to Nicias and Laches to negotiate the treaty; they had ignored him.” 9
However, though the facts coincide, their import is not the same, and
depends on whether the facts are presented by Thucydides or directly by
Alcibiades. As presented by Thucydides, they sound like critique; coming
from Alcibiades, they become a profession of faith, bold and provocative.
Alcibiades acknowledges, admits, announces that his political decisions
are based on strictly personal considerations; and his selfi sh realism seems
to ignore the possibility that he might serve the interests of his homeland.
Yet this is nothing beside what followed, when Alcibiades, just yester-
day the elected leader of democratic Athens, denied having the slightest
ties to the democracy.
There is, in what he says, some cleverness, but there is also reasoning.
He recalled that his family had been known for its opposition to tyranny:
a point that would resonate with the Lacedaemonians, who had fought
tyranny everywhere, including in Athens. It was a point on which demo-
crats and oligarchs could agree. After his death, Alcibiades’s defenders
would return to this argument. 10 Here Alcibiades stretches a bit in declaring: “And all who oppose arbitrary power are called the People,” thereby
burying the differences between the two regimes with a bit of sleight of
hand. Ultimately the overall argument is both adroit and true.
To this he adds another argument that is also a fair one: after all, democ-
racy was the regime at the time: “As democracy was the government of the
city, it was necessary in most things to conform to established conditions.”
He is also correct in observing that neither he nor his relatives were
ever extreme democrats (like Hyperbolus or Androcles, and most of those
who had earned his condemnation). “However, we endeavored to be more
9. See chapter 1.
10. Isocrates, On the Horses 16.26; “Alcibiades and Cleisthenes—the former my
great-grandfather on my father’s side, the latter my father’s maternal great-grandfather—
assuming the leadership of those in exile, restored the people to their country, and drove out the tyrants.”
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moderate than the licentious temper of the times; and while there were oth-
ers, formerly as now, who tried to lead the multitude astray (the same who
banished me).” He continued, in words worthy of Pericles, to defend the
true spirit of democracy, which is not a spirit of party but a genuine civic
spirit: “Our party was that of the whole people, 11 our creed being to do our part in preserving the form of government under which the city enjoyed the
utmost greatness and freedom.” Actually, Alcibiades is accurately describ-
ing his own political position, that of a moderate democrat; at the same
time, he shows the extent to which this position was realistic and practical,
rather than doctrinaire. It will not, however, surprise us at a later time to
hear his defenders in Athens take a different tone and trumpet his devotion
to the democracy. 12
The argument starts to get murky when, to please Sparta, he treats de-
mocracy with a scorn he has never before shown: “As for the democracy,
the men of sense among us knew what it was, and I perhaps as well as any,
as I have more cause to complain of it; but there is nothing new to be said
of a patent absurdity. Meanwhile, we did not think it safe to alter it under
the pressure of your hostility.”
“A patent absurdity.” We fi nd in many Greek texts numerous attacks
against the democracy and its faults, but nowhere else do we fi nd a state-
ment as radical as this one.
Does this view refl ect what was being said among the more enlightened
people? What was said around Socrates? Such a hypothesis would be a
very weak one. In the harshness of its tone, one is more tempted to see
a desire to please Sparta and to speak like a Spartan. After all, we know
from Plutarch that Alcibiades, the rogue, played that card with convic-
tion. He who had been so accustomed to luxury, to all the luxuries, had
instantly adopted Spartan ways, shaving his face clean, bathing in cold
water, and eating very lightly that awful “foul brew,” as if he had never
in his life seen a cook or a perfumer! 13 Plutarch actually remarks on this:
“He could change more abruptly than a chameleon” ( Alcibiades 23).
11. During this time of divisions, there was beginning to be an emphasis on the idea that democracy meant the power of the people “as a whole.” See 6.39.1 (“I say . . . that the word demos, or people, includes the whole state.”). This idea will save Athens during the troubles of 411. See 8.93.3.
12. See Isocrates 16.36.
13. 23.3.
Exile 95
Given all this, why would he not assume the tone of a confi rmed oligarch
by simply twisting his words a bit? So what if that meant betraying a regime
that he had served and would serve again later, with apparent conviction?
In Thucydides’s speeches, it is always a pleasure to see how the favor-
able elements and the unfavorable ones blend quite naturally, in a manner
as complex as, but more ironic than, in reality. In this one, the reason-
able argument is made alongside hypocritical exaggeration, realism next
to cajolery. For anyone who reads the text carefully, these subtleties are
striking; ultimately, they render a clearer picture of Alcibiades than the
subtlest psychological analysis.
Finally, the last justifi cation, also the most general one, bears on a serious
issue; and it becomes, in the speech, even more revealing than the previous
two. In it, Alcibiades must prove that he is doing nothing wrong in aiding
the enemies of his homeland—in other words, in committing treason.
This text is so important and also so striking that it is worth quoting
the passage (92.2–4). We see in it a refl ection on the homeland as the
country where one enjoys certain privileges, and that ceases to be a home-
land when those rights are denied; hence, love of one’s homeland means
desiring to retake it with arms.
Meanwhile I hope that none of you will think any the worse of me if after
having hitherto passed as a lover of my country, I now actively join its worst
enemies in attacking it, or will suspect what I say as the fruit of an out-
law’s enthusiasm. I am an outlaw from the iniquity of those who drove me
forth, not, if you will be guided by me, from your service; my worst enemies
are not you who only harmed your foes, but they who forced their friends
to become enemies; 14 and love of country is what I do not feel when I am wronged, but what I felt when secure in my rights as a citizen. Indeed I do
not consider that I am attacking a country that is still mine; I am rather
trying to recover one that is mine no longer; and the true lover of his country
is not he who consents to lose it unjustly rather than attack it, but he who
longs for it so much that he will go to all lengths to recover it. 15
14. In this fi nal word of the phrase, it is no longer a matter of enemies in war, but of Alcibiades having become the enemy of Athens while being its friend: he becomes an enemy in both senses of the word!
15. It will not come as a
surprise to read in the book by A. Vlachos, in which a faithful servant of Alcibiades talks about his life, one part of the speech in Sparta quoted, but not this part!
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Amazing Alcibiades: to hear him tell it, he is the model patriot for attack-
ing his country.
To understand the full import of the text, of course, we should think
about the eternal problem of exiles returning “in the wagons of the
enemy.” Every self-respecting Greek posed a problem in terms that are
true for other times. But at the same time, we must go back centuries in
our minds, when the Greek city was constantly confronted with the prob-
lem of exiles and their desire to come home.
During the political fi ghting of the sixth and fi fth centuries BCE, it
was normal to see a whole group of citizens sent into exile: once it was
the expulsion of partisans of the oligarchy, or the rich; then it was the
democrats’ turn. And naturally, they immediately started plotting their
return, soliciting the aid of other cities. Sparta and Athens, or Athens
and Corinth, had a habit of intervening in ways that, under cover of
helping the exiles, served their own prestige and power. The Pelopon-
nesian War began by such battles between Epidamnus and Corcyra; and
we read often phrases like “the last act before the war was the expulsion
of those in power by the people. The exiled party joined the barbar-
ians.” (1.24.5). “The Corcyraean revolution began with the return of
the prisoners taken in the sea fi ght off Epidamnus” (3.70.1). In fact it
was in regard to the unrest in Corcyra that Thucydides begins his broad
analysis of the civil wars in Greece (3.82). Similarly, we have seen how
Argos went from one side to another, groups of men being displaced or
brought back, and the fi ghting increased against this or that city “that
had welcomed the banished.” 16
It is this aspect of political life in ancient Greece that in a sense justifi es
Alcibiades’s reasoning. There is a difference, however, and it is signifi cant.
Alcibiades was the leader, the one responsible, who knew everything: his
crossing over to the enemy was more serious. Moreover, he was not re-
questing help in returning to his country: he was offering instead to help
Sparta defeat his country—his return being only a possible, but uncertain,
result of that defeat. Last, he was doing this at a moment when Athens
was fully engaged (thanks to him) and risked losing everything (again
thanks to him). The desire to return had taken on the appearance of mer-
ciless revenge.
16. See above, chapter 3. And for the last case, 5.83.3.
Exile 97
In an amazing stroke, some years later the problem would again en-
fl ame passions. Athens was defeated in 404, and Sparta installed an oli-
garchy there. The democrats left in exile, then returned in glory; they
fought, triumphed, and freed Athens. That would be one of the proudest
moments in Athenian history, particularly as the democrats knew how to
exercise moderation and civic sensibility; they achieved national reconcili-
ation, one that would be respected.
Alcibiades was gone. But he had a son, who seems to have inherited
his taste for scandal but not his genius. This son had trials that were, in-
directly, those of his father. There we fi nd again the whole debate about
the exiled patriot.
Isocrates, in a speech pleading on behalf of the son, recalls that Alcibi-
ades, in exile, had fought against his country; then right away he refers
to the liberation of Athens by the democrats: they too had fought against
her: “Did you not seize the Piraeus and destroy the crops in the fi elds and
harry the land and set fi re to the suburbs and fi nally assault the walls?” 17
This is very close to the argument Alcibiades makes in Thucydides, only in
the later case there is a positive reminder of a moment of glory.
The young man’s adversaries, and so those of his father also, point out
the faulty reasoning and protest against it. Lysias, 18 in a speech against the younger man (for a different occasion), states:
For he has the audacity to say that Alcibiades has done nothing outrageous
in marching against his native land, since you in your exile occupied Phyle,
cut down trees and assaulted the walls, and by these acts of yours, instead
of bequeathing disgrace to your children, won honor in the eyes of all the
world; as though there were no difference in the deserts of men who used
their exile to march in the ranks of the enemy against their country and those
who strove for their return while the Lacedaemonians held the city! And
again, I think it must be obvious to all that these others sought to return that
they might surrender the command of the sea to the Lacedaemonians and
gain the command of you for themselves; whereas your democracy, on its
return, expelled the enemy and liberated even those of our citizens who de-
sired to be slaves. 19
17. Isocrates, On the Horses 16.13.
18. Or the author of the speech passed down in his name. See the preface.
19. Lysias 14.32–34.
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Of course, the comparison with the exiles of 404, appealing and fl attering,
helped to limit, to some degree, the difference between the two cases. This is
yet another example of the way in which with the Greeks, problems are re-
vealed and defi ned on the basis of experience and in the light of argument.
The speech that is found in Thucydides could not make a comparison
with events that would not occur for more than ten years. This speech is
assuredly characteristic of Thucydides’s work. It is also characteristic of
the intelligence and unscrupulous insolence of Alcibiades.
What gives his treason and the strength of his conviction in the speech
such gravity is that within these diverse arguments appear certain proposi-
tions, revelations, and opinions that were going to change the course of
Greek history. Whatever modern examples one might think of or imagine—
spies crossing from East to West, scientists in atomic research, treasonous
generals—no traitor ever brought more to an enemy.
The least one can say is that Alcibiades did not come empty-handed.
Among Alcibiades’s recommendations that would come to have great
weight are two that are part of his speech in Sparta. Apart from revealing
the “great design” that Alcibiades had kept secret from Athens and the
plans he offers to excite the Lacedaemonians, we should pause to con-
sider these two pieces of advice that the Spartans in fact followed and
that proved especially effective. First, of course, was the advice to help
Syracuse, to cause the Athenian expedition to fail. But how exactly? Not
by sending just any small number of troops that would be more or less
helpful. No! Alcibiades wanted more and knew what would be really ef-
fective there: “Send on board ship to Syracuse troops that will be able
to row their ships themselves and serve as hoplites the moment that they
land; and what I consider even more important than the troops, a Spar-
tiate as commanding offi cer to
discipline the forces already on foot and to
compel shirkers to serve. The friends you already have will thus become
more confi dent, and the waverers will be encouraged to join you.” 20
And that is what was done. Gylippus was named to lead the troops;
he was responsible for training the troops needed in agreement with the
Corinthians. So it began.
20. 6.91.4.
Exile 99
The last chapters of book 6 of Thucydides and the fi rst chapters of
book 7 cover events between the efforts of Nicias and the arrival of Gylip-
pus. Many peoples rallied to the cause, owing to “the energy Gylippus
seems to have brought from Sparta.” From the outset, Alcibiades’s advice
had proven sound. At last Gylippus arrived. And he arrived at the very
moment that Athens was about to fi nish its wall around Syracuse. As the
sober Thucydides notes: “The danger to Syracuse had indeed been great”
(7.2.4).
From that point on, everything was going to unfold exactly as Alcibi-
ades hoped—unfortunately for Athens. In the course of book 7 we follow
a series of battles around Syracuse and in the great harbor; we also see
that, once resistance to Athens solidifi ed, many people rallied to the cause.
And throughout we fi nd Gylippus and Hermocrates together, the Spartan
and the Syracusan, each one as committed as the other, supporting and
complementing each other. Athens also sent reinforcements, but in vain.
We can imagine this fi nal Athenian effort, this stubborn hope. It seems
likely that Euripides is alluding to this at the end of his Electra , in 413, when the Dioscuri appear and announce, at the very end of the play: “We two
must rush to the Sicilian seas, rescue the salt-smashed prows of the fl eet.” 21
Nothing worked against the strategy organized by Alcibiades. The
Athenian general Demosthenes, who commanded the reinforcing fl eet
(not related to the orator of the same name in the next century), saw the
gravity of the situation as soon as he arrived (7.42.3–5). He wanted to
attempt a hasty action. It might work: if not, he would have to re-embark
and leave. We know how it ended: that rapid strike failed. Did he then
re-embark? Demosthenes wanted to; but Nicias, as usual, hesitated. The
result was an unprecedented defeat. Both sides had gambled everything
The Life of Alcibiades Page 15
