portrayed in the Gorgias .
But in particular, these reprises evince a similarity in their general in-
spiration. The Gorgias , as we know, is about rhetoric, but also, besides
rhetoric, about practical success obtained in defi ance of justice. The dia-
logue takes place over three periods and with three interlocutors, each
increasingly forceful. The last one, Callicles, is not familiar from any other
work and is neither a sophist nor a teacher of rhetoric: he is an ambitious
man, ambitious without limits, without scruples, who defends the right of
the strongest. This quality alone suggests that the memory of Alcibiades
is not far away.
Naturally, I am not claiming that Callicles is Alcibiades: that is not the
point. I explained elsewhere that Callicles seems to me to be a fi ctional
Repercussions 187
fi gure meant to express outwardly what is hidden at the heart of the teach-
ing of the sophists as some disciples understood it. 17 This is unchecked ambition, the same ambition that Euripides portrayed in high relief in 410
in the character of Eteocles, 18 and which was denounced by Thucydides in the same period, the period of the most disgraceful plots. We have to
think that Plato too, more than anyone else, was making a connection to
the most ambitious of all, Alcibiades. Callicles is not Alcibiades, but there
is a lot of Alcibiades in him. More to the point, Socrates uses the occasion
to condemn the same behavior as it relates to states, and the error of those
who try to acquire power through force. Everyone knew that he was talk-
ing about the empire of Athens, the imperial tyranny that expanded and
then sank of its own weight. Could Plato not have been thinking of the
man who was the author of the great plan, who had wanted to conquer
not just Sicily but the entire Greek world for Athens, and who in the end
left the city without its allies, its fl eet, or its walls? Alcibiades was included
in that condemnation as well.
Moreover, toward the end of the dialogue, Socrates, criticizing the po-
litical leaders of Athens who had pursued power at the expense of justice,
says that the city, having grown fat on advantages, and feeling itself slip
into the weakness that naturally follows, will begin to blame their suc-
cessors: “And if you are not on your guard, they may perhaps lay hands
on you and on my friend Alcibiades, when they have lost what they once
owned in addition to what they have since acquired, though you are not
the authors of their troubles, but perhaps the collaborators in, them”
(519a–b).
Alcibiades’s name, and the allusion to future disappointments, seems to
be both a confi rmation and an admission: the example of Alcibiades fos-
tered Plato’s thinking and led him to transform the virtuous principles of
the teacher, to which Alcibiades did not adhere, into a deepened political
theory about politics and its aims.
All of this does not end here: besides the Gorgias, there is the Republic , an analysis of what justice ought to be in a state. The work emphasizes the
17. Les grands sophistes dans l’Athènes de Périclès (Fallois, 1988), 210–17. Nor do I accept the absence of Alcibiades’s scruples on the teaching of the sophists, as Bloedow does: Klio (1991): 64–65. In both cases, the connection is an indirect one.
18. See above, chapter 8.
188 Chapter
12
necessity of subordinating everything to the good of the whole. Alcibiades
has been forgotten, but his life gave rise to questions that would continue
to grow at the heart of Platonism. We could say, fi nally, that what might
seem excessive in the rigor of Plato’s city can be explained by a fear of see-
ing the rebirth in a city of an Alcibiades or a Callicles.
Before we leave Plato, the analysis of these ideas allows us to pause
briefl y at Plato’s conclusions and to compare them to Thucydides’s
conclusions.
Both authors blame ambition and see in it the cause of the fi nal disas-
ter. But Plato and Thucydides identify a different point at which ambition
goes too far.
Thucydides thought the government of Pericles was excellent, that his
policy was a wise one, and that if Athens had just listened to him, it would
have triumphed in the war and held the empire. Thucydides describes how
the empire became harsh and more and more ambitious; and that led to a
growing number of hostilities and to poor decisions that caused it to fall.
But for Thucydides, there had been a time when Athens was great, a time
he extols through the words of Pericles, in brilliant terms. He talks force-
fully about the city’s principles, its irresistible character, and its beauty.
He links Athens to virtue itself: “Feast your eyes on her from day to day,
till love of her fi lls your hearts; and then when all her greatness will break
upon you, you must refl ect that it was by courage, sense of duty, and a keen
feeling of honor in action that men were enabled to win all this” (2.43.1).
Thucydides makes a clear distinction between Pericles and his successors,
between the time of civic responsibility and that of personal ambitions.
Plato, on the other hand, includes all the great men of the past—
Themistocles, Cimon, Miltiades, Pericles—in his censure. He blames the
very principle of empire, of political power itself. He makes a connection
between Alcibiades and his predecessors. And for this reason we must re-
turn to the ideal state—ideal and unreal. The divorce between the political
thought of the historian and political philosophy is right here: Alcibiades’s
troubles are etched in these two diverging categories.
All of that would make a strongly coherent logic were it not for the
dialogue with which this book opens, namely the Symposium . Now, at the
end of our journey, we must return to it.
Why was the disciple who came to ruin chosen as the most brilliant fi g-
ure in this dialogue? Why bestow on him, of all people, Socrates’s ringing
Repercussions 189
praise, praise that is found nowhere else in this work? Why here, this
open, perceptive Alcibiades, so close to Socrates? Is this not inconsistent
with the later reaction and condemnation that we have just seen?
We should fi rst note that, even in these texts about his life and the
political role that Alcibiades ultimately adopted, Plato’s tone, or at least
the tone he has Socrates express, always contains a trace of affectionate
indulgence. In the Alcibiades , he has no diffi culty perceiving the potential
of the adolescent Alcibiades. The skepticism he shows in acknowledging
this potential is a nice way of showing that though he does not doubt Al-
cibiades, he doubts those forces that will weigh “on you and on me.” In
the Gorgias , at the moment of the most dire predictions about the future,
he again refers to “my friend Alcibiades.” This phrase refl ects a charming
reluctance to call him guilty; instead, he is “just a little complicit.”
In the Symposium, the subject of the dialogue is not ambition or poli-
tics; it is love. Just as the prophetess Diotima, whom Socrates quotes,
presents the benefi ts of love as giving birth to the b
eautiful, just as the love
she describes inspires in the one who loves the most beautiful thoughts in
order to share them with the beloved, thoughts that lead each one to the
contemplation of the Beautiful, so the teaching of Socrates, inspired by
love and inspiring love, may lead souls to the other type of love, lead them
to the Good. This is no longer a time for rigorous dialectic, nor for argu-
ments about the just. Now another quality is introduced, one that links
Socrates’s teaching to a kind of religious initiation, and that evolves from
love in the ordinary sense of the word to love of the Good.
To suggest this novel quality, Socrates could only be invoked by a man
inspired—even intoxicated—by a man with whom Socrates had a close
and affectionate friendship; by a man above all capable of discovering
that the kind of love Socrates bore for him was different from what he
expected, from the kind with which he was familiar.
The text then unfolds on two planes, as we mentioned earlier without
trying to explain the reason for it: 19 fi rst, a portrait of Socrates as seen by someone with enough self-confi dence to speak freely, but also sensitive
enough to admit to feeling confused, moved, troubled, by the revelations
Socrates reveals to him; and second, a simple account, but one full of
19. Above, chapter 2.
190 Chapter
12
self-conscious irony—the account of an amorous overture that ends with
a lofty lesson about pure love and pure beauty.
At the end of this episode, Alcibiades is both vexed and full of respect.
He understands how exceptional Socrates is. He grasps the wonder of
teaching by intimation, and of this sacred discourse, “approaching all that
should be kept in mind if one is to become a man of honor.”
Alcibiades concludes with these words. The admission that he ex-
presses in this passage is the best possible illustration of this transposition
of love, placing at the heart of Platonism a warmth and an intensity that
the dialectic too often causes us to forget.
There is, then, no contradiction between the texts that we have seen
and this one: one may regret the choices Alcibiades made in his life and
take from them a moral lesson, and at the same time recognize in him,
better than in anyone else, the interpreter of the miracle associated with
the fi gure of Socrates, a miracle by which love is elevated to the Good and
makes one want it.
We have no hesitation recognizing at the end of this book what we saw
at the beginning—the image of a seductive and provocative young man,
wearing an ivy and violet crown, who arrives late at a banquet, already
drunk. We can forget the adventures that will come, the plots and betray-
als, the glory and the death. We can, in spite of everything, love Alcibi-
ades, the beautiful Alcibiades. And we can imagine that the extraordinary
turmoil of his life can be appreciated in scale and substance only in juxta-
position with the portrait drawn by a writer of an imagined dialogue, with
which Alcibiades had nothing to do.
What remains, as always, is literary art.
Conclusion
Alcibiades has come down to us by the dual path of historical and literary
texts. The story of his life requires consulting both kinds of sources. The
honors bestowed on his tomb by the emperor Hadrian have served as the
epilogue of Alcibiades’s death. This is not surprising since Hadrian was
known to be an admirer of Greek culture. Nor is it surprising that culti-
vated Romans knew about Alcibiades. They read Plato, the Greek histori-
ans, and later Plutarch. Cicero often quoted our hero. And in addition to
the biography written by Cornelius Nepos, cited frequently in this work,
we encounter Alcibiades in all the scholars of the imperial age: Valerius
Maximus, Frontinus, Justin.
After that? A heavy veil of silence fell. There is no mention of Alcibi-
ades through the Middle Ages until the reappearance of Greek texts.
In the fi fteenth century we fi nd, in an odd source, an indication of just
how unfamiliar these facts and names had become. It was Villon actually,
whose Ballade des dames du temps jadis added to the names of famous
courtesans the name of one Archepiada, in whom some scholars found
192 Conclusion
( horresco referens! ) an echo, distorted in both name and gender, of that
individual who fi gures among the famous men of Plutarch and Cornelius
Nepos! 1 Are the scholars correct? Could they be? The fact that they even considered such a hypothesis is a measure of how far there was to go before Alcibiades would again be known. That distance, however, was soon
to be covered during the Renaissance. Just one century later, Montaigne
cited Alcibiades in his Essais some fi fteen times, with details. He knew the
anecdotes and scandals recounted in Plato. He took an interest in Alcibi-
ades’s beauty, in the affectation of his lisp. Montaigne was familiar with
the references in Plato’s Symposium , and with other sources on Socrates. 2
On the whole the persona appealed to him and aroused his sympathy. One
is even a bit surprised to see how far that sympathy sometimes went: in
Essai 2.36, in which he refers to important men, he goes so far as to write:
“For a man who was no saint, but, as we say, a gentleman, of civilian and
ordinary manners, and of moderate ambition, the richest life that I know,
and full of the richest and most desirable parts, all things considered, is,
in my opinion, that of Alcibiades.” What? This man who betrayed his
country, was twice exiled, and died by assassination with no one to defend
him? The validation is almost as confusing as the strange metamorphosis
granted by some scholars to Villon and his Archepiada! Was Montaigne
guided by Plato’s dazzling texts? Was he seduced by Plutarch’s testimony?
He was not, in any case, guided by a sound knowledge of history or by
the analysis of Thucydides.
Equally surprising was the emergence, in the next century, of the fi gure
of Alcibiades in Campistron’s tragedy of 1685. The play bears Alcibiades’s
name and portrays his death, not in a lonely fort in upper Phrygia, but at
the Persian court, in the presence of the king and satrap, as well as of two
women, both in love with him. Alcibiades is himself also in love. Since this
was the end of the seventeenth century, how could it be otherwise? He is
secretly in love with the king’s daughter. Furthermore, he is no traitor;
rather, he has refused to lead the Persian army out of loyalty to Greece! He
is, to be sure, endowed with that familiar boldness and seductive charm.
And he is an exile. But that is all. All the rest arises out of the imagination
1. And isn’t this metamorphosis as surprising to us as fi nding, among the martyrs of Lyon in 177, a Saint Alcibiades?
2. One or two of the allusions are still somewhat mysterious and could be mistakes.
Conclusion 193
of the author, informed by his reading of Plutarch and by the memory of
Themistocles.
History was moving forward, however. In the following century, au-
thors like Mably, l’abbé Barthélemy, and Rollin readily cite Alc
ibiades in
the context of Greek history. Scholarship became more rigorous; sources
were categorized, facts better established. That is not to say that everyone
knew about Alcibiades. If we examine the random references in textbooks,
we fi nd that Alcibiades is often little known and hastily condemned. These
manuals mention only his guilt in the affair of the herms, largely based on
a misunderstanding, or the incident of the dog with its tail cut off, with no
sense of the alarming signifi cance of the incident. Those with more knowl-
edge knew how exceptional an individual he was, one who had known
highs and lows, great glory and great suffering. They did not, however,
fully understand how these extremes related to each other and why.
The linkages between these aspects of Alcibiades’s story and the reasons
for them take on greater meaning for us today and deserve our thoughtful
consideration. These are the relationships I have sought to emphasize, and
the ones with which I want to conclude.
Like everyone else, I am affected by the exceptional quality of this in-
dividual and by his fate. I admit that I would have experienced less plea-
sure in writing this book if the wild adventures of the man, his successes,
his boldness, and the dramatic vicissitudes of his life had not amazed me
and left me breathless—even knowing in advance the trajectory and the
outcome. A contemporary of Alcibiades said that Greece could not have
endured two Alcibiades. 3 At his best and at his worst he had no equal; nor did his life’s story.
I am above all, however, a reader of Thucydides, and constrained by
the strength of his analyses. Moreover, I have written this book at a time
when we are living in a democracy and when, as we face daily crises and
problems, we feel an urgent need to understand them and to work to
resolve them. Given my scholarly and intellectual ambience, I could not
have continued with the portrayal of Alcibiades’s exceptional life without
being sensitive to the associations and refl ections his life inspires in us
today.
3. Plutarch 16.8.
194 Conclusion
In this respect, I have been well served: on every page, there seemed to
be a detail that signaled something for me, more or less clearly, about our
own time; and from page to page, in light of Thucydides’s commentary, I
The Life of Alcibiades Page 28
