Alcibiades

Alcibiades was famous for his exceptional beauty, which persisted at any age, and was considered one of the most attractive people of his time. Ancient sources, including Antisthenes, described him as a man with features worthy of Achilles, noting extraordinary physical strength, courage and refined appearance. Contemporaries described him as an exceptionally handsome, charming, yet depraved and arrogant person.

Alcibiades was one of the most prominent members of Athens’ “golden youth.” For a time, he was close to Socrates, but he did not embrace his philosophy. Alcibiades grew up extremely spoiled and depraved. He led an extravagant life consisting of drunken binges and promiscuous affairs. In the military sphere, Alcibiades assigned a large role to the navy and expanding the scope of its use (actions on sea communications, blockade of the coast, invasion from the sea into enemy territory). As later historians have written, even in his youth, alongside noble traits of character and considerable abilities, he displayed self-love, frivolity, audacity, arrogance, and a passionate desire to be first in everything. His beauty, noble birth, and Pericles’ influence won him many friends and admirers; Socrates also had a great influence on him, but the good aspects of his character could no longer prevail over the bad. At the same time, he had a speech impediment (a lisp), which his sons also inherited from him. Even in his youth, he led an extravagant life, full of promiscuous romantic relationships with hetaerae and lovers. Alcibiades managed to charm Tissaphernes, who, according to ancient sources, hated the Greeks and the Greek way of life. Tissaphernes followed most of Alcibiades’ advice and called him a friend.

Hipponicus gave his daughter Hipparete in marriage to Alcibiades. However, this marriage was not a happy one. Hipparete was given in marriage to Alcibiades by her father with an unprecedented dowry of 10 talents (before 422 B.C.). After the birth of their first child, Alcibiades tried to extort the same amount from her brother Callias, and this led to a conflict. Alcibiades openly brought hetaerae—both slaves and free women—into his home, which his wife (even though she loved him) could not accept and sought a divorce. For a woman, achieving this was no easy task; she had to personally submit a petition for protection to the archon in the Agora. By opposing the divorce, Alcibiades was fighting not for his wife, but for the enormous dowry, which would otherwise have to be returned to her family. Alcibiades also had a son, Leotychides, from the Spartan queen Timea—but that's not certain. While on Samos in 411 BC. e., he managed to have children with some Samian aristocrats.

Alcibiades belonged to the ancient Attic aristocracy, which traced its lineage back to mythological heroes. His ancestors were considered to be the legendary kings of the island of Salamis from the Aeacidae family: Ajax the Greater (great-grandson of Zeus, cousin of Achilles, hero of the Iliad) and Ajax’s son Euryx, who had moved from his kingdom to Athens. Alcibiades’s great-great-grandfather, who bore the same name, was a comrade-in-arms of the Athenian reformer Cleisthenes and participated in the expulsion of the Pisistratids in 510 BCE. His son, Clinius, distinguished himself in the Battle of Artemisium against the Persians in 480 BCE, commanding a trireme he had equipped at his own expense. The latter’s son, Alcibiades the Elder, was subjected to ostracism around the 460s BCE due to his pro-Lacedaemonian sympathies and went into exile (it is unknown whether he was able to return after 10 years or died in exile). Alcibiades the Elder’s son, Clinius, restored the family’s standing thanks to his closeness to Pericles—an outstanding aristocratic politician and leader of the democratic “party.” Clinius’s wife and Alcibiades’s mother was Dinomache, a member of the Alcmaeonid family—one of the most distinguished and influential families in Attica. After Alcibiades, another son, Clinius, was born into the family. In 447 BCE, when Alcibiades was about three years old, his father was killed in the Battle of Coronea. The boys’ uncles, Pericles and Ariphron, became their guardians. Even in his childhood and youth, Alcibiades proved himself to be a well-rounded and gifted individual. He grew up surrounded by universal respect and admiration and was known throughout the city.

As he grew older, Alcibiades entered public life in the circle of Pericles and Socrates. Ancient sources place him with Socrates at Potidaea in 432 BCE and again at Delium in 424 BCE, where he is said to have helped cover Socrates’ retreat. By the 420s he had become a recognized speaker in the Assembly, and in 420 BCE he was elected general for the first time. In that period he opposed Nicias and helped draw Athens into an anti-Spartan alliance with Argos, Elis, and Mantineia; the coalition was defeated by Sparta at Mantineia in 418 BCE. In 416 BCE he restored his standing in a highly public way by entering seven chariots at Olympia and taking first, second, and fourth places. The following year, 415 BCE, he helped persuade Athens to launch the Sicilian Expedition against Syracuse, alongside Nicias and Lamachus. Before the fleet sailed, the mutilation of the hermae and accusations that he had profaned the Eleusinian Mysteries created a political crisis. He demanded an immediate inquiry, but his enemies ensured that he departed with the charges still pending. Shortly after reaching Sicily, Alcibiades was recalled, but he escaped on the journey home. He learned that he had been condemned in absentia to death and went to Sparta. There he urged the Spartans to send Gylippus to Syracuse and to fortify Decelea in Attica, both of which became serious blows to Athens. In Sparta he also became a conspicuous figure at court and in public life, while the war in the Aegean continued to widen around him.

In 412 BCE he moved to Sardis and attached himself to the Persian governor Tissaphernes. When Athenian officers at Samos were preparing an oligarchic coup, Alcibiades held out the prospect of Persian support if the democracy were overthrown, but the plan failed and the new regime in Athens did not secure him. The Athenian fleet at Samos then recalled him, and from 411 to 408 BCE he helped restore Athenian fortunes at sea. Under his command, the Athenians defeated the Spartan fleet at Abydos in 411 BCE and at Cyzicus in 410 BCE, regaining control of the Hellespont and the grain route from the Black Sea. These successes brought him back to Athens in 407 BCE, where he was received with enthusiasm and given supreme control over the war. That same year he led the procession to Eleusis by road despite the Spartan presence at Decelea, but after a minor naval defeat in his absence his political enemies persuaded the people to remove him again, and he withdrew to a fortress in Thrace. When the Athenians later lost their fleet at Aegospotami in 405 BCE, he warned them of the danger, but they ignored him. He then took refuge in Phrygia with the Persian governor Pharnabazus, and in 404 BCE he was killed there at Spartan instigation. Plutarch described Alcibiades’ death as follows: “The assassins did not dare to enter the house, but surrounded it and set it on fire. Noticing the fire that had broken out, Alcibiades gathered all the and threw them over the fire; then, wrapping his left arm in a cloak and clutching a drawn sword in his right, he safely leaped through the flames before the cloaks he had thrown could catch fire, and, appearing before the barbarians, scattered them with his mere presence. No one dared to block his path or engage him in hand-to-hand combat—having retreated far away, they hurled spears and shot arrows. Finally, Alcibiades fell, and the barbarians withdrew (...)»