The Life of Alcibiades

The Life of Alcibiades PDF

Author: Jacqueline de Romilly

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1501739964

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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.

The Life of Alcibiades

The Life of Alcibiades PDF

Author: Jacqueline de Romilly

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1501739972

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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.

The Life of Alcibiades

The Life of Alcibiades PDF

Author: Jacqueline de Romilly

Publisher: Cornell Studies in Classical P

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781501719752

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"A translation of a biography of the Athenian general Alcibiades by Jacqueline de Romilly, a French scholar and member of the French Academy"--

Nemesis

Nemesis PDF

Author: David Stuttard

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2018-04-16

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0674919661

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Alcibiades was one of the most dazzling figures of the Golden Age of Athens. A ward of Pericles and a friend of Socrates, he was spectacularly rich, bewitchingly handsome and charismatic, a skilled general, and a ruthless politician. He was also a serial traitor, infamous for his dizzying changes of loyalty in the Peloponnesian War. Nemesis tells the story of this extraordinary life and the turbulent world that Alcibiades set out to conquer. David Stuttard recreates ancient Athens at the height of its glory as he follows Alcibiades from childhood to political power. Outraged by Alcibiades’ celebrity lifestyle, his enemies sought every chance to undermine him. Eventually, facing a capital charge of impiety, Alcibiades escaped to the enemy, Sparta. There he traded military intelligence for safety until, suspected of seducing a Spartan queen, he was forced to flee again—this time to Greece’s long-term foes, the Persians. Miraculously, though, he engineered a recall to Athens as Supreme Commander, but—suffering a reversal—he took flight to Thrace, where he lived as a warlord. At last in Anatolia, tracked by his enemies, he died naked and alone in a hail of arrows. As he follows Alcibiades’ journeys crisscrossing the Mediterranean from mainland Greece to Syracuse, Sardis, and Byzantium, Stuttard weaves together the threads of Alcibiades’ adventures against a backdrop of cultural splendor and international chaos. Navigating often contradictory evidence, Nemesis provides a coherent and spellbinding account of a life that has gripped historians, storytellers, and artists for more than two thousand years.

The Life of Alcibiades: The Idol of Athens

The Life of Alcibiades: The Idol of Athens PDF

Author: E. F. Benson

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2019-03

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1733537120

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Alcibiades (ca. 450 BC-ca. 404 BC) was the charismatic and controversial Athenian general and politician who promoted the Peloponnesian war against rival Sparta, who subsequently inspired Athens's failed Sicilian Expedition, and who later allied himself with two of Athens's biggest enemies: Sparta and Persia. His actions gravely affected the future of Athens and his motives and reasons for acting as he did are indeed the stuff of fascinating biography. Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940) was a prolific and much-loved English novelist, biographer and short story writer. He was educated at Marlborough College and King's College, Cambridge. Benson is most famous for a series of comic novels he published during the 1920s and 1930s--""Mapp and Lucia"". Benson was awarded an OBE and was made an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Revised, with Introduction, by Dr Craig Paterson. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Alcibiades

Alcibiades PDF

Author: P. J. Rhodes

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2011-07-12

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1848849826

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The renowned classicist presents an authoritative biography of one of the most infamous and colorful characters of Ancient Greece. A charismatic Athenian and close associate of Socrates, Alcibiades came to prominence during the Peloponnesian War when he helped form an alliance against Sparta. Although his gambit led to defeat, his prestige remained high, and he was elected to lead the Sicilian Expedition of 415 BC. Shortly after arrival in Sicily, however, Alcibiades was recalled to face charges of sacrilege allegedly committed during his pre-expedition reveling. Jumping ship on the return journey, he defected to the Spartans. Alcibiades quickly ingratiated himself with the Spartans, helping them to victory against his former countrymen. But he soon overstepped the bounds of hospitality by sleeping with the Spartan queen. On the run again, he began to play a dangerous game of shifting loyalties. He had a hand in engineering the overthrow of democracy at Athens in favor of an oligarchy, which allowed him to return from exile, though he then opposed the extreme excesses of that regime. For a time, Alcibiades restored Athens' fortunes in the war, but was soon forced into exile once again. This time he took refuge with the Persians, but as they were now allied to the Spartans, the cuckolded King Agis was able to arrange his assassination by Persian agents.

Alcibiades (Routledge Revivals)

Alcibiades (Routledge Revivals) PDF

Author: Walter M. Ellis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 131774683X

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In Alcibiades, first published in 1989, one of the most colourful and controversial figures of fifth-century Athens is presented in a sympathetic light. The author sets out to demonstrate how, in his manipulation of the Spartan representatives in 420 BC, in his successful formation of an Athenian-Argive alliance, and in his plan for the conquest of Syracuse, Alcibiades developed a style of leadership that was characterised by audacity, ingenuity and skilful diplomacy. Further, his outstanding generalship during the Hellespontine War prompts speculation on how the Sicilian expedition might have ended had he also been in command. In many respects the story of Alcibiades is the history of Athens in the twilight of its power; Alcibiades succeeds in constructing a continuous narrative of his political career without duplicating more conventional accounts, always focussing on his involvement in the course of the Peloponnesian War and his troubled relationship with his Athenian compatriots.

Socrates and Alcibiades

Socrates and Alcibiades PDF

Author: Ariel Helfer

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2017-05-02

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0812249135

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In Socrates and Alcibiades, Ariel Helfer provides a new interpretation of Plato's account of the relationship between Socrates and the infamous Athenian general Alcibiades, in the process revealing a complex Platonic teaching on the nature and corruptibility of political ambition.

The Ambition to Rule

The Ambition to Rule PDF

Author: Steven Forde

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-05-15

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1501745786

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This book is a fresh examination of Thucydides' treatment of Alcibiades in his History of the Peloponnesian War, Alcibiades' significance in the History, and his relation to Thucydides' political themes.

Sophocles and Alcibiades

Sophocles and Alcibiades PDF

Author: Michael Vickers

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-12-05

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1317492927

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Literary historians have long held the view that the plays of the Greek dramatist, Sophocles deal purely with archetypes of the heroic past and that any resemblance to contemporary events or individuals is purely coincidental. In this book, Michael Vickers challenges this view and argues that Sophocles makes regular and extensive allusion to Athenian politics in his plays, especially to Alcibiades, one of the most controversial Athenian politicians of his day.Vickers shows that Sophocles was no closeted intellectual but a man deeply involved in politics and he reminds us that Athenian politics was intensely personal. He argues cogently that classical writers employed hidden meanings and that consciously or sub-consciously, Sophocles was projecting onto his plays hints of contemporary events or incidents, mostly of a political nature, hoping that his audience's passion for politics would enhance the popularity of his plays. Vickers strengthens his case about Sophocles by discussing other authors - Thucydides, Plato and Euripides - in whom he also demonstrates a body of allusions to Alcibiades and others.