids, and yet that when I leave his company I am overcome by the honour that comes from the many. So I run away from him like a slave and flee, and whenever I see him I am ashamed by the things I have admitted in our discussions. Often I would gladly see him no longer among us. (Symp. a–c).

This account of Alcibiades’ turning-away from philosophy is more complimentary to Alcibiades and more interesting than Xenophon’s picture of a ruthless dissolute using Socrates for his own political ends (Mem. . . –). Unlike Callicles, who rejects what Socrates has to say outright, Alcibiades presents himself as deeply attracted to Socrates’ words. Unlike the Alcibiades of the first Alcibiades, whose defeat by Socrates suggests a certain superficiality and lack of spirit, this is a great-hearted Alcibiades who holds out against Socrates ‘heroically’, but in doing so is diminished and defeated. Plato’s Alcibiades is a self-aware sophisticate who understands enough about Socrates and his philosophy to be passionately attracted to them, but also to realize how radically opposed they are to his own ambitious dreams. Moreover, Plato’s tracing of Alcibiades’ unstable rejection of Socrates to the bitter humiliation following the rejection of his attempts to seduce and manipulate Socrates (de), introduces a note of psychological realism. The appearance of Alcibiades in the Symposium does not simply confirm the presentation of Socrates as the embodiment of eros, but also complicates it, just as his presence in the background of the Gorgias complicates Socrates’ self-depiction as the true politikos. the presentation of Alcibiades constitutes ‘an interesting admission that argument can influence action only when addressed to those who are well disposed to its presuppositions’.

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Alcibiades’ role is to suggest that, given the nature and power of existing society, the philosopher has no chance of altering it, or of persuading its leading figures. Alcibiades contributes not only to an apologetic response to the charges of the city and Polycrates (far from corrupting Alcibiades, Socrates was the only one trying to save him from becoming the sort of figure he later became), but also to a more pessimistic rumination on their significance (Socrates’ attempt at protreptic was ultimately futile and led to his execution by the city). In his portrayal of Alcibiades, Plato rejects not only the city’s allegation that Socrates was capable of corrupting Alcibiades, but also the protreptic dialogue’s implication that he was capable of turning him in a straightforward way to virtue. Plato’s reaction to the charges made against Socrates in   and in the Accusation of Polycrates has shaped Plato’s thought in a way that makes it impossible to separate ‘apology’ from the philosophical thought of the dialogues, and links politics and philosophy.89 In his thinking, Alcibiades becomes a symbol of the inevitability of the conflict between philosopher and society. .   -   SYMPOSIUM Most surviving presentations of Alcibiades are of an official and public character: the orator appears before the assembled citizenbody to present a version of Alcibiades. These public depictions concentrate on the significance of Alcibiades for the city. Where private details are presented, these are stylized and included to support the public picture. Socratic philosophy and the Platonic dialogue, on the other hand, take place in a semi-private world away from the public presentations of the city. Socratic method is a recognition of the particularity of the philosophical encounter and the individuality of the participants; the individuation of the interlocutor in Platonic dialogues can be seen as a literary reflection of this concern.90 Plato also rejected literary forms based around public extended speech, the normal prose medium of the day, in favour of the dialogue. Extended speech was capable only of producing doxa (‘irrational’ Cf. Humbert (: ). Coventry (); Rutherford (: –, –, –). Cf. also Gill (b: –). On characterization in Plato, cf. also Gill (). 89 90

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opinion). Encomium in particular is rejected,91 as a rhetorical means of dressing up or concealing the real individual. The dialogue, on the other hand, changing the scene as it were from the Pnyx to the andreion, from a fully public to a semi-private civic sphere,92 can be seen as a means of bringing out the real nature of the individual, now unable to cloak himself in rhetoric.93 This is an important step from the point of view of characterization.94 But as a work like Plato’s Symposium shows, this distinction between public and private arenas is not a firm one. The symposium too, or the private conversation, could also be the occasion for a sort of appearance or performance by the individual, this time before his peers, often using extended speech. In depicting the extended speeches characteristic of this more formal side of nonpublic encounters, Plato is interested in exposing the characters and ethical orientation of speakers through the use of revealing speech,95 and this recalls Thucydides’ use of speech to expose the character or position of his speakers. This type of characterization is akin to that of parody: a character’s distinctive features are allowed to emerge by having him speak in his accustomed way, with the aid of some selection and exaggeration. The depiction of Alcibiades in the Symposium thus offers a rare opportunity to compare Thucydides’ and Plato’s use of characterizing speech. The Alcibiades depicted by Plato is recognizably the same figure as that of Thuc. . – (though this does not mean that he is a ‘type’96). Just as the speeches of Thucydides’ Alcibiades Plato, Symp. b–b, Theaet. d, Menex. c–c. On the question of whether to class the symposium in the private or the public sphere see Schmitt-Pantel (a, b). 93 Socrates in Plato objects to the techniques of rhetoric delivered to a large audience (Grg. c–d, cf. a). In his own dialectic he insists on short speeches (Grg. d–b), and on the interlocutor saying only what he believes, as distinct from what he thinks his audience wants to hear (Cri. c–d, Grg. a–, Rep. c—cf. Coventry : –; Vlastos ). Thus, when exposed to Socratic dialectic, where they are unable to conceal themselves behind public speech, politicians and other public figures find themselves humiliated (cf. Meno b–, Grg. e–). Socratic dialectic is a reaction to the rhetorical techniques of the sophists. On the Socratic shift of speech from the public to the ‘private’ domain, cf. Asmis (: ), examining the discussion of rhetoric in the Phaedrus in this light. 94 Dihle (: –). 95 A version of this technique, where extended speech is used to suggest what lies beneath the surface of the official encomium of the city, is also used in the Menexenus: cf. Loraux (: –); Coventry (). 96 Contrast Gill (: –), seeing the presentation of Alcibiades in terms of the type who rejects philosophy. Cf. also Cornford (: ) on Plato’s 91 92

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are concerned with himself (self-justification, self-praise, selfprojection), the Alcibiades of the Symposium (though theoretically delivering an encomium of Socrates) devotes much of his speech to his personal suffering at the hands of Socrates, to justification of his own actions, and to a description of his own reactions (so that the picture of Socrates which results is one that is filtered through Alcibiades’ own perceptions). Plato’s Alcibiades, like Thucydides’, is revealed as an egotist (his main thought in approaching Socrates is to acquire his abilities for himself97), ambitious (he runs away from Socrates because he realizes that he will thwart his plans to achieve public success—ab), vain (he prides himself on his beauty ‘to an incredible extent’98), and extreme in his reactions when slighted.99 Plato’s and Thucydides’ Alcibiades also share a strikingly direct and open way of talking about themselves. Just as Thucydides’ Alcibiades is expert in adapting his words to his audience, whether Athenian or Spartan, Plato’s Alcibiades artfully appeals to his listeners’ experience of the uplifting excitement of philosophy in order to justify his behaviour (ab), and adopts Socrates’ own style of speaking to win him over before attempting to seduce him (c–d). As in Thucydides (. ), Alcibiades is skilled at arousing a (now literal) eros in others, even though the attempt founders on Socrates’ amazing self-control. Indeed, it is Alcibiades’ association with this dangerous and unfulfillable sort of eros100 which makes him so appropriate a foil to the Platonic eros set out in Socrates’ speech, which culminates in philosophical fulfilment. These similarities extend to the stylistic level. In Thucydides, as Tompkins101 showed, Alcibiades employs a paratactic style suggestive of a ‘simple and sincere’ approach and of directness and urgency (many of Alcibiades’ sentences start with the word , ‘and’). We also noted the large number of sentences in Alcibiades’ speeches which begin with , ‘I’, and a tendency to excessive self-reference in general. These same features can be observed in ‘idealisation’ (i.e. assimilation to ideals or types) of his characters in general and Alcibiades in particular. 97 a, c–d, criticized ironically by Socrates in d–a. 98 a–; cf. a (Alcibiades describes himself as ‘a young soul not without ability’). 99 de: cf. Alcibiades’ reaction to being overlooked by the Spartans over the Peace of Nicias (Thuc. . ). 100 Cf. Cornford (,  ff.). 101 ().

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Alcibiades’ speech in the Symposium: fifteen of Alcibiades’ sentences begin with ,102 and eight with .103 These features of expression and style demonstrate the desire of both authors to establish Alcibiades as a distinct personality, an individuated character. In Plato, Alcibiades’ ability to be so open about himself and the most private details of his life is partly a feature of the symposium context, where normal social rules might be bent, played with, and even ignored altogether,104 and where participants were encouraged to ‘risk their own image’,105 to put themselves to the test before their fellows. The trick was to engage in this dangerous game and still win. In the Symposium Alcibiades reveals how he offered himself to the sexual pleasure of Socrates, an act which in a non-symposium context might be straightforwardly condemned,106 and reveals to the gathering the emotions which the rejection of his beauty, of which he was so fantastically proud, aroused in him (d–e). But his image somehow survives this dangerous exposure. His supposedly self-revealing speech is also a carefully planned self-presentation, through which he emerges as ambitious, beautiful, and successful, but at the same time possessed of sensitive intellectual qualities which make him susceptible to the force of philosophy, ‘when it takes hold of a soul of good natural qualities’ like his own (a). Alcibiades judges his audience, a group of intellectuals and aesthetes, well. When he appeals to them to forgive his shameless behaviour on the grounds of their shared experience of the power of philosophy (ab), it is clear that he believes that his story, if told wittily and skilfully enough, may actually enhance his position with the symposium group. At the end of the speech, ‘the reaction was laughter at his outspokenness’ 102

In addition, five begin with . The first-person pronoun is used a further seven times. Other characterizing features are the use of superlatives (six times), and oaths (four times). (It is of course relevant that Alcibiades is drunk.) See Hug (: on d, e, and p. ). 104 Pellizer (: ); Winkler (: ). 105 Pellizer (: )—‘a challenge between participants, a confrontation with the group, a risking of the image, of the self-representation that each of the symposiasts had constructed as part of his participation in social life’. 106 Alcibiades shows by his words at ab that his story will be a shocking one (‘forgive the things I did then, and the things I am saying now. You slaves and any other that is uninitiated or a boor, fence around your ears with great gates’). The homosexual passivity (‘getting under the covers’) here admitted to by Alcibiades is precisely that which forms a topic of invective in Lys. . . 103

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(c–). Alcibiades’ awareness of the element of deliberate selfpresentation in his speech is underlined by his constant reversion to the formulae of the assembly and lawcourt.107 His automatic recourse to these phrases shows the extent to which he is fashioned by the life of public appearance he has chosen, how thoroughly attuned he is to self-presentation.108 Part of Plato’s aim, as it is Thucydides’, is to re-create the charm with which this selfpresentation is achieved. Characterization emerges through the self-presentation: we cannot easily separate off a layer which is independent of the way the figure wished to present himself and which we can regard as the ‘real’ inner character. There is much in this deliberately transgressive self-presentation which recalls Thucydides. In the depiction of both Thucydides and Plato, Alcibiades projects an aristocratic superiority that can afford deliberately to eschew traditional moral scruples and feelings of shame: And I have a greater right to hold the command than others, men of Athens . . . and at the same time I think that I am worthy of it. (Thuc. . . ) It is not unfair that someone who thinks in grand terms about himself should be on a different level to others. (Thuc. . . ) And this youth and folly of mine which is supposed to be so prodigious [ ] found the right arguments to approach the power of the Peloponnesians. (Thuc. . . ) Socrates is the only man in the world before whom I experienced—a thing that no one would have thought was in me—a feeling of shame.109 (Plato, Symp. a–)

107 Note esp. c: ‘gentlemen of the jury, for you are the jury in Socrates’ trial for overweening arrogance’. Cf. also b– (‘I will provide witnesses’), and perhaps a, suggesting correct assembly procedure, and d, suggesting formal legal reconciliation. Such formulae also remind us that every symposium performance was to some extent a ‘public’ performance, shadowing the fully public appearance before the demos. The formula frequently used by Alcibiades ((a, b, e, a with Hug ad loc.) suggests an address to assembly or jury, but it is in fact a normal way of addressing fellow symposiasts (cf. Xen. Symp. . ). 108 Cf. Schein () on characterization of Alcibiades through his use of political language. Krüger (: ) sees Alcibiades and Agathon as related by their appeal to the support of the masses. 109 Callicles too rejects aischune: Gorg. a–e; d. Cf. also Eur. Phoen. ; Soph. Phil. .

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Thinking that he was very keen on my youthful beauty, I thought that I had struck it lucky . . . for I prided myself on my beauty to an incredible extent. (Plato, Symp. a–)

The Alcibiades depicted in these texts clearly believes that his arrogance and ambition, his youth, his ‘folly’ (note how he is happy to refer to his reputation for being prodigious, beyond the normal), his shamelessness, and his vanity may be attractive to his audience.110 In Thucydides the depiction of Alcibiades’ transgressive attractiveness contributes towards the aims of the work as a whole, for it helps us to understand the origins of the Athenians’ disastrous love–hate relationship with him. One might ask why Plato allows Alcibiades’ character and way of life, which are so opposed to Socrates’, to seem so attractive, at least superficially, at the end of the Symposium. Yet this superficial attractiveness must also be seen in the context of the main ethical themes of the dialogue, which, although not always prominent, are so important:111 Socrates’ speech in particular refocuses the dialogue in an ethical direction. Despite the charm and disarming drunken honesty displayed by Alcibiades, this is far from a positive or apologetic depiction, ignoring the immorality which, as Plato was of course aware, was attributed to Alcibiades.112 The moral level of the portrait of Alcibiades and the danger he represents is suggested symbolically by his drunken and violent entry into the civilized conversation of the other symposiasts (c–e), and by his overthrow of the proper drinking rules: ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘it looks like you are sober. This cannot be allowed, we must get you drinking: that’s what we’ve agreed. So as master of the drinking I choose, until you are all drinking sufficiently, myself. Agathon, have someone bring some sort of large drinking-vessel. On second thoughts, we don’t need one: bring me that wine-cooler there, boy.’ He had seen that it held more than eight kotulai. This he filled and first of all drained it himself, then told them to fill it for Socrates. (Symp. e–a).

110 On the question of whether the historical Alcibiades could have spoken as he does in Thuc. . – before a demos audience, see Ch. , above. 111 The light ironic surface conceals a darker seriousness: cf. Hug (: ). 112 Note Prt. a, where Socrates claims that Pericles had Alcibiades’ brother Cleinias separated from Alcibiades’ company, lest he be corrupted by his influence.

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For the Greeks, the careful control of drinking, especially in the elaborate rules of the symposium, was an index of the ability to restrain physical pleasure, with uncontrolled drinking taken as a dangerous and barbarous sign.113 Moreover, symposium rules mimicked those of the city. Alcibiades’ tyrannical deposition of the democratically elected symposiarch thus parallels his civic attitude,114 a neat illustration of the inherently political dimension both of the symposium and the Symposium. The threatening quality of Alcibiades is also hinted at in the jokes of Socrates: Agathon, see if you can protect me. My love for this man115 has caused me a great amount of trouble. Ever since the time when I became his lover, it has no longer been possible for me to exchange a glance or word with a single beauty, without him being struck with jealousy and envy and carrying on in an unbelievable way, abusing me and hardly being able to keep his hands off me. (Symp. c–d)

Hints in the dialogue about Alcibiades’ future assist the sense of a further, moral dimension. The dramatic date of the Symposium is early  , not long before the mutilation of the Herms, and the entry of Alcibiades in a violent and drunken manner (as well as the entry of a second group of drunken komasts—b) helps to suggest the events of that night.116 Alcibiades’ use of imagery to do with Sileni and the Mysteries also calls to the reader’s mind the mutilation of the Herms and the illicit performances of the Mysteries.117 Alcibiades even borrows from the language of the Mysteries (b):118 ‘You slaves,119 and any other here who is Cf. p. , above. Hug ( ad loc.) remarks, ‘er überschreitet das constitutionelle Recht des attischen Trinkcomments . . . mit derselben genialen Ungenirtheit, mit der er sich im Staatsleben über Gesetz und Recht hinwegsetzte’. 115 Objective genitive: Dover (: ). 116 Rosen (:  n. ) raises the possibility that the dramatic date of the dialogue is the very night of the mutilation of the Herms. For what it is worth, the victory of Agathon took place at the Lenaea of / , i.e. in January  (Ath.  a), while the mutilation of the Herms took place about a year later (sometime in early , perhaps  May, as Andrewes, HCT iv. , argues). But in any case, it is not that we are meant to think that the mutilation of the Herms or the performance of the Mysteries took place on the very night of the symposium described by Plato, but rather that they took place on some such night as this. 117 Cf. Nussbaum (: ). As a matter of historical correctness, Alcibiades was implicated in the Mysteries rather than the Herms affair (cf. HCT iv. ), but by the th c., little attention was paid to such fine distinctions (cf. Lys. . ). 118 See Hug and Bury ad loc. 119 It was slaves who first gave information about the performance of the Mysteries in  : And. . –. 113 114

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uninitiated or uncivilized, block up you ears with great gates’.120 The inclusion of a frame conversation which clearly takes place some time after the second exile of Alcibiades121 hints at the unhappy future that hangs over the symposiasts, especially perhaps Alcibiades.122 All this reminds us of the dangerous paranomia behind Alcibiades’ urbanity. The origins of imminent public disgrace can thus be traced in the personal moral standards displayed by Alcibiades in the dialogue, so that, once again, Alcibiades’ public and private behaviour are seen as closely linked. The absence of crucial moral controls in Alcibiades’ life is emphasized by the implied comparison with Socrates which runs through the former’s speech. Alcibiades’ dissolute behaviour, and his self-confessed lack of shame, are set against Socrates’ ability to withstand cold, hunger, the effects of wine, and the desires of the body, which is the result of an attempt to impose rational moral evaluation on his life. Alcibiades himself recognizes the contrast (it is forced upon him in the most insulting possible way by Socrates’ resistance of his own physical attraction): these are qualities which he lacks and would very much like to have (de). In the symposium, where physical pleasures were available in abundance, the participants proved their manly restraint before each other by demonstrating their control over these pleasures, especially that of wine.123 Once again the element of competition or test inherent in the practice of the symposium is apparent. In Plato’s Symposium Alcibiades, by challenging Socrates to drain a wine-cooler filled with wine (e–a), sets up such a competition of restraint between himself and Socrates, but straight away recognizes his mistake: ‘This trick will be of no use to me against Socrates, gentlemen. However great the amount of wine one imposes, he just drinks it down and never gets any drunker’ (a–). Socrates is the clear winner of these competitions, both 120 Cf. the text of the indictment of Cimon against Alcibiades for participation in mock performances of the Mysteries (Plut. Alc. .): ‘he addressed the rest of his companions as Novices and Initiates’. Cf. also Socrates at d: µ . 121 Agathon has already left the city: c. 122 Nussbaum (: –) argues that information provided at the beginning of the dialogue enables us to date the frame conversation to  , in the context of the desperate plight of the city and rumours of the return of Alcibiades. Rutherford (: ) is rightly sceptical. 123 Plato, Laws – (e.g. d); Tecusan (: –); Pellizer (: )—‘an exercise which accustoms one to overcoming within oneself, in front of the not always benevolent group of friends’.

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the more limited contest about the wine (he converses the whole night, then walks off to a normal day—b–d), and also the more important test of lifestyles, as Alcibiades recognizes in the symbolic gesture of crowning Socrates with fillets from his own head (e, via Agathon—e–).124 After Socrates makes it clear that the moral gifts Alcibiades covets are not available to him by the means he is proposing (de), Alcibiades, unwilling to subject his life to philosophic evaluation, falls into an agonizing slave-like status in relation to Socrates (a–c, de). In the competitive terms of Greek morality, Socrates, through his superior command of his own self, is revealed as the moral victor in this love-affair/battle with Alcibiades. Alcibiades’ superficial attractiveness as a figure thus conceals a deeper objective inferiority and unhappiness which we cannot admire. It is the speech of Socrates in praise of a real, philosophical eros and way of life that provides the context which allows us to see through the superficial attractiveness of Alcibiades. Not all have found the superiority of Socrates over Alcibiades so straightforward,125 but the Symposium is not a dialogue where figures are straightforwardly condemned, but one where the weaknesses in people and their positions are suggested through more implict and oblique means. Socrates and Alcibiades are both fascinating and individuated characters, each in his own way attractive at a superficial level. But their individualness is not comparable. The facets of behaviour which make it up are not morally or philosophically neutral, but arise from moral positions which are in fact totally opposed. Alcibiades himself presents a striking description of the individuality of Socrates:

124 Alcibiades is also forced to recognize that the prize of valour at Potidaea rightfully belongs not to him, but to Socrates (e). 125 In particular Nussbaum (:  ff.) sees Symp. as a drama between two competing ways of life and views of eros (represented by Socrates on the one hand, and Alcibiades on the other), each of which has its attractions. But contra A. G. Bury (: p. li), Krüger (: ), Gagarin (: ), Halperin (: ), and Nussbaum (), there is not much evidence that Alcibiades feels eros for Socrates: rather, he aimed to exploit Socrates’ powers for his own ambitious ends (a–, cf. Xen. Mem. . . ). The powerful emotions Alcibiades later felt in respect of Socrates are a potent mixture of intense admiration (d) and wounded pride, arising from Socrates’ rejection of his body and everything else he has to offer (c–, de): Socrates is left victor and he is helpless. For further critique of Nussbaum, see Price (: esp. –); Gill (: –).

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You could find a lot of other remarkable things to say in praise of Socrates: but the sort of things one might say about his general behaviour could perhaps also be said about another man too; but the way he is like no other man, either of previous generations or of this one, that is really astounding. As a comparison for Achilles you might use Brasidas and the others, or for Pericles you could compare both Nestor and Antenor—there are others too—and you could find comparisons for the rest in the same way.126 But if you wanted to describe what sort of man this fellow here is in his full extraordinariness [ ], both he himself and his speeches, you could search and not find a comparison that even came close, either in previous generations or in this one, unless, that is, you were to compare him not to a human at all, but to the things I have been talking about, to Sileni and Satyrs, both himself and his speeches. (c–d)

It is perhaps characteristic of Alcibiades’ failure fully to grasp the import of Socrates’ philosophy and way of life127 that he sees him as a creature of unique and unrepeatable individuality: there is no suggestion in this passage that the individualness of Socrates is related to his philosophy.128 But it has already become clear in the dialogue that Socrates’ idiosyncrasies are at least closely related, perhaps even subsidiary, to his practice of philosophy,129 and to the difficulty faced by the philosopher of living and communicating with his non-philosophical fellow-Athenians who do not understand what he is talking about. His imperviousness to cold, drink, and sex makes him an object of suspicion to his fellow citizens (b–). At the beginning of the dialogue we see him standing out on the street lost in a sudden thought, cut off from his fellows (d–c). His speech stands in stark contrast to those of the other symposiasts in its earnestness and poetry. Socrates is located in a halfway position, engaging in the ironic byplay of his sophisticated companions, but then lapsing into dialectic; coming washed to the party, but loitering outside in the doorway; listening to the speeches of his friends, but censuring them for not speaking the 126 Perhaps such comparisons to great men were a standard element of symposium epainoi. 127 Alcibiades presents Socrates as the supreme possessor of normal qualities he himself admires: thus he depicts his rhetoric as like Pericles’, only better (e): cf. Rosen (:  (Alcibiades ‘revises Socrates’ nature’), ). 128 Cf. Gill (: –) on Alcibiades’ failure to understand the significance of Socrates’ individual behaviour, which is related to his failure to accept the way of life implied by philosophy. 129 Cf. Gill (: )—‘behind the odd character of the man whom Alcibiades describes, we are made aware of the philosophical mind’.

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truth; drinking when required, but not getting drunk.130 His apparently idiosyncratic behaviour can be seen as the attempt of a man who has glimpsed an invisible world, more real and more beautiful than the one around him, to find a way of living with his fellows without compromising himself, through the use of selfprotecting and self-isolating irony131 (‘he spends his whole life being ironic and joking with people’:132 Symp. e–). Like the daemon Eros, Socrates is poised halfway between the world of the Forms and the world of mortals. Socrates’ speech and behaviour, like that of Alcibiades, is a form of self-presentation, but informed by philosophy and not rhetoric, and masking a deeper unity, not a moral confusion. In the Symposium Socrates’ pursuit of the philosophical way of life makes him not just an idiosyncratic, but even a rather ridiculous figure,133 especially in the images of Alcibiades (cf.  a–): the open-up Silenus figure, the flute-playing satyr Marsyas.134 If Alcibiades too comes across as ridiculous in his attempted seduction of Socrates,135 this is another example of a difference-concealing similarity. In the Republic (e–a), Socrates contrasts two types of philosophical ridiculousness, that of the philosopher who has come from the illuminated world of the Forms back into a world of darkness to help his fellows, and that of the non-philosopher dazzled by the light of the world which the philosopher reveals to him. The ridiculousness of Alcibiades in the Symposium is of this latter sort: partly contemptible, slave-like (b, e–). Just as the idiosyncrasy of Socrates is determined by, or Cf. Rosen (: ). It is perhaps significant that the root meaning of , the word used by Alcibiades to describe Socrates’ individuality (a, d), is ‘out-of-placeness’. 132 On this passage, and the interpretation of Alcibiades’ portrayal of Socrates in general, see Vlastos : –. 133 The ridiculousness of the philosopher is also remarked upon in other dialogues. In Grg. he is portrayed as slapped in the face (c–), stammering helpless before an Athenian court (bc, d–b), and forgetting assembly procedure at the trial of the Arginusae generals (e–b: cf. also Grg. a). In Theaet. a–e the philosopher is like Thales, continually falling into holes because of his contemplations, and not knowing who his neighbours are. In Rep. he is like the man who has come out of the cave into the sunlight, and tries to go back into the case to rescue his fellows, and finds himself dazzled and confused by the sudden change of light (e–a). 134 Alcibiades also compares the effect of his words to the Corybantes, the Sirens, and the snake whose bite is more deadly than a viper’s. 135 Cf. e (laughter as Alcibiades supports himself on a flute-girl); c. 130 131

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at least suggestive of, a moral choice, a choice of life, so too is that of Alcibiades. This is made particularly clear in the Symposium by references to the decision of Alcibiades’ youth to reject the life of philosophy so eloquently presented to him by Socrates. This initiates a process of constant confrontation with Socrates and with himself, leading always to the pursuit of a life of honour in the city (e–c). As Alcibiades describes it, this is not so much a choice as a running-away from choice, a constantly repeated flight from philosophical truth which constitutes the moral conditions within which Alcibiades’ present character is formed. His apparent idiosyncrasy, his ‘ridiculous’ attitude of subjection in the face of Socrates, are an advanced version of the ridiculousness of the victim of elenchus or protreptic, brought about by the failure of the victim to act on his experience there. Alcibiades has thus reached the position predicted for Callicles in the Gorgias: he does not agree with himself. Unlike Socrates’ individuality which stems from a deep-rooted consistency pursued in every aspect of his life (and the difficulty of pursuing such consistency within normal society), that of Alcibiades results from his failure to work out a fundamental inconsistency in his life, the competition between self-love and love of philosophy, worldly ambition and appreciation of contemplative truth, reckless sensuousness and a deep admiration of Socratic self-control. This produces a disorder of soul reflected in the disorderly quality of his drunken speech,136 especially when compared with the organized serenity of Socrates’ speech.137 As in the case of Thucydides’ Alcibiades, individuality (type ) is closely related to an egotistic individualism, (type ) a self-obsession which makes it ultimately impossible for him to accept truths of philosophy which demand a renunciation of egotistic goals and self-love.138 Alcibiades’ distinctive traits are often problems or defects of character: vanity, ambition, shamelessness. His self-assurance stems from an egotistic self-projection, not, like Socrates’, from the security of examined conviction and carefully regulated conduct. In this way, Plato’s individuated Socrates and Alcibiades lead us into characterization of a more general ethical significance. I remarked earlier on the importance of the distinctness of the 137 Rutherford (: ). Cf. a, d and Robin (: p. cii). Cf. Rosen (: ). Like Callicles, Alcibiades is both inconsistent and an egotist. 136 138

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individual in Platonic philosophy and Platonic dialogues. But this is not a celebration of individuation for its own sake. As the dialectic proceeds, the individuation of those engaged in philosophy becomes de-emphasized, perhaps even superseded. It is not the distinct, personal, contingent qualities of the interlocutors that end up being involved in dialectic, but that rational element which is the same or similar in us all.139 In the Platonic theory of eros, too, the ‘ascent’ involved in the properly philosophical erotic relationship is associated with a de-emphasis of the particular qualities of the lovers, as they come to appreciate the more beautiful truth of the general, unchanging and eternal both in themselves and the world in general.140 The deeper one goes, the less individuated one becomes. We can even detect a suspicion of individuation in Plato, at least that individuation which stems from rich variety, and which suggests an alarming inconsistency. In the soul of the Democratic Man in the Republic, for example, the pleasures establish a democracy so that each has an equal share, creating a man who is various in himself: he lives from day to day, indulging the pleasure of the moment. One day it’s getting drunk to the sound of the flute, the next water to drink and a strict diet; one day it’s hard physical training, the next indolence and careless ease, and then a period of philosophical study. . . . I think that this man is both versatile [ ] and contains in him a great variety of characters. He is both attractive and complex [ ], just like the democratic city. (Rep. c–d, e–)141

Whereas Pericles in the Funeral Speech (Thuc. . –) had praised the variety of Athens and the individual achievement of the Athenian, in Plato variety and diversity are more likely to suggest fluctuation, disorder, and lack of discipline, and to be opposed to the consistency and good order of the just state.142 The multifaceted 139 Cf. the discussion beginning at Alc. I , esp. c–: the soul, that part of the person which is ‘looked at’ in dialectic, constitutes something divine; contemplating it we see ‘the god and reason’. Moreover, in the other’s soul we see ourselves (c–). 140 Cf. Vlastos (). For a measured response to Vlastos’ essay and the debate it has aroused (esp. Nussbaum ), see Gill (). 141 Translation adapted from Lee (: ). 142 In the Just State and Individual there is a properly ordered and constant relationship of subordination between the various component elements: Rep. a–e. In the universe too there is a fixed order, a geometrical relationship, which is why it is called kosmos: Grg. a.

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character shared by Democratic Man and democratic city, state and individual, is an unhealthy one. There are clear similarities between such a figure and the Alcibiades of the Symposium:143 in particular, variety is linked to a sort of indecision about way of life. The drunken komastic imagery associated with the Democratic Man in the Republic suggests the dangerous, uncontrolled entrance of Alcibiades in the Symposium: A little later Alcibiades’ voice could be heard in the courtyard, extremely drunk and shouting loudly, asking where is Agathon and demanding to be taken to Agathon. So he was brought to the room where the others were, the flute-girl and others of his attendants supporting him. He stood in the doorway crowned with a fulsome wreath of ivy and violets, and a great number of fillets on his head . . . (d–e)

The hedonism and confusion of this strong visual portrait144 (the drunken irruption into the sober and orderly gathering of the others) is reflected in the confusion within Alcibiades’ soul which he himself reveals in his speech: one day submitting himself to Socrates’ questions and admitting his need for philosophy, the next running from Socrates towards ambition and pleasure (d–c). Here, idiosyncratic or flexible character is associated with inconsistency or fluctuation of character, or a dangerous ability to adapt one’s character to suit circumstances. This idea will be important in later depictions of Alcibiades as the kolax, the twisting flatterer.145 There is something of Alcibiades in the Democratic Man, and conversely something of the familiar Platonic critique of Athens in the depiction of Alcibiades. Plato and Thucydides suggest a similar conclusion: despite Alcibiades’ demos-spurning élitism, there is something very democratic about him, very Athenian: Alcibiades’ eros for the demos forces him to adapt to its ways and resemble it. His search for honour is accompanied by a hedonistic, ‘democratic’ lifestyle, and his flattery of the demos mirrors his indulging and flattering of the pleasures inside himself (cf. Rep. c–). Thus for 143 On the similarities between the Democratic Man and Alcibiades, see Adam () on Rep. d with the works cited there, and c. The Democratic Man is the son of the wealthy oligarchic man, and leads a life of pleasure. He degenerates into the Tyrannical Man, who has also been compared to Alcibiades (Cornford : –). 144 Anselm Feuerbach took this moment as the subject for his painting Das Gastmahl des Platon (two versions,  and ). 145 Cf. Russell (: –, –).

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Plato private character is not only moral in implication, it is also actually political: this is particularly clear in the Republic, with its schema of corresponding constitutions and characters. In other dialogues, Plato’s choice of Alcibiades and other political figures as interlocutors suggests the wider ethical and political signficance of apparently private conversations and private character. In this chapter, comparison with other texts relating to Alcibiades, both Socratic and non-Socratic has allowed the Alcibiades of the Symposium to emerge in a clearer light. Despite the more overtly moral and philosophical orientation of the depiction, the Socratic Alcibiades is a figure familiar from earlier chapters, acting as a focus for similar concerns about the political implications of private behaviour.

       The Authenticity of the First Alcibiades

This is not the place to attempt to resolve the question of the authenticity of this dialogue,146 but it may be pointed out that those who would defend the dialogue as a work of Plato must reckon with the following problems: (i) Although the first Alcibiades is in the manner of Plato’s early dialogues, i.e. a discussion with a single interlocutor, involving aporia, Socrates is not only in direct control of the direction of the discussion, but also possesses developed doctrines which he is extremely ready to impart.147 This is in stark contrast to his behaviour in the other early dialogues. (ii) Whereas Platonic dialogues, and in particular early Platonic dialogues, depict dialectic as an unrepeatable conversation whose course is determined by the characters (or ‘souls’) of the interlocutors, characterization in the Alcibiades is almost non-existent,148 and the course of the dialogue seems to be determined by the presentation of doctrine. In other words, there is a completely different perception of the point of dialoguecomposition. (iii) The role of ‘God’ is particularly pronounced and particularly uncharacteristic of early Platonic dialogues.149 Finally, the following three features are also noteworthy:

146 Of the huge literature on this question, the most convincing and concise is perhaps de Stryker (), arguing against authenticity (cf. also Bluck ). The most conspicuous supporter of authenticity has been Friedländer (, , and ). Annas () is a good example of the ‘open-minded’ approach, though Annas herself (pp. –) recognizes that the general view today is rather that the dialogue is not Platonic. For further bibliography, see the works cited by Annas and Friedländer, and Cherniss (). On the whole pseudo-Platonic corpus see Heidel (: –). 147 In particular: the idea that the soul is the real man (c–), the idea that sophrosune is knowing oneself (b–), and the theory of the reciprocity of dialectic based on eyesight (c–d). 148 The lack of characterization in the case of Alcibiades is partly a feature of the sheer sparsity of his speech: there are no more than four or five replies of his which extend to more than a sentence or two. 149 See de Stryker (:  ff.); and further Bluck ().

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(iv) To the extent that the character of Alcibiades in the dialogue is describable at all, he is depicted as submissive and unintelligent.150 This is uncharacteristic of Alcibiades depictions, Platonic or otherwise. It is true that the Alcibiades of this dialogue is young ( years old), but Plato’s Protagoras presents a young Alcibiades whose forceful interjections into the conversation of his elders151 reveal what one would expect, that even a -year-old Alcibiades would demonstrate the well-known extraordinary self-confidence. (v) The depiction of the course of the relationship between Alcibiades and Socrates is inconsistent with that in other Platonic dialogues. In the Symposium the episode in which Alcibiades tries to seduce Socrates must surely take place when Alcibiades is under the age of , and the Protagoras depicts Socrates as already having an ‘erotic’ relationship with Alcibiades at a time when his beard is first beginning to grow.152 But the first Alcibiades shows no awareness of this: instead the dialogue seems to imagine the conversation between the two as the first serious approach of Socrates to Alcibiades.153 It should, however, be emphasized that this inconsistency, though puzzling, is not in itself a reason for rejecting the first Alcibiades as a work of Plato. (vi) In the course of the dialogue a number of anecdotes and pieces of anecdotal information concerning the life of Alcibiades are brought in in a way which suggests a later stage of the Alcibiades tradition, when a body of anecdotal material was associated with Alcibiades’ name: Alcibiades refused to learn the aulos (e–); his tutor’s name was Zopyrus (b); Pericles was his guardian (c); his estates were located at Erchiae (c); his mythical genealogy is recorded (a ).154 The first Alcibiades is so close in theme and ideas to Plato as to make it resemble a commentary on, or summary of, Platonic dialogues (it is precisely this closeness that has led many to suspect it).155 In its handling of the significance of Alcibiades as interlocutor and the relationship between 150 He is very ready to admit defeat (a, d, b, e–, a). His reply at a– suggests actual lack of intelligence. However, he shows more spirit at e, b–. 151 Prt. b–e, bc. 152 Prt. a–c. 153 Alc. I a (‘through all these years I have never addressed you’). 154 Also, b hints at an anecdote about dice-playing, and d at the identity of his nurse (whom Antisthenes identified as Amycla: frag.  Caizzi). Dittmar (:  n. ) thought these stories might be taken from a ‘biographical’ source. 155 Cf. Shorey (: )—‘a tedious, if scholastically convenient, summary of a long series of points that are better and more interestingly expressed in other dialogues’. Thus e.g.: Alc. I b–d, cf. Prt. c–e; Alc. I de, cf. Prt. c–b; Alc. I c–e, cf Grg. c–e. Hence the dialogue was used as the ‘entrance gate’ to Plato by students of Plato in antiquity (cf. Friedländer , –; Asmis : –).

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Socrates and Alcibiades, it seems to set out more plainly what is latent in Platonic dialogues.156 156 Some passages look like direct references to the depiction of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades in Symp.: Alc. I d– cf. Symp. be; Alc. I d cf. Symp. e, b; Alc. I d–e cf. Symp. a.

Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades

At the end of the ancient Alcibiades tradition stands Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades. The Life is a conclusion and interpretation of that tradition, and more than any other text is responsible for transmitting an image of Alcibiades to the post-classical world. Although this study has focused on the classical depiction of Alcibiades, and on his significance for the classical city, Plutarch’s Life can help us in the Conclusion to review some important themes, and also serve as a reminder that the tradition of Alcibiades-depiction is a continuing one. At the same time, the analysis of the foregoing chapters can be brought to bear on the reading of Plutarch. Finally, I will return to pick up some of the threads of the discussion of the postclassical Alcibiades tradition in Chapter : what was there treated as a preliminary to reconstructing the fifth- and fourth-century Alcibiades can now be seen as a coda, an imaginative reinterpretation of the classical depictions. There are already sensitive studies of Plutarch’s allusive and interpretative deployment of sources in the Life of Alcibiades:1 it is enough here to concentrate on how the Life reflects and transforms the themes I have traced in this book, and, in turn, how the studies of the previous chapters can help us understand the Life. With Alcibiades, Plutarch was dealing with a figure who was more depicted, whose character was more familiar to his readership, than perhaps any other of his heroes (see . ). It was not just that Alcibiades’ key traits were illustrated by a wealth of anecdotes with which every educated Greek would be familiar. There were also the famous depictions in the classic texts already considered— in Thucydides, and above all in two of the best-known Platonic dialogues, the Symposium and the first Alcibiades (there is no evidence that Plutarch was drawing on earlier formal lives of Alcibiades2). 1 Russell (a, : –); Pelling (b), and on Plutarch’s deployment of Thucydides (: –, : ch. ). See also Duff (forthcoming). 2 Burn () fails to show that both [And.]  and Plutarch rely on a common

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Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades

Plutarch did not have to fashion an Alcibiades character himself: the art of presenting Alcibiades lay in combining and manipulating the well-known texts and traditions in an elegant and allusive way. So when it comes to studying the Life, characterization and deployment of sources are really aspects of the same question. The very wealth of previous presentations raises the problem of integration of character. Though a pattern or consistency was perhaps perceptible in some of the texts and stories of the tradition, many depicted an ambivalent or ambiguous Alcibiades, or described the bitter controversies he aroused, or (like the rhetorical texts, with which Plutarch was familiar, even if only at second hand3) presented polarized interpretations of the same incidents and behaviour. We are warned at the outset of the Life that we should not expect a straightforwardly unified or fully explicable Alcibiades: His character [ethos] subsequently, as was to be expected amid great events and constantly-changing [polutropos] fortunes, displayed many internal discrepancies [anomoiotes] and changes. By nature [phusis] however, while he possessed many important emotional tendencies [pathe], it was the love of victory [ ] and the desire to be first that was the strongest. (. )4

Alcibiades’ character is attributed with a complexity which resists neat schematizations (even philonikia is a shifting, ambiguous quality, as we shall see below), and indeed it was not necessarily Plutarch’s aim fully to reconcile the elements of the Alcibiades character presented by the tradition. Often it was enough to develop the well-known themes in suggestive combination. In what follows, I will consider the various elements of the tradition in turn, looking first at the inconsistent, ambivalent Alcibiades associated with anecdote and Hellenistic writing. I will then turn to consider biographical source: see Gribble (: ‒). Even if Plutarch was familiar with a previous treatment of some sort, for example that of Satyrus (see Ch.  above, § ), most of the texts and anecdotes in the Alcibiades will have been well known to him from elsewhere. 3 I argue elsewhere (Gribble ) that Plutarch was not personally familiar with [And.]  (cf. Alc. . ), and the way the so-called loidoriai of Antiphon is cited in ch.  suggests the same conclusion—cf. Ch.  above, App. . This suggests that Plutarch knew of these works through some intermediary, perhaps commentaries on other works (Russell a: ). But Plutarch may have known Isoc.  at first hand (Alc. ). 4 Trans. adapted from Russell (: ).

Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades

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how Plutarch uses Platonic material as a means of integrating or at least comprehending the complexities of the character. It is the tradition of anecdotes around Alcibiades, briefly explored in Chapter , which gives the Life its special flavour. Because they come from a variety of origins such stories naturally vary considerably in tone and nuance, yet, because of the standardizing and selecting tendencies of the anecdotal tradition, they nevertheless cluster around a group of themes and traits which is in a sense coherent. When deployed in the Life they help to produce that characterization effect which Pelling calls integration of characteristics around a trait:5 we cannot exactly predict the next story, yet we are not surprised by it when it comes. Such anecdotes are for the most part timeless (indeed, there is a tendency for them to become torn from their original contexts6): they do not promote chronological biography. Rather, they contribute to the depiction of a lifestyle typical of a certain type of character—bios. Hence their deployment throughout the Life creates a sense of continuity of character over the course of the biographical narration. In the first place, Alcibiades anecdotes suggest the paradoxical character of the man of action devoted to a life of luxury.7 In Plutarch, this is related to Alcibiades’ ‘inconsistency’ of character (anomoiotes, anomalia), an idea which is developed above all in chapter : ‘Amid all this high policy and oratory, this exalted ambition [phronema],8 and intelligence, there was much of another sort to be seen: luxury in his lifestyle [diaita],9 and outrageous conduct [hybrismata] in drink and love’ (. ).10 This inconsistency is often seen in terms of ‘ethical gender’. As we saw in Chapter , Alcibiades’ behaviour with regard to luxury and pleasure is typically seen as feminine: Alcibiades is a ‘woman’. His ambitious, warlike tendencies, on the other hand, are masculine. The uncertainty about the ethical gender implied by Alcibiades’ behaviour is reflected in the early anecdote (Alc. . ) where Alcibiades bites his wrestling opponent to avoid losing, and is accused of biting like a (: –; b: –; : pp. xliv–xlv). Russell (a: , ). 7 On this type see Griffin (: ); Rudd (: –); Pelling (b: –). The existence of the type implies that Greeks and Romans found the combination far less ‘inconsistent’ than we do. 8 Cf. Thuc. . . : µ . 9 Cf. Thuc. . .  (quoted at Alc. . ): µ . 10 Translation adapted from Russell (: ). 5 6

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Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades

woman: ‘No,’ he replies, ‘like a lion.’11 Alcibiades as lion— Alcibiades as woman: this ambiguity reflects the dominant ambivalence of the Alcibiades character of the later tradition. Later in the Life (), Alcibiades combines his display of Spartan endurance (a display which leads the Spartans to see him as ‘not the son of Achilles, but Achilles himself’), with his adultery with the Spartan queen Timaea: this latter behaviour suggests that he is ‘still the same woman as before’. We recognize the Alcibiades of AthenaeusSatyrus,12 who, even while serving on the campaigns which produced such famous victories for Athens, ‘wanted to appear kalos’, had the decks of his trireme cut away so that he could sleep more luxuriously, and carried a shield on which was depicted a thunderbolt-bearing Eros. Or again, the Alcibiades of Duris of Samos, who turned the moment of his greatest military glory, the return to Athens in  , into a display of arrogant and womanly truphe. Plutarch is inclined to reject Duris’ account (. —in the later part of the Life Alcibiades is something of a reformed character), but nevertheless reports it in some detail. This transgressive pursuit of pleasure is closely related in Plutarch’s anecdotes to insulting treatment of others: the seduction of Timaea suggests hybris just as much as it does truphe, and so does Duris’ story of Alcibiades’ return to Athens. Plutarch favours the word , signifying a debauched lack of concern for the reactions of others,13 to suggest the combination of truphe and hybris revealed by such behaviour. Many anecdotes depict Alcibiades’ arrogant treatment of others (his lovers, his Homer teacher, his father-in-law, his wife), and his absence of respect for nomos and transgression of accepted standards (his biting of his wrestling opponent, his adultery with Timaea). I argued above in Chapter  that this quality is the descendent of the much more dangerous hybris which led the Athenians to believe that Alcibiades was aiming at the overthrow of the constitution, just as his addiction to luxury is the descendent of that ‘paranomia towards his own body’ which in Alcibiades’ own lifetime led directly to the fear that he was aiming at tyranny (Thuc. . ). In the later anecdotal The lion is a figure of masculine ethical gender: Gleason (: –). Ath. . b; cf. Ch.  above, § . .  (arrogant attitude to Hipparete whom he has insulted by bringing prostitutes into the house); .  (his arrogant explanation of his adultery with Timandra); .  (the return to Athens); .  (contempt for his command demonstrated by his alleged consorting with prostitutes). 11 12 13

Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades



tradition Alcibiades’ transgressiveness is much less alarming, much less obviously political. Anecdotes of Alcibiades’ hybris tend to receive an apologetic coda: Alcibiades strikes Callias, but later apologizes and offers his body for punishment (. –); he imprisons Agatharchus but then lets him go with a payment; he strikes the rival choregos, but only out of philotimia to win the prize (. ).14 The result of this disarming of the stories of Alcibiades’ hybris is that they begin to convey a kind of ambivalence: they suggest the sort of conduct of which one ought to disapprove, but which one finds somehow endearing or forgivable. It seems that Plutarch is aware of this tendency in the stories and himself contributes to it: note in particular how he brings out the ‘spin’ of the anecdotes at . : the Athenians gave the mildest of names to Alcibiades’ sins, calling them philotimia and practical jokes. It looks as if it is Plutarch himself who supplies the apologetic coda to the story of Alcibiades snatching his wife back in the agora, the claim that this was an accepted action under Attic law (. ). Even Alcibiades’ support for the Melian decree receives a favourable gloss: his raising of the child born to him from one of the captives is seen as ‘philanthropy’ (contrast the very different interpretation of this story in [And.] . –).15 Indeed, it is clear that Plutarch deliberately emphasizes and develops the ambiguity inherent in the tradition. Not only does he report these ambivalent stories without interpretative guidance or the provision of an analytical structure, but he also dwells on the confused reaction Alcibiades’ behaviour produced:16 the reaction aroused by his adultery with Timaea, for example (), and above all that of the Athenians in chapter . The reaction in this chapter is quite complex. Not only do we find a tension between various camps (the demos and the ‘men of reputation’, the young and the old) but the attitude of the demos itself is also ambivalent (as Plutarch illustrates by quoting Frogs), and uncertain (they are unsure how to react to his escapades). Plutarch develops the story of Timon the misanthrope’s warm greeting of Alcibiades (. ) by describing the reactions of onlookers: ‘some laughed, some cursed Cf. Duff (: –). Plutarch may be responsible for this favourable interpretation of Alcibiades’ action: the point seems to be that Alcibiades, having fathered the child, agreed to raise it ( ). 16 Cf. Duff (: –). 14 15



Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades

him, but others were deeply disturbed by the remark. So uncertain [ ]was the public reaction to him because of the anomalia of his nature’. Thus Alcibiades’ ambivalence is reflected in : undecided reaction. This addition of varying focalization to well-known anecdotes underlines the difficulty of forming a judgement about Alcibiades. Here, far from resisisting inconsistency, Plutarch makes it thematic. Another feature of the Life which adds to this impression of the difficulty of reacting to Alcibiades is Plutarch’s frequent exposure of disagreements in his sources, or his own calling into question of the stories they present. The Life reflects the fact that (as we saw in Chapter ) the Alcibiades tradition was from its inception, and continued to be in the declamatory speeches of Plutarch’s own day, dominated by polarized rhetorical presentations of accusation and defence. In chapter , for example, Plutarch follows a series of anecdotes illustrating Alcibiades’ transgressive philonikia with what looks like an uncomfortably integrated interjection: ‘Antiphon’ in his ‘loidoriai of Alcibiades’ claimed that Alcibiades ran off with one of his lovers and killed a wrestling attendant with a club. If true, this would be really shocking. But one should not trust accusations composed purely for the purpose of invective, warns Plutarch. Why record the story at all, in that case? The point seems to be to disturb the impression, created by the earlier anecdotes, of a youthful transgression inspired by philonikia by interposing allegations of a deeper, more troubling immorality.17 The ambivalence of the previous stories modulates here into actual uncertainty, so that the reader is left unclear, like Alcibiades’ contemporaries (tempted, like us, to give the mildest of names to his sins), as to the true extent of his transgressive tendencies. As the Life progresses, more questions are left open. Did Alcibiades really steal the chariot team from his fellow citizen (. )?18 Did he really aim at tyranny? (. —Plutarch explicitly leaves this question ‘unclear’— .) Was he killed by those who feared his genius, or by villagers angered by his seduction of a local girl? (. —the final sentence, so that the Life ends on a note of uncertainty). See Duff (: ) for a slightly different explanation. Plutarch allows the reader to decide whether this was slander ( ), or real evidence of bad-dealing ( ). On Plutarch’s apparent attempt to reconcile Isoc.  and the account reflected in Diodorus, see Ch.  above, § ., where it is suggested that Plutarch has actually combined two separate incidents. 17 18

Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades



Indeed, the key allegations made against Alcibiades, the ones which led to his two exiles, are never refuted by Plutarch: the profanation of the Mysteries (–), and the charges of debauchery while commander-in-chief of the Athenian forces in Ionia (. ). Certainly, Plutarch’s attitude to such charges is on the whole defensive (as it is with the loidoriai of Antiphon). He is aware of the envy which dogs the life of great figures,19 and understands that a character like that of Alcibiades tends to encourage such allegations. But there is a strong residual element of actual uncertainty in the picture of Alcibiades which emerges from the Life, in addition to the inconsistency and ambivalence. Nevertheless, we are at least dealing with ambivalence and uncertainty of a predictable type: the questions which hang over the hero are always of the same sort. The other central type of character inconsistency in the Life is Alcibiades’ ability to adapt his character to that of the national groups with whom he came into contact. This too had been developed by previous writing on Alcibiades, as Russell shows.20 The theme is developed most fully in chapter :21 Among the many examples of his cleverness [deinotes], they say, was a device for hunting people, the ability to assimilate himself and share intimately in their habits [epitedeumata] and ways of life [diaitai]. He could produce swifter transformations [tropai ] than the chameleon. Indeed there is one colour, or so they say, that that animal is incapable of simulating, namely, white; but Alcibiades found nothing anywhere, good or bad, that he was unable to reproduce and put into practice. (. –)22

This is the ‘cunning intelligence’, the amazing flexibility of the polutropos, whose many-sided brilliance is reflected in his ability actually to transform himself, like the chameleon, to suit his surroundings.23 The schema is reflected in the earliest Greek lyric poetry,24 and in epic in the figure of Odysseus himself, the ultimate Cf. . ; . ; . . (: –, cf. Ch.  above, § )—though as Russell notes, it does not follow that there was already a formal Greek Life of Alcibiades in existence for Plutarch simply to draw on. 21 Cf. Ath. . b; Nepos, Alc. ; Plut. Mor. e; Aelian, VH . . 22 Trans. adapted from Russell (: ). 23 The quality of metis, traced by Vernant and Detienne (): ‘a kind of intelligence which, to render itself impossible to sense and to dominate fluid, changing realities, must always prove itself more supple and more polymorphic than they are’ (p. ; note also pp. – on Plutarch). 24 Theognis, –; Pindar frag.  Bowra; Eupolis, frag.  K.–A.; cf. Pearson () on Soph. frag. . 19 20



Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades

polutropos (Od. . ), who possessed a dazzling array of stratagems, travelled as an exile to many lands, and adopted a series of lying stories and disguises. This is all very much like Alcibiades himself, and we can see how this sort of cunning adaptibility is readily associated with a man who was able to live, both literally and metaphorically, outside the city, who was as happy hob-nobbing with Tissaphernes as he was addressing the Athenian assembly. But Alcibiades’ political and geographical adaptability was capable of arousing the suspicion of the city, as we saw in Chapter . It was also apt to arouse the suspicion of the moralist. We can trace a hostile attitude to such polutropic versatility back to Plato’s portrait of the Democratic Man (itself a reaction to the Funeral Speech’s encomium of the versatility of the democratic Athenian25): he lives from day to day, indulging the pleasure of the moment. One day it’s getting drunk to the sound of the flute, the next water to drink and a strict diet; one day it’s hard physical training, the next indolence and careless ease, and then a period of philosophical study. . . . I think that this man is both versatile [pantodapos] and contains in him a great variety of characters. He is both attractive and complex [poikilos], just like the democratic city. (Rep. c–d, e–)26

As was noted in Chapter , this Democratic Man is a close relative of the constantly changing Alcibiades depicted by Plato in the Symposium, untrained by the mental discipline of Socratic philosophy, living for the multifariousness of the world-in-being rather than the unity of the Forms. In the Gorgias, Plato implies that such changeability is inherent in democracy, for the demos itself is fickle, and forces its leaders constantly to change their position like Callicles, pursuing the most pleasing policy instead of the right one. The locus of Alcibiades’ ability to adapt himself to the behaviour of others was treated elsewhere by Plutarch (Mor. e; cf. e).27 Like Plato, Plutarch regarded this ability in a wholly negative light. Such behaviour is a form of flattery, kolakeia, to be contrasted with the behaviour of the man who is haplous, staighforward, unitary— like Alcibiades’ Roman pair, Coriolanus (Synk. . ). In the Life itself, Alcibiades’ versatility make him popular with the deceitful Tissaphernes (. ): 25 27

Cf. Thuc. . . . Cf. Russell (: –).

26

Trans. adapted from Lee (: ).

Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades



the barbarian, not a straightforward character [haplous] but rather a malicious man with an attraction to the immoral, admired his versatility [ ] and his outstanding cleverness [deinotes]. . . . Though in other respects one of the harshest Greek-haters of the Persians, he gave way to Alcibiades’ flattery [ µ ] to such an extent that he surpassed Alcibiades in returning flattery for flattery.

Such versatility is also calculated to win Alcibiades the fickle favour of the Athenian demos (. –). Indeed, Alcibiades’ ‘behavioural’ kolakeia is closely associated with his practice of illegitimate rhetorical techniques, his demagogia. Hence Alcibiades the kolax is at the same time ‘chief of demagogues’.28 Like Plato, Plutarch links character-versatility to democracy and demagogy. The description in chapter  of the pranks Alcibiades engaged in to win the attention and affection of the Athenian demos, is followed immediately by the account of his irresponsible fanning of the demos’ fatal eros to conquer Sicily ().29 Certainly, as in Thucydides,30 there is admiration of Alcibiades for his persuasive ability both in terms of personal charm and public rhetoric (Alc. . –; Synk. . –). Alcibiades preferred to rely on his rhetoric rather than his wealth and birth in order to win the favour of the masses (. —in strong contrast here to Coriolanus). But Alcibiades’ practice of persuasion too often exceeds the legitimate needs of the statesman, degenerating into ‘disgusting’ flattery (Synk. . –). It may well have been Plutarch himself who was responsible for developing the theme of Alcibiades’ adaptability in a moral direction, for the transformation of Alcibiades polutropos into Alcibiades kolax. In turn, the depiction of the flattering adaptability of Alcibiades is closely tied to the analysis of the relationship between statesman and demos which is a central theme of the Alcibiades–Coriolanus pair. We can already see the importance of Platonic interpretation for making moral sense of Alcibiades. Indeed, the detailed and intimate account in Platonic texts of Alcibiades’ dealings with Socrates was clearly going to be central to any attempt to understand and analyse Alcibiades. As we saw in Chapter , these texts had already produced a most subtle and convincing analysis of Alcibiades’ Plut. Mor. d. For the link between kolakeia and demagogia, cf. Alc. . . Cf. Thuc. . . : Plutarch is more explicit than Thucydides in attributing responsibility for this mood to Alcibiades. 30 Cf. Ch.  above, § 6. Note especially . . –: ‘There was not another man alive capable of restraining the mob at that time’. 28 29

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Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades

moral character, with the aim of defending Socrates against the charge of corrupting the young, and of focusing attention on the problems of the reception of philosophy in a society dedicated to other values. In Plutarch, the centrality of Platonic texts to the Alcibiades tradition is signalled early—. . Moreover, it is the favour shown by Socrates to the young Alcibiades which guarantees the essential goodness of his phusis (euphuia, a concept adapted from Platonic texts on Alcibiades31), and is perhaps partly responsible for Plutarch’s fundamentally defensive attitude to Alcibiades throughout the Life. Moreover, as I will try to show in the remainder of this Conclusion, Platonic accounts of the relationship with Socrates provide a point around which the anecdotal material of the first seven chapters is organized, as well as a moral orientation for the analysis of character throughout the Life. The influence of Platonic texts is particularly evident in Plutarch’s development of the central quality of philonikia. In the opening chapters Plutarch describes a philonikia which has transgressive and perhaps even immoral tendencies. At this point, with the most important quality of the hero thus defined, Socrates is introduced. Perceiving Alcibiades’ essential euphuia, Socrates is able to provide an alternative focus of ambition in the form of philosophical words with enough philosophical ‘bite’ to affect Alcibiades’ soul (. ),32 so as to tame and humble his ungovernable spirit (. ).33 But there is in Alcibiades a force competing with his attraction to Socratic philosophy, a non-philosophical ambition, fanned by the flatterers and lovers who surround him, for success in the city. Here Plutarch cleverly combines several sources: the description of Socrates’ competition with Alcibiades’ other lovers at the beginning of Alcibiades I,34 stories from the anecdotal tradition about Alcibiades’ treatment of his lovers, and—an unexpected element—the account of the corruption of the philosophical soul by flatterers from the Republic.35 Under the influence of the flatterers the baser aspect of Alcibiades’ 31 Plut. Alc. . , . , . : cf. [Plato] Alc. I e; Symp. a– with b–, and above all the philosophical soul of Rep. (d–e). 32 The description of the stinging power of philosophy (. ) recalls Symp. a–. 33 Socrates’ reduction of Alcibiades to a slave-like state (. ) is inspired by Symp. e. 34 The description of Alcibiades’ crowd of noble lovers (. ) is from Alc. I b; and his scornful treatment of them (. ) is inspired by Alc. I b. 35 .  ( µ ) is from Rep. c– ( µ µ µ ). In

Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades



philotimia, temporarily at least, gets the upper hand, in the important chapter : ‘Alcibiades was no doubt also somewhat susceptible to pleasure—what Thucydides calls his ‘paranomia towards his body in his daily life’ leads us to suspect this. Nevertheless, it was rather his philotimia and his philodoxia that his corrupters36 seized upon, driving him on to great affairs before the time was right’ (. –). It was philotimia which led Alcibiades to Socrates, and philotimia which led him away. This analysis is very Platonic: as we saw in Chapter , it was Platonic texts which had implicitly traced both the burning desire for success in the city and the Alcibidean philosophical soul’s attraction to philosophy to the same ambitious drive. From the very beginning of the Life (. ) Plutarch had presented this burning ambitious passion as the key to understanding the complexities of Alcibiades’ character. In chapter , he sees it as capable of explaining to some extent even Alcibiades’ hybristic and dissolute behaviour, which he traces to an overweening arrogance and disdain for accepted convention, rather than a base desire for pleasure.37 There is a self-conscious attempt here to establish a Platonic explanation over that of other writers: not just Thucydides, but all those who depicted Alcibiades’ sensualism and truphe. In this way the account of the relationship with Socrates establishes a tension between a positive and a negative ambitious drive in Alcibiades, which can help to explain the fundamental anomalia of his character.38 This is illustrated in the description of the Potidaea incident in the following chapter (. –): Socrates’ efforts to make sure the prize of valour is awarded to Alcibiades is seen as an attempt to encourage a good sort of philotimia (‘philotimia in noble deeds’),39 which contrasts with the empty, boastful philotimia seized upon by his flatterers in the previous chapter. This tension in Alcibiades’ key pathos of philonikia is perceptible throughout the Life. Initially in the younger Alcibiades it is associated with an impulse to break the rules: to bite his wrestlingopponent (. –); to undermine the Peace of Nicias by deceit . , these flatterers try to prevent Alcibiades from listening to Socrates—cf. Rep. e. Finally, the phrase (. ) is probably from Rep. d– ( µ ). 36 Note the unmistakable element of apology for Socrates here, also present in the passage of Rep. which inspired it: it was Alcibiades’ flatterers and the city which corrupted Alcibiades, not Socrates, who did his best to save him. 37 Russell (a: ). 38 Pelling (b: pp. xlvii–xlix). 39 Cf. Russell (a: ).



Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades

(. –), to induce the irresponsible Sicilian expedition by demagogic oratory (. –). It is the ambitious vanity that his flatterers play on to lure him away from the positive influence of Socrates (. –). It is associated with the arrogant, contemptuous manner in which Alcibiades treats his other lovers, and which Socrates manages to tame. Later in the Life, however, a more commendable philotimia appears to get the upper hand, an urge to live up to the expectations of himself and others. We see it in the indomitable spirit which leads him to refuse simply to accept the disgraceful fate of an exile, a refusal which in Plutarch (as in Isoc. ) is portrayed as the mark of great character rather than as an act of treason (. ; . ).40 It is this noble ambition which inspires Alcibiades’ bold action during the capture of Selymbria (. ), and his leading of the Mystery procession to Eleusis (.).41 The Platonic sections early in the Life also help us to understand that other anomalia of Alcibiades, his flattering adaptability. For it is natural that someone who is so flattered in his youth should himself becomes a flatterer, that the flight from the clear moral direction provided by Socrates should lead to a shifting uncertainty of character, and that the fundamental inability to decide between Socrates’ philosophy and the prizes of the city should lead, as in the Alcibiades of Plato’s Symposium, to a constantly shifting, ‘democratic’ character. For Plato and Plutarch, adaptability and inconsistency are related. Where we might perceive a tension between two modes of explaining the fluxes in Alcibiades’ behaviour, between the cunning, deliberate changes of the polutropos on the one hand, and the uncontrolled inconsistency of the great libertine on the other, in Plutarch’s Alcibiades inconsistency of character and deliberate character shifts are aspects of a more fundamental uncertainty and unscrupulousness of character, which admits change and is not haplous.42 Thus in chapter , for example, the initial 40 Note the highly defensive .  (which follows Isoc. . ): Alcibiades is only induced to go over to Sparta after terrible condemnations and curses have been pronounced against him; after first staying in Argos; and out of fear of his enemies. 41 Cf. Russell (a: ). 42 Cf. Russell (b: ). Alc. .  does distinguish self-conscious adaptability of behaviour from unconscious shifts of character: this facet of Alcibiades is related to his cleverness and is not the ethical chaos of the ephemeros (cf. Vernant and Detienne (: –) on the distinction between uncontrolled flux of behaviour and the deliberate adaptability which is the mark of cunning intelligence). Nevertheless, it is also tied to an unscrupulousness which is the mark of a deeper moral inconsistency.

Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades



focus on Alcibiades’ inconsistency soon merges into an account of his deliberate attempts to ingratiate himself with the multitude through his outrageous behaviour (. –).43 In this way the Platonic material is used to suggest an explanatory mode, which helps to make sense of Alcibiades’ inconsistent character. The vague-sounding philonikia of .  is developed by use of anecdotal material and the Platonic account of the relationship with Socrates into a complex character-tendency with explanatory power. Moreover, the strong thematic coherence of Platonic discussions of the Alcibiadean philosophical phusis, which we noted in Chapter , allows Plutarch to read the texts as a unity, weaving them into an allusive composite account.44 From the Symposium and the first Alcibiades come the description of Alcibiades’ attraction to philosophy and the internal struggle between love of philosophy and ‘love of the demos’. From the Republic’s analysis of the philosophical phusis (whose links to Alcibiades have already been noted in Chapter ) comes the account of Alcibiades’ ‘corruption’ by his flatterers. There are even hints, later on, of the Callicles of the Gorgias.45 Nevertheless, there are also points of difference between Plato and Plutarch. Instead of the stark choice of life presented to the young soul in Plato—philosophical ascent towards the Forms, or corruption by the political practice of the city—Plutarch’s Socrates offers a more orthodox form of moral improvement through philosophy. His role is not to turn Alcibiades away from a political career, but to prepare him for one. The tension, or even outright opposition, evident in Plato (especially in the Republic) between Socrates and the city, philosophy and a life of public ambition, is elided by Plutarch. In this context, it is crucial that, in Plutarch’s depiction of the relationship, there is no resolution of the paedagogic struggle between Socrates and the flatterers (note the imperfect tenses with which the account ends in . ). The influence of 43 Cf. Synk. . –: ‘vulgarity and buffoonery in his dealings with the masses designed to win their favour’. 44 Russell (a: –); Pelling (b: pp. xlvii–xlix), noting also intertextual nuances from the Phaedrus. Platonic interpretation is also important in the Coriolanus (Pelling b: p. xxvii; and forthcoming: a). 45 .  (‘overthrowing decrees and laws and the chatterers who were destroying the city’) appears to recall Grg. a (‘trampling on our inscriptions and trickery and enchantments and laws—unnatural all of them’): Russell (: ; : ).



Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades

Socrates continues throughout the Life.46 Indeed, this early section of Plutarch’s biography is not just concerned with formative influences, with education, but also with the illustration of qualities and moral struggles which are inherent in the character and will continue to be important right up to his death. Thus Plutarch presents Socrates as helping Alcibiades to tame the vicious inclinations remarked on by Thucydides apropos of the events of   (. ).47 Equally, when we come to the Thucydidean material later in the Life, we are still thinking of the fundamental struggle in the young Alcibiades between ‘philosophical’ and ‘arrogant’ ambition. We can see how Plutarch uses his intimate knowledge of classic Platonic texts to provide a structure for, and breathe new life into, the basic features of the Alcibiades portrait provided by anecdote and moral writing. There is none of this in Nepos, nor apparently in Satyrus. Plutarch reinvigorates the tradition, by returning to the classical texts. The same is true of his deployment of Thucydides, though, as Pelling has shown,48 Plutarch’s divergences from Thucydides are more noticeable than his borrowings. This is partly a function of the transformation of history into biography, and partly arises from a desire not simply to repeat the unbeatable narrative account of the great historian. Plutarch was aware of Thucydides’ strict avoidance of personal detail, and we can detect a desire to fill in the gaps left by Thucydides. He provides a sketch () of the paranomic personal behaviour which Thucydides alluded to in . but refrained from setting out in detail; an account of the ostracism of Hyperbolus (omitted by Thucydides49); and a full account of the Herms and Mysteries affair, including the personalities left out by Thucydides.50 Much of this was necessary to provide a coherent account: as I suggested in Chapter , the divergences between Plutarch’s account and 46 Here too Plutarch is influenced by the Symposium, which depicts Socrates still playing the role of Alcibiades’ moral tormentor as late as  . 47 Russell (a: ). 48 Pelling (: –; : pp. xxxix–xlii; : ch. ): if Plutarch mentions Thucydides explicitly only when he wishes to signal where his account differs from that of the historian, that merely underlines the extent to which Thucydides’ account can be taken for granted as essential background to the reading of the rest. 49 Ch. . The mention of Thucydides’ brief note on Hyperbolus (. ) draws attention to the fact that Plutarch is recounting an incident wholly omitted by Thucydides. 50 Especially Andocides (), and Diocleides and Teucros (. ).

Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades



Thucydides’ are more revealing of the idiosyncrasy of Thucydides’ account of Athenian politics than they are of Plutarch’s. The most conspicuous divergence from the account of Thucydides is in chapter , an analysis of Alcibiades’ relationship with the Athenians which corresponds both in tone and in its position in the narrative to Thuc. .  (the tension described at the outset of the chapter between Alcibiades’ achievements and his luxurious excesses is clearly reminiscent of the tension between public and private in Thuc. . . ). But whereas in Thucydides there is a strict analytical opposition between the Athenians on the one hand and Alcibiades on the other, Plutarch describes a more complex reaction:51 in the first place, the endoxoi, the ‘men of reputation’, react in a different way to the demos, and secondly, the demos itself is presented as unable to make up its mind about Alcibiades. The ambivalent reaction of the demos is less of a divergence from Thucydides than it might at first appear. As we saw in Chapter , Thuc. .  gains much of its point from its context: this analysis of Alcibiades’ deposition by the Athenians comes at the moment of his greatest public influence and popularity, while the sketch of the reaction to his private excesses must be read against the background of his extreme public success at the moment of narration. Thucydides too is describing an inconsistent character, and a confused Athenian reaction. This is a recasting of Thucydides rather than a divergence. What is really different in Plutarch is the stress placed on the distinction between endoxoi and demos. His account of the hostility aroused by Alcibiades’ paranomia recalls Thucydides, . .  (‘they were aggrieved as individuals with his way of life’), but there this reaction was predicated of the Athenians in general (particularly the demos in fact— ), whereas in Plutarch it is confined to the endoxoi. Again, Plutarch quotes the bon mot of Aeschylus in Frogs describing the Athenian reaction to Alcibiades (‘it loves him, it hates him, but it wants to have him’), but attributes this reaction to ‘the demos’, whereas in Frogs it is attributed to ‘the city’. We can see reasons for Plutarch’s depiction of the Athenians as divided in their reaction to Alcibiades. The Alcibiades speeches discussed in Chapter  above were a dramatic illustration of the polarized reactions aroused by Alcibiades, and Plutarch was well 51

Pelling (: –; : pp. li–lii).



Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades

aware of Xenophon’s account of the deeply divided Athenian attitude to Alcibiades on the occasion of his return to Athens in  .52 As we saw in Chapter , Thucydides preferred to elide the complex divisions in Athenian political life, concentrating instead on the development of a single theme—the growth of destructive private interests after the death of Pericles—and this led him to favour simple oppositions between individual leader and city.53 Plutarch’s admission of a spectrum of opinion in the Athenian reaction to Alcibiades looks more realistic, even more true to sources and to facts. Yet what is neither realistic nor based on anything in Plutarch’s sources is the nature of this division: a split between endoxoi and demos. The introduction of precisely this sort of division reveals a fundamental difference between the Plutarchean and the classical, Thucydidean Alcibiades. As has already been seen, the classical depiction of Alcibiades as a city-threatening great individual centred on a direct and fundamental opposition between individual on the one hand and city on the other. Thucydides’ analysis of the relationship between Alcibiades and Athens focuses on a sense of the threat perceived in Alcibiades by the polis as a whole, which manifested itself in the ‘massiveness’ of his behaviour and in his hybristic personal conduct, while for [And.]  Alcibiades’ hybris and attitude to pleasure indicated a threat of the tyranny of the individual over the community. In Plutarch, on the other hand, this sense of the direct danger posed by Alcibiades to the politeia is largely lost (it is noticably absent, for example in his account of the ostracism struggle in chapter , which we would have expected, following [And.] , to focus on precisely this issue54). The new distinctions in chapter  are part of this shift. Instead of the tension between individual and city, we have the relationship between statesman and demos. The endoxoi, with their straightfoward condemnation of Alcibiades’ behaviour, are there to signal the moral reprehensibility of Alcibiades’ conduct, and to stress that it was aimed only at one section of the citizen body: the fickle demos. This Xen. HG . . –. But later in Book , in the account of the Herms and Mysteries affair, Thucydides does mention the enemies of Alcibiades (. .; . . ; . . ), and the angry reaction towards him centres on the demos, rather than the Athenians as a whole (. . , . . , . . , . . ). 54 Plutarch’s account is about how Alcibiades outsmarted the demagogic Hyperbolus. 52 53

Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades



split between endoxoi and demos is one that is naturally associated with the portrayal of a demagogue (hence it is used by Thucydides in his depiction not of Alcibiades, but of Cleon55), and indeed the Alcibiades of chapters – is more like the ‘flattering’ demagogue of the Moralia than the great individual of [And.] . In place of an inevitable conflict between individual and city, we now have a study of political morality, of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ types of political behaviour. Alcibiades’ conflict is not with the city, with the polis itself, but with the fickle demos. Only the endoxoi can perceive in him the paranomia of the tyrant, and even here the emphasis is on a type of kolakeia (or ‘buffoonery’—bomolochia) arousing the ‘disgust’56 of the right-thinking (like Thucydides’ Cleon), rather than, as in [And.]  or Thucydides, transgressive behaviour inspiring fear in the whole city for its political safety. The political order is threatened by a failure of political morality, by Alcibiades’ demagogy and the demos’ political irresponsibility, rather than by that destructive fascination with superb individualism which is so feared in [And.] . The demos’ fascination with Alcibiades is a childish delight in pranks rather than a baneful obsession presaging its own political destruction. The analysis is still political, but that urgent connection between personal diaita and politeia, between conduct with regard to the self and attitude with regard to the city, which I traced in Chapter , is missing. Alcibiades’ personal conduct is seen as characterizing behaviour—bios—and from a moral perspective, not as inherently political action that can be translated directly into a particular stance towards the polis. This shift produces a very different account of the relationship between Alcibiades and the Athenians. Whereas Thucydides traces the fall of Alcibiades to a deep-seated and understandable fear of the great individual (. , . , . –), in Plutarch, in the absence of any of that sense of the danger posed by Alcibiades to the politeia,57 the Athenians’ two depositions of Alcibiades are presented as simply foolish and disgraceful.58 Plutarch’s shift of emphasis turns the story of Alcibiades and Coriolanus, two figures 56 . . . : Alc. ., Synk. . , cf. Nic. .. In particular, the vital link between the Athenians’ fear of Alcibiades’ paranomia and personal power and their reaction to allegations of his involvement in the Mysteries affair (Thuc. . . ) is missing in Plutarch. 58 . –, . , and note esp. . –, where the Athenians are explicitly made to lament the folly of their actions. 55 57



Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades

capable more than any of suggesting the struggle between the great individual and the polis, into a moral study of the relationship between statesman and demos, which aims at developing an ideal of persuasion used in the service of restraint, eschewing the flattery of Alcibiades on the one hand and the arrogant contempt of Coriolanus on the other (Synk. ).59 Of the two figures, it is Alcibiades who more nearly approximates to the good statesman, not only because his ability to make himself agreeable is better than the dismal aloofness of Coriolanus (Synk. . –), but also because, whereas Coriolanus degenerates into even greater harshness towards the end of his life, the latter part of Alcibiades’ career was dominated by a string of great victories for his own city (Synk. ). Plutarch uses the episode adapted from Thucydides60 where Alcibiades restrains the fleet at Samos from sailing to Athens to signal this shift in Alcibiades’ behaviour.61 On that occasion, instead of humouring and flattering the mob which had restored him to power, Alcibiades ‘as befits a great leader’ stands up to their angry mood, and so staves off the collapse of the Athenian war effort. From this point on, bold and statesmanlike qualities predominate, and this suits the shift to the account of Alcibiades’ great military victories and his triumphant return to Athens, taken from Xenophon and Ephorus (and/or Theopompus—. ). Alcibiades is now undermined not so much by his own moral failure, but by envy, and by his inability to satisfy the expectations aroused by his own astonishing success.62 When it comes to his second exile, this time the allegations of hybristic and dissolute conduct, the fears of tyranny, are the product of the ‘anger and ill will’ of his enemies (. ). Alcibiades goes off to Thrace to crusade against the barbarians on behalf of the Greeks, and (in contrast to his reaction to his first exile) is magnanimous enough to warn the Athenians of impending disaster before the battle of Aegospotami (. , cf. Synk. . ) 59 That is why the episode in the Alcibiades where Alcibiades restrains the fleet (. –) is so important in the Life. 60 . . –—cf. Ch.  above, § . 61 Perhaps Plutarch had this shift in mind when he wrote (. ) of changes in Alcibiades character resulting from ‘great events and constantly-shifting fortune’: Alcibiades’ reaction to the terrible reversals of his career seems to turn his philonikia in a positive moral direction. 62 Pelling (b: p. li).

Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades



Nevertheless, Alcibiades’ fall is partly caused by problems of his own making: his reputation, and his failure to found his relationship with the demos on statesmanlike consistency. It is too late to break the pattern. Nor can we be fully sure that Alcibiades really has been transformed. There has already been one false transformation—at chapter , where Alcibiades’ adultery with Timaea showed that he was ‘still the same woman as before’, and there remains a suspicion that the allegations of Thrasybulus in chapter  might contain an element of truth.63 The fundamental inconsistency of the character, the impossibility of ever achieving a secure moral grasp on the man, is strongly reaffirmed by the account of his death (. –. ). Alcibiades dies in a brave final stand against his enemies, certainly, but ambushed at night in bed with a hetaira, who buries him in woman’s clothes,64 an uncomfortable reminder of the dissolute, ‘feminine’ Alcibiades of the early Life, and of the fundamental tension between Alcibiades as lion and Alcibiades as woman, with which we began. We also have to deal with an uncertainty in the account of the death: was the motivation behind Lysander’s ordering of Alcibiades’ death fear of his energy and ambition,65 or the desire to gratify Agis, who, we remember, was bitterly opposed to Alcibiades because of the latter’s seduction of his wife? And finally Plutarch leaves us, right at the end, to decide between the main version of the death and an unconfirmed variant, according to which Alcibiades was murdered by the angry family of a local girl whom he had seduced—so that the moral significance of the death is left disturbingly unclear. In Plutarch, the death of the hero is often deeply suggestive of his character as a whole, and the carefully calculated uncertainties surrounding the death of Alcibiades are thematically suggestive in their own way. These final chapters are as good an example as any of the Life’s use of anecdote and competing source to suggest a ‘characteristic’ type of ambivalence and uncertainty. 63 The narrative does not actually contradict the allegations of Thrasybulus: Alcibiades’ money-collecting could have provided him with the opportunity to consort with hetairai from Abydus and Cyzicus—an all-too-possible scenario given .  and the account of his death in ch. . The narrrative confirms that Alcibiades entrusted the fleet to the ‘foolish and common’ Antiochus (. ). 64 Yet this burial is described as lampros and philotimos (. ): we are encouraged to see it as worthy of the man’s ambition in life: Pelling (b: pp. lvi–lvii). 65 µ µ (.) the word used to describe Alcibiades’ earliest ambition as a young man—. .



Conclusion: Plutarch’s Alcibiades

The account of the end thus reminds us of the beginning, of the opening stories of Alcibiades biting his wrestling opponent, and the unconfirmed loidoriai of Antiphon. This final note of uncertainty is appropriate in a Life where, although we are provided with a kind of schema (the trait of ‘ambition’) which suggests a way of linking the key traits—hybris, dissolution, philotimia, adaptability, demagogy—into a single comprehensive character, we are still dealing very much with a figure whose inconsistent qualities cannot be comprehended in any neat way, and who remains to the last elusive, a man whose whole life was a matter of conflict and controversy.

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Index Locorum

Aeschines of Sphettus: fr.  Dittmar  n.  fr.  Dittmar  fr.  Dittmar  n.  fr.  Dittmar – fr. c Dittmar  fr.  Dittmar  Aeschines (orator): . [Andocides]        –    –     Antiphon: ‘loidoriai’

 –, , –, , –    ,  – ,  ,  , , ,    –  , , ,   ,  n.  , , –, –, 

Antisthenes: fr.  Caizzi fr.  Caizzi

, ,  n.  

Archippus: fr.  K.-A.

, –, 

Aristotle: Nic. Eth. – Post. An. b

  n. 

Poet. ab Pol. a a

, , – ,  –

Aristophanes: Frogs: – –

, , ,  –, , , 

Athenaeus: b-e d de

–,    n. 

Bion: fr.  Kindstrand

 n. 

Demosthenes: . – . – .  .  . 

 –, , –    n. 

Diodorus Siculus: . 



Duris of Samos: FGH , 

, 

Eupolis: fr.  K.–A. fr.  K.–A.

 

Isocrates: .  .  . –  . 

– ,  , , , – , ,  n. ,  , 

 Isocrates (cont.): . – . – .  . –  .  . – .  .  .  . – .  . - .  . – .  . – .  .  .  .  . – .  .  .  .  .  .  .   Libanius: Ap. Soc.:    Lysias:  .  .  .  .  .  . – . – . 

Index Locorum ,    n.  , , , – , –, , –, , –,  – –   –,       – –,   , ,     , ,   , ,  ,  ,   n.  ,  , 

   , –, –,    , , ,  n.  ,     

.  . – . – .  .      fr. a fr.  fr.  fr.  fr.  fr.  fr. a

 ,  –  n. , , ,   – ,  ,  n.   – , –     

Nepos: Alc. 

– –

Pausanias: . . 

 n. 

Pherecrates: fr.  K.–A.



Pindar: Pyth. 



Plato: Alc. I – – b d – c Alc. II Apol. b Gorg. – c ab b Prt. a

–, –,  – –,  n. , –, –    –    –       n. 



Index Locorum Rep. – – cd b - ce – Symp.: – b de cd e-a a – ac a ab bd de bc cd

–, ,    ,  ,   ,   n. 

Mor.: a e Numa  Alc. and Cor. Synk. Solon: poem  West

    ,  ,  –,   – ,  n.  , ,  n.  ,  ,  , 

Theophrastus: fr.  Wehrli

Pliny: NH . 

 n. 

Plutarch: Alc. .  .  . – . – . – . – . – .  .  .  .   .  .   . – –  .   . – . – –

–, – ,  ,         ,  , ,  –, –    –, ,   – , ,     

Thucydides: . . – .  . – . – . .  . .  . – .  .  . .  .  . . – .  .  .  . .  .  . .  . .  . .  . .  . .  . .  .  . – . . – . – . .  . – . . . . – .  . . 

 n. ,   n. ,   n.     n.  – ,   – ,  ,     , ,      ,   n.  , –, , –, , , ,   , , , ,    , –  , ,  , ,  , ,  n.    n.    –, ,  , , , , , , , – , ,  n.



Index Locorum

Thucydides (cont.): . . – –, –,  . .  , ,  n. ,  n. ,  n. , ,  n. , ,  . .  ,  . . – – . .  ,  . .   . . – –,  . .  ,  . .  ,  n. ,  . .   . .  ,  . .   .  , ,  . .  , ,  . –  . – , – .  ,  .  , – . . –  . .   . .   . –  . – ,  .   . .  , –,  .  ,   – . – – . .  – . .  , 

.  . – . .  . .  .  . . – . . – .  . – . .  . .  . .  . .  Xenophanes: poem  poem  Xenophon: Mem. . – . .  . .  . .  . . – . .  . . – . .  HG: . . – . . – . .  . . 

,   n. , ,   n. , ,  n. ,  , ,  , –  –, , , ,  , – –,    ,   n. 

 –, 

– –      n.  ,   n.  , ,    n.  

General Index

Abydus  n. , –,  n. , – Achilles , , , , , ,  Adeimantus , ,  Aegisthus ,  Aegospotami , , , –, ,  Aeschines of Sphettus  see also index locorum Agamemnon  Agatharchus , , ,  Agis  Ajax , , , ,  Alcibiades: adaptability –, –, , –, –, – aiming at tyranny , , –, , , , –, –, , –, , ,  alcohol and –; see also symposium athletic competitor , , , –, –, , –, –, ,  beauty , , , , ,  choregos –, , ,  n.  ‘cult’ of , , –, – death ,  n. , , , , , – demos, relations with –, –, – as demagogue – depicted in paintings  enemies , – forts in Chersonese – hetairai and , –, , –,  incest  n. , , , – lion, compared to , –,  Medizing , , – ostracism and –, , –, –, , ,  private life , –, –, 

proxenia with Sparta , –, ,  public prosecutor  n.  rhetorical ability –,  n. , ,  Socrates, compared to , , – Socrates,‘corrupted’ by , –, ,  treason and patriotism –, , –, –, –,  tribute assessor –,  victory ode and –,  woman, compared to –, –,  youth of ,  Alcibiades IV, son of Alcibiades ,  n. ,  and ‒ passim,  n.  Alcmaeonids –, ,  n. ,  n. ,  Amphion – Andocides , ,  Andrewes, A.  Androcles  anecdotes –, –, , , – Antigone  Antiope of Euripides  Antisthenes ,  Antony, Mark  Anytus  n. , , – Archestratides  Archidamus , –,  Argos/Argives –, –, , –,  Aristides ,  Aspasia ,  n. ,  n. ,  Athenaeus – see also index locorum athletic competition , – see also Alcibiades, athletic competitor



General Index

Attic stelai  Axiochus, dialogue of Aeschines ,  n.  Axiochus, uncle of Alcibiades  n. , –, –

Demos, son of Pyrilampes  Diodotus  Diogenes  Diomedes , –, ,  Duris of Samos ,  n. , , , 

Baldwin, Stanley  Berve, H. ,  n.  biography , , –, ,  bios , , , –, –, –, ,  Brasidas , , ,  Bruns, I. ,  n. ,  n. , – Burn, A. 

empire, Athenian , , –, , , –, –, –, ,  encomium –, , , – Endius , ,  Ephesus ,  epinikion ,  ethical gender ,  Euclides  Eupatrids ,  Eupolis , ,  Euripides –, ,  Euryptolemus  n.  Evagoras , , , , –

Callias , ,  Callicles , , –, , ,  Callipides ,  Cartledge, P.  n.  Cato  Chalcideus  Chersonese – Chios  Chrysogonus ,  Cimon ,  Cleinias, father of Alcibiades –,  Cleisthenes ,  Cleon  Clouds, of Aristophanes ,  n. ,  n. ,  Colophon  comedy , , , , , , – Conon , , – Corcyra  Coriolanus –, – Cornford, F.  n. ,  n. ,  n. ,  n.  Critias , , – cunning intelligence, see metis Cylon , ,  Davidson, J.  de Romilly, J.  Decelea ,  declamation , –, –, – Delebecque, E. –,  n.  demagogue –, , –, , –, ,  Demetrius of Phaleron – Democratic Man –, ,  democratic ideology , , , , –, , –, , 

focalizer , –, ,  Four Hundred –,  Funeral Oration –, –, , ,  Funeral Speech of Pericles , ,  general and specific in historiography – Gibbon, Edward  Gill, C.  Gorgias  Great Man –,  , , –, , –,  ,  n. , – see also individual, great Gylippus , ,  Hadrian  Haliartus ,  Harmodius and Aristogeiton  Harpocration – Hell-Fire Club  n.  Hellenistic literature –, –, – Herman, G. ,  Herms and Mysteries affair , –, –, , , , , , , , –, –, ,  Herodotus  n. , , , , ,  Hipparete, wife of Alcibiades , , , 

General Index Hipponicus ,  homosexuality , –,  Hornblower, S. – Hoyer, R.  Hyperbolus, ostracism of , , , –, –,  ideology, see democratic ideology individual and individualism –, –, , ,  great –, –, , –, –, , –; see also Great Man historiography, in – individuation –, –, , –, , –, , – place in democratic city –, , – Isocrates: Alcibiades and , , ,  generic innovation , –,  Great Man and –, ,  Polycrates and , – publication and  Thucydides and  kakodaimonistai  kinaidos , , – Knights, of Aristophanes  Knox, B.  kolax , , ,  n. , , , –,  kudos , , – Kurke, L.  n. , ,  Lamachus  Lesbos ,  Libanius – liturgies –, , , ,  Lochites , , ,  loidoriai of Antiphon, see Antiphon in index locorum Lysander , , –,  Mantinea/Mantineans ,  n. , , , ,  Mantitheus ,  Medontis, see Alcibiades, hetairai and Megacles ,  n.  megalopsuchos , –,  Megarian decree  Meidias –, , –, , –



Melos/Melian , , ,  n. , ,  metis (‘cunning intelligence’) –, , , –,  Miletus , ,  Milo  n.  Miltiades , , , –, ,  Momigliano, A.  Mysteries, see Herms and Mysteries affair Mytilinean debate , ,  narrator intervention –, ,  Nepos  Nicias –, –, , , , –, –, , , –, – Notium  Odysseus , , – Oedipus  Olympics, see Alcibiades, athletic competitor ostracism –, , –, ,  – see also Hyperbolus, ostracism of Pamphilos  pamphlets , – Paris  Pausanias, Spartan regent , , –, ,  Peisander –,  Peisistratus /Peisistratids , , , ,  Pelling, C. ,  Pericles , , , , , , –, , , , , , ,  Peripatetics – Phaeax ,  Phaedo of Elis  pharmakos  Pharnabazus  Pheidippides  philotimia/philonikia , –, , , , , –, , , , , , –, –,  Phormio –, – Phrynichus ,  Pindar , ,  Plato: characterization in –



General Index

Plato (cont.): generic innovation , – Plutarch’s use of – Thucydides and  n. , –,  Polycrates , , , –, ,  n. ,  Potidaea ,  private sphere –, –, –, –, –, , , , –, , ,  protreptic dialogue , –, –, , –, ,  publication of speeches – Pylos , ,  Quintilian  Raubitschek, A.  Russell, D.  Samos  Satyrus –, ,  Schaefer, H.  n.  Selymbria  Sicilian expedition , –, –, , , ,  Socrates , , , ,  corrupts young –, – individuality of –, – trial of –, , , , –, – Socratics , ‒ passim Sopater – Speusippus ,  status , , –, , – symbolic capital  symposium –, –, , –, – Syracuse ,  Taureas , , , ,  n. ,  Teisias , –, , – Themistocles –, , , , , , , , 

Theodote  Theopompus –, ,  Theseus  Thirty, the , , , –, , , ,  Thrasybulus of Kollytus ,  Thrasybulus of Steiria , , , –,  Thucydides: Alcibiades, judgement on –, – Athenian leaders, treatment of , – Book  – characterization – composition of History –, , –,  Great Man and , –, – individuals and – Plato and  n. , –,  sources –,  n.  Timaea , ,  Timaeus  Timarchus , , , – Timon the Misanthrope – Tissaphernes , , , , –, , – Tompkins, D. ,  tragedy , –, , – truphe , , ,  tyranny , , –, –, , , – see also Alcibiades, aiming at tyranny Wasps of Aristophanes , , –,  Westlake, H. –,  Womersley, D.  xenia (guest-friendship) , –, –, , – Xenophanes –, ,  Xerxes ,  Zethus –