The Life of Alcibiades

This biography of Alcibiades, the charismatic Athenian statesman and general (c. 450–404 BC) who achieved both renown and infamy during the Peloponnesian War, is both an extraordinary adventure story and a cautionary tale that reveals the dangers that political opportunism and demagoguery pose to democracy. As Jacqueline de Romilly brilliantly documents, Alcibiades's life is one of wanderings and vicissitudes, promises and disappointments, brilliant successes and ruinous defeats. Born into a wealthy and powerful family in Athens, Alcibiades was a student of Socrates and disciple of Pericles, and he seemed destined to dominate the political life of his city—and his tumultuous age.

Romilly shows, however, that he was too ambitious. Haunted by financial and sexual intrigues and political plots, Alcibiades was exiled from Athens, sentenced to death, recalled to his homeland, only to be exiled again. He defected from Athens to Sparta and from Sparta to Persia and then from Persia back to Athens, buffeted by scandal after scandal, most of them of his own making. A gifted demagogue and, according to his contemporaries, more handsome than the hero Achilles, Alcibiades is also a strikingly modern figure, whose seductive celebrity and dangerous ambition anticipated current crises of leadership.

Translator's Preface
Author's Preface
Chronology
1. Richly Endowed
2. Insults and Scandals
First Interlude: Alcibiades between Two Lifestyles
3. Political Debut: The Argive Alliance
4. The Grand Design
5. The Scandals
6. Exile: Defending Treason
7. In Asia Minor
8. With the Athenians on Samos
Second Interlude: Alcibiades between Two Historians
9. A Triumphal Return
10. Slightly More Than One Hundred Days
11. A Final Appearance
12. Repercussions
Conclusion
Index