reinforced by wine, was in telling all, making fun of himself; his amorous
successes protected him from any shame about this—and he was not a
man to be easily embarrassed.
Moreover, the story is a nice one: it shows the discovery of another
meaning of love. I cite it here only because it also shows how unprepared
for this he was, given his usual behavior.
Besides, it was undoubtedly too late to change his behavior. Whatever
may have been the date of the night with Socrates, the Symposium, where
Alcibiades tells the story, is thought to have taken place in 416. He was
already involved in political life, actively in pursuit of glory.
The second incident, the fi nal one, took place at the beginning of that
brilliant career. It combines great glory with the absence of scruples for
which we have seen ample evidence.
Whenever someone wanted to be talked about, to draw attention,
to get ahead, one of the best ways to do so was to win victories in the
Insults
and
Scandals 27
Panhellenic Games. The contests that were properly called “athletic” were
obviously the domain of specialists. However, one could, and often did,
own a stable of racehorses and compete in the chariot races. Doing so
won great notoriety: a bit like someone who, today, manages and trains a
football team to compete in the major competitions. This was a sure way
of getting oneself into the spotlight and earning the acclaim of the city that
would celebrate the victories. Add a bit more hype in the fi fth century BCE
and a bit more of a populist chord in the current era, and the similarity is
even more striking.
In the family of the Alcmeonids to which Alcibiades belonged there
was a tradition of greatness in victories at the Panhellenic Games. He
wanted to resume that tradition. In 416 he was victorious in not one but
in several events, an incomparable achievement.
As Plutarch said soberly, “He gained great notoriety from his stable of
racehorses and from the number of chariots. No one, either private citi-
zen or nobleman, had ever, in the history of the Olympics, entered seven
chariots at once. He alone did it” (11.1).
By itself this was awe-inspiring. But the result was no less so: Alcibi-
ades took three prizes, including fi rst and second place.
As for the third prize Alcibiades won, history is ambivalent: Thucydides
says that he won fourth, Isocrates says third, a point also made in an ode
Plutarch attributes to Euripides. 17 It is a nice example of how stories are always simplifi ed for emphasis. Today, if someone wins fi rst prize in Latin
and second prize in Greek in the general exams, the press will say she won
fi rst prize in both; I know from experience.
It was in any case a triumph. Thucydides, Plutarch, Isocrates all men-
tion it, all agree on that point. The celebrations that followed were unfor-
gettable. The ode Plutarch attributes to Euripides sets the tone: “Of you
I wish to sing, son of Cleinias. It is wonderful to win; but what is more
wonderful is something that no other Greek has done: that is to take fi rst,
second, and third prizes in the chariot races and to return twice, with ease,
as the object of the herald’s proclamation.” 18 Many Greek cities showered him with honors: Ephesus offered him a magnifi cently decorated tent,
17. Thucydides 6.16.2; Isocrates, On the Team of Horses 34; Euripides, in Plutarch 11.3.
18. Plutarch 11.3; the Life of Demosthenes mentions this ode, noting that he is unsure it is by Euripides, and no one today would attribute the ode to Euripides.
28 Chapter
2
Chios gave him food for his horses, and Lesbos gave him wine and food
for his own table and for the receptions he hosted at Olympia.
He himself celebrated his victory with all the pomp one would expect.
Among the events he sponsored was a parade in Olympia, for which the city
allowed him to borrow gold vases; according to Against Alcibiades, falsely
attributed to Andocides, Alcibiades used the vases for a private party. But
he kept them for a procession that took place the next day; it was a proces-
sion he organized, distinct from the offi cial procession that followed. The
result: strangers believed the vases belonged to Alcibiades. Many of them,
seeing the ways in which he acted on his own, “laughed at us when they
saw that a single man was more powerful than the entire city” (29).
The brilliance of the victories and celebrations was long remembered.
All the authors refer to it. We know that there were paintings (cited by
Athenaeus) and a third-century sculpture mentioned by Pliny. Alcibiades
is sometimes represented by a quadriga (four-horse chariot). And the lack
of scruples? It is there, of course, and not only in the incident involving
the borrowed vases. As usual with this character, shameless carelessness
was combined with glowing success. In sports, in our own time as well,
fi nancial affairs are not always strictly proper.
Alcibiades had a friend, an honest man named Diomedes. Diomedes,
who also wanted to enter chariot races, heard that there was a fi ne chariot
in Argos that belonged to the state and was available for sale; he asked the
very infl uential Alcibiades (who was especially infl uential at Argos, for rea-
sons we shall soon learn) to buy the chariot “on his own, Diomedes’s, ac-
count.” Very well! What did Alcibiades do? He bought the chariot . . . and
kept it! Diomedes was furious, sued, went to court. The speech Against
Alcibiades that has come down to us in the name of Andocides mentions a
“stolen” team and a race entered “with horses belonging to someone else”
(26–27). Indeed, we have seen that Isocrates’s speech about Alcibiades is
called On the Team of Horses. This is the team involved. The case went
on a long time. Diomedes’s suit over this incident in 416 was halted with
Alcibiades’s exile; despite efforts by Diomedes in 408, the case was not
heard until 396, twenty years after the event. The charge was brought by
a certain Tisias, who was unaware of Diomedes’s case, 19 and was directed against Alcibiades’s son, who had just attained majority. The improprieties
19. On this trial, see below, chapter 12.
Insults
and
Scandals 29
linked to the pursuit of athletic victories can lead to a lot of problems.
Alcibiades’s son argued, we can be sure, that the race was entirely proper
and that the suit was an awful conspiracy.
Nevertheless, a moment of glory unique in the entire fi fth century was
dulled by shadows that had accumulated consistently in the life of this man.
All the insolence and scandalous behavior was diverting and amusing. But
from the moment the man entered politics, they acquired some weight and
played a role—one that historians have not failed to refl ect on, beginning
with Thucydides.
Causing a fuss around oneself could be useful. Prestige leads to power.
It could even be a benefi t to the city. On Alcibiades, Thucydides devotes a
brilliant analysis of this possibility that is not to be overlooked.
Nicias made the Athenians suspicious of A
lcibiades’s excessive ambi-
tion: the man “may astonish you with his extravagant racehorses and fi nd
in the exercise of his duty the means of covering his enormous expenses.”
To which Alcibiades responded by saying:
The Hellenes, after expecting to see our city ruined by the war, concluded it
to be even greater than it really is by reason of the magnifi cence with which
I represented it at the Olympic Games, when I sent into the lists seven char-
iots, a number never before entered by any private person, and won the fi rst
prize, and was second and fourth, and took care to have everything else in a
style worthy of my victory. Custom regards such displays as honorable, and
they cannot be made without leaving behind them an impression of power.
Again, any splendor that I may have exhibited at home, in providing cho-
ruses or otherwise, is naturally envied by my fellow citizens, but in the eyes
of foreigners has an air of strength as in the other instance. And this is no
useless folly, when a man, at his own private cost, benefi ts not himself only,
but his city. (6.16.2–3)
We do not need to drown this powerful text in commentary. The elabo-
rate boasts about prestige, extravagant banquets, noisy celebrations that
Alcibiades makes in this argument are familiar to every age.
20. Quoted in my earlier discussion, which constitutes an anticipation of Thucydides 6.15.
30 Chapter
2
But wait: there is another side to it. This attitude has a political cost; it
sows jealousy. And when scandals are added, defi ance and enmity grow.
Alcibiades’s argument might have been excellent; it might have succeeded;
but it was weakened, very quickly, by the bitterness and anger it had
sown. It was not so much his arguments that led to failure as it was the
memory of his refusal to respect the laws, the liberty he took in speech and
behavior, that paranomia , as Thucydides called it. 20
Thucydides explains this in another important passage that gives mean-
ing to the whole series of misdeeds and misdemeanors that we have just
examined. It provides a passage of general refl ection. Thucydides recalls
Alcibiades’s keeping of a stable and other expenses, all of which were be-
yond his means, and he adds:
And later on this had not a little to do with the ruin of the Athenian state.
Alarmed at the greatness of the license in his own life and habits, and at the
ambition he showed in all things whatsoever that he undertook, the mass
of the people marked him as aspiring to tyranny and became his enemies;
and although in public life his conduct of the war was as good as could be
desired, in his private life his habits gave offense to everyone and caused
them to commit affairs to other hands, and thus before long to ruin the city.
(6.15.3–4)
This passage has been heavily debated, for it seems to telescope two differ-
ent periods. Thucydides was writing about 416 and the hostilities that led
to Alcibiades’s fi rst exile; but it slips right into the fi nal disaster, following
the second exile. 21 This slip, though it need not be taken up here, is nev-ertheless revealing: it shows how, in the life of Alcibiades and in the his-
tory of the war, things repeat themselves. In fact, Alcibiades’s entire public
life can be read as a dialogue in which the talents and the defects compete,
each as vivid as the other.
There is a lesson here, and it interests us still today because it shows the
formidable interaction between private scandals and public works—or, as
we might say, between morality and politics.
21. One wonders whether the part of the phrase “his conduct of the war was as good
as could be desired” refers to his brief command of the Sicilian expedition or to later events.
Here, let us preserve the double possibility.
First Interlude
Alcibiades between Two Lifestyles
These scandals involving Alcibiades have led me, by way of random anec-
dotes, to a point late in his life. But as Thucydides’s work makes clear, the
scandals did not become a serious issue until the day they became mixed
up with politics.
Could that combination have been avoided? One might have hoped
that before entering politics Alcibiades would have calmed down, refl ected
on the real purpose of politics, and understood at a deep level the lessons
of the man he admired most and whose words he found profoundly mov-
ing. Was it possible that the failed seduction, in the scene with Socrates,
might have eventually opened his eyes?
These are strictly hypothetical questions since we know that Alcibiades
never allowed himself to pause, that he ran from intrigue to success, from
success to scandal, from betrayal to rehabilitation, without ever thinking
about the lessons of his teacher. But Plato, perhaps for the purpose of
justifying Socrates, 1 demands that we stop this line of thinking and ask 1. See below, chapter 12.
32 First
Interlude
ourselves about that moment when, between the two paths before him—
that of philosophy and that of immediate success—Alcibiades not only
failed to choose, but he was not even aware there was a choice.
There are two dialogues among the works of Plato called Alcibiades .
We distinguish between them by referring to First Alcibiades and Second
Alcibiades , the latter a dialogue on prayer. This second is defi nitely not an
authentic work of Plato. Although the authenticity of the fi rst dialogue
has also been questioned, it would sadden me to deny Plato’s authorship.
And it does admirably address the issue of Alcibiades’s failure to make a
choice between the two paths.
The problem is similar to the one Prodicus describes when he sets
Hercules at the crossroads, one path leading to justice and the other to
pleasure. This quandary is what confronts anyone who is about to take
action. From the very beginning, Socrates confronts Alcibiades (still a
young man, 2 and unfamiliar with politics) about the choice before him.
What Alcibiades wants is immediate success. In a phrase previously noted,
Socrates describes Alcibiades’s ambition as extending from Athens to all
of Greece and beyond (105a–c).
To serve that ambition, Alcibiades needs Socrates. Otherwise, what
would he know? Where has he learned the meaning of the just? And
how can he enter politics without knowing what it is? Only knowledge
of the just is useful. He must aim high. Alcibiades’s true rivals, the only
rivals worthy of him, are the kings of Sparta and Persia; such a rivalry
demands application and a serious apprenticeship, in the course of which
he can acquire self-knowledge. The conclusion: “And if you are to man-
age the city’s affairs properly and honorably, you must impart virtue
to the citizens” (134b). Alcibiades then agrees, and makes a resolution:
“Well, it is decided, I shall begin here and now to focus my attention on
justice” (135e).
Socrates expressed his doubts, doubts that would be borne out by
subsequent events. When this dialogue was written, Plato (or some-
one else after him, if we do not believe
it to be authentic) knew per-
fectly well that Alcibiades never applied himself to virtue; that he threw
2. Not yet twenty years old, according to the text (123d, and also 118e). Another passage is ambiguous about his age but still gives the impression of youth.
Alcibiades between Two Lifestyles 33
himself into politics and used every means to advance his personal ob-
jectives; and that after many highs and lows, he ended up a failure,
entirely alone.
First Alcibiades is written, clearly, to show that Socrates’s teaching was
useless, since Alcibiades never applied it. The dialogue also shows that this
remarkable young man might have taken a different course had he listened
more to his teacher, had he paused and refl ected. Just before describing the
launch of his political career, this momentary pause Plato evokes helps us
to assess the gravity of the situation. The disasters in Alcibiades’s life and
the disasters in the history of Athens for which he bears responsibility all
began with this failure of the student to listen to his teacher, and with the
grievous separation between morality and politics.
This same idea reappears in a variety of dialogues, authentic or not.
The Second Alcibiades presents a young Alcibiades who knows nothing
of the good, an ignorance that invalidates his piety: he cannot make a sac-
rifi ce until he dispels his ignorance. And there again, Alcibiades promises
to apply himself and to learn. He never does so, and was eventually, as we
know, condemned to death for sacrilege.
At the end of this book we will refl ect again on the subject of Alcibia-
des’s character and life as inspiration for Plato. For now, having mentioned
the opportunity offered to this ambitious young man, the moment when
something we might call the temptation of the good occurs, it is touching
to refl ect on one fi nal image. It comes by way of a disciple of Socrates,
one very close to the teacher, named Aeschines of Sphettos. We cannot be
certain of its authenticity, but no one can dismiss its symbolic value. As in
Plato’s Alcibiades , Aeschines of Sphettos shows Socrates shaming Alcibi-
ades: he compares him to Themistocles and shows how unworthy he is
by comparison, how ignorant he is. According to the author, Alcibiades
The Life of Alcibiades Page 6
