playing for A and sometimes for B, taking the course of opposing his own
expedition and its great plan. This became more serious than any other
imprudence. But, indisputably, it was the result of the “affairs” that had
torn Athens apart.
In these pages, I have had the habit of putting “affairs” in quotation marks.
I would not have thought to do this as recently as just fi ve or six years ago.
Reality today brought to mind this connection to the various scandals that
are breaking out all the time in our country and in Italy, England, now the
United States, and Japan. And I do not do it with a wink, as a crude way
of interesting readers today, at any price, in Greek history. In fact, the con-
nection is not simplistic and the resemblance is greater than it may seem.
It is instructive to see a demonstration of one of the greatest dangers that
can threaten democracies, everywhere and at all times.
For that, we must return to the great analysis of Thucydides book 2,
one passage of which we have just quoted. The general idea expressed
there is that the successors of Pericles, too equal to each other, and each
one incapable of gaining a clear superiority, reached the point where they
had to fl atter the people. Each aspired to the leading position, and showed
himself incapable of attaining it without a serious struggle. In addition,
they were willing to use whatever means necessary.
The discord linked to the affair of the herms and to that of the myster-
ies is one example. But the ongoing disputes between Nicias and Alcibi-
ades regarding the Argive alliance and the plots leading to the ostracism of
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Hyperbolus had been a warning sign. During these years, we have seen the
effort to defeat one’s adversaries by very dubious means. For Alcibiades,
this ambition seems to have been matched by his concern for fi nancial
gain. Thucydides, at least, indicates this clearly on several occasions. 23 In other words, the pursuit of personal profi t, at whatever level it may be, is
more important than concern for the public good.
“Affairs” are simply a refl ection of either power struggles or greed.
They are, as they were for Athens, the warning sign of a decline in public
service among politicians, leading to a decline in the state itself.
In any case, if the warnings retain their meaning today, we must also
recognize that the nature of “affairs,” whatever the era, differs very little.
Even if Alcibiades’s policies were partly inspired by the desire for profi t,
the scandals that led to his exile were all religious in nature: that is what
moves public opinion and leads to an upheaval. The “affair” that over-
whelmed the beginning of the twentieth century involved nationalism.
Today, our “affairs” are most often fi nancial, either directly or indirectly: 24
each era has the affairs that fi t it.
In any case, they are a serious matter. They are all symptomatic of a
profound crisis, whether the charges are legitimate or not. If they are,
they expose a moral crisis in the political ranks; if they are not and are
brought up in an arbitrary way, then they bring to light bitter egotistical
fi ghts that have replaced real debate about the public good. The “affairs”
in 415 seem to represent the accumulation of both aspects. It may well be
the same in our own time.
To return to Alcibiades, and to the enormous upheaval caused by his exile:
there is another lesson to be drawn from the events of that time.
Alcibiades seems, in the fi nal analysis, to have been, in all these events,
more a victim than a guilty party. Yes, in his habitual irreverence, he may
have been drawn, to some extent, into a farce mocking the mysteries. And
that was imprudent. Wouldn’t it have seemed imprudent, given his grand
plan? At a moment when he was completely involved in this grand plan,
23. See 2.65.8 (judgment of Pericles); 6.12.2 (speech of Nicias: Alcibiades “seeks to use his position to help cover his enormous expenses”); 6.15.3 (Thucydides’s evaluation: “His tastes exceeded his resources, for maintaining his stable as well as his other expenses”).
24. This might involve stealing money or contributing it illegally by allowing something to be sold or gained in the market.
The
Scandals 87
he was surely not involved in vague conspiracies (moreover, how would a
private farce imply a conspiracy?). Yet it is entirely clear that people were
after him. They had found a basis for accusing him. They sought a mo-
ment to combine the two affairs. They refused to let him defend himself
before the departure of the expedition. They may have exaggerated the
facts that incriminated him. This hostility to him was signifi cant.
Was it, then, unjust? Probably not. This is where the tragedy that
struck, so abruptly taking him from the peak of success to ruin and exile,
becomes exemplary.
Why, really, all the acrimony against him? Jealousy? Maybe in part
(and he did nothing to calm it or to avoid causing it). Remember all the
early scandals! That wealth, that insolence, these controversial state-
ments, the desire to shock. And then there was that vanity about his
Olympic successes. And what about all the people he had deceived or
betrayed—everyone from the friend who asked him to buy a chariot team
to his in-laws to poor Hyperbolus, not to mention the friends among the
Lacedaemonian delegation? In the end, that is what turned everything
against him. He wanted too much. He did too much. Wasn’t he in it only
for himself? Was it perhaps true that he aspired to tyranny? And was that
tolerable? Impudence may be attractive from a distance, but it breeds ir-
ritation and calls for a reaction.
Listen once more to what Thucydides says: “Alarmed at the greatness
of the license in his own life and habits, and at the ambition he showed in
all things whatsoever that he undertook, the mass of the people marked
him as aspiring to tyranny and became his enemies.” And later: “In his
private life his habits gave offense to everyone and caused them to com-
mit affairs to other hands and thus before long to ruin the city” (6.15.4).
From the fi rst, scandals marked Alcibiades’s early life; they were soon
used against him. In all the injustices done him, there is also a kind of
justice: a justice that says scorn for the laws of morality and society will
cause resentment and will, in one form or another, backfi re.
This is the idea that Isocrates, in the next century, will use as the basis
for his speech urging all princes and leaders to work for the good, for the
devotion and support of all.
In fact, the different aspects of Alcibiades’s behavior are interrelated.
The same ambition that inspired his plan to conquer the Greek world was
realized in his conduct by unrestrained insolence. His insolence provoked
88 Chapter
5
reactions that led quickly to the ruin of both the plan and the man himself.
It is like a game of billiards in which one ball touches another and then by
ricochet hits a third that had appeared quite distant.
Events go so quickly in this year 416 that
we can almost hear the sound
of these successive strikes that end in the fall of the hero. This fall leads
him from summit to the abyss, like Oedipus in Sophocles:
Hence he was called my king and hence
was honored the highest of all
honours; and hence he ruled
in the great city of Thebes.
But now whose tale is more miserable?
Who is there lives with a savager fate?
Whose troubles so reverse his life as his? 25
But unlike Oedipus, Alcibiades had not said his last word. He no longer
had position or property or country. We would fail to understand him if
we supposed that he gave up the game. He shocked the entire Greek world
by the audacity with which he now reacted.
25. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, translated by David Grene (University of Chicago Press, 1991), lines 1202–6.
6
Exile
Defending Treason
Having broken with Athens, Alcibiades was a fugitive. His homeland had
become an enemy city.
His treachery began before he even left Sicily. He revealed to Messina,
the ally of Syracuse, that Athenian troops were coming to the city, expect-
ing it to be given up to them. The plot was therefore aborted. 1
Where was he to go? From Thourioi he traveled to Elis, then to Argos:
his Argive alliance policy would have suggested this choice. 2 At the time, however, the severity of the charges to be brought against him were still
unknown. He was clearly suspicious. To one who asked him if he did not
trust his homeland, he replied, according to a later source quoted by Plu-
tarch (22.2), that basically, “where my life is concerned, I would not trust
1. Thucydides 6.74; Plutarch, Alcibiades 22: “No sooner had Alcibiades sailed away than he snatched Messina from the Athenians’ grasp.”
2. Isocrates 16.9; Plutarch 23.
90 Chapter
6
even my own mother.” His suspicions were correct: very shortly came the
verdict: the death penalty and the order banishing him from all of Greece. 3
After that, Alcibiades’s friends in Argos could not help him. They were
already worried and weakened, suspected of antidemocratic leanings, and
Athens had handed over to the Argive democrats all those it had taken
hostage: he would have to fi nd refuge elsewhere.
He did not delay: with resolute audacity, he went over to . . . Sparta!
Obviously, that would be a problem later for his defenders. We have
seen how Isocrates uses the cruelty of Alcibiades’s enemies who had ob-
tained from the city a demand for extradition: he himself would have
wanted nothing more than to stay “peacefully” in Argos. But could he?
“Not knowing what to do amid the diffi culties, banished everywhere and
seeing no way out of his predicament, in the end he was forced to ap-
peal to the Spartans for refuge.” 4 This assertion of Alcibiades’s innocence fooled no one; Alcibiades knew exactly what he was doing when he chose
to go to Sparta.
Plutarch says clearly that Alcibiades went on his own initiative and was
ready to make an offer to help Sparta. “He sent a message to Sparta, ask-
ing for asylum and promising to them the kind of service and assistance
that would outweigh the harm he had done them before when they were
on opposite sides” ( Alcibiades 23). Thucydides is not so specifi c: he says
only that Alcibiades had come “on the Spartans’ own invitation, after fi rst
obtaining a safe conduct” (6.88.9). But there is no contradiction there: 5
Plutarch is considering the psychology of Alcibiades, and Thucydides the
sequence of facts. The services Alcibiades promised to render are made
plain enough in Thucydides’s account: they are laid out clearly and are
even the subject of one of his speeches.
Alcibiades was aided in Sparta by an infl uential person who was, at the
time, ephor—a high elected magistrate, with control over the kings—and
linked with Alcibiades’s family through obligations of hospitality. Alcibi-
ades had deceived him at the time of the Argive alliance, but he was able
to cover his deceptions adroitly. 6 And in fact, this man Endios never stops 3. Isocrates 16.8–9.
4 . Isocrates 16.9.
5. Notwithstanding Hatzfeld, 208, n. 5.
6 . See chapter 3.
Exile 91
defending Alcibiades and helping him—perhaps because he was hoping to
impose on him for infl uence over King Agis. The latter had no reason to
like Alcibiades; he would soon have ample reason to hate him.
For now, Endios’s supporters were ready to welcome Alcibiades, who
was not just any refugee. And where could Alcibiades have found a place
where his information had higher value and where he could get greater
revenge against Athens? If Athens had become an enemy city, Sparta in-
stantly became his ally. One phrase that Plutarch repeats several times
conveys the tone of his desire for revenge: “I’ll show them that I’m alive.” 7
Thus, in the winter of 415–414, he is offi cially welcomed in Sparta and
ready to help Sparta against Athens, providing the most secret intelligence
as well as his widely recognized experience. In the course of a few months,
the man who had directed operations for the Athenians would now be the
genius behind the war against them.
That entailed a change of sides and—let us say the word—treason such
as one has rarely ever seen in history. Of course, there were occasions,
even in that era, when Athenians sought refuge with enemies of Athens
and were helped by Sparta, which they then praised in their works; that
was true of Xenophon. He had taken part in a battle on the Spartan side
against Athens and was exiled for that. But he was given some property in
the Peloponnese and stayed there quietly, never claiming to direct Spartan
policy, much less to direct it against Athens. Furthermore, that had not
involved a long and decisive war between the two peoples.
Alcibiades, on the other hand, betrayed Athens in the middle of the
war, switching from one side to the other. Moreover, in the speech given
him by Thucydides, at the time of his arrival in Sparta, he is seen not only
playing the part of a traitor providing Sparta with invaluable information;
Thucydides has him giving a speech boldly justifying his change of sides
and the morality of it. There have been traitors in history; there has prob-
ably never been one who defends treason with so much lucidity, audacity,
and authority.
The speech fi lls paragraphs 89 to 92 of book 6. Ambassadors from Corinth
and Syracuse had come to ask the Lacedaemonians for help. At fi rst, as
7. Plutarch, Alcibiades 22.3; Apophthegms 186e6–7.
92 Chapter
6
their request coincided with that of Alcibiades, Sparta told the Syracusans
not to make a deal with Athens. They bought some time; and then Alcibi-
ades came before the authorities and gave his famous speech.
He was not only made welcome and his advice taken, but he spoke
publicly and freely.
It is true that the speech we read is that of Thucydides, not Alcibiades.
It is probable that the historian has condensed into one striking text a
; whole series of revelations, justifi cations, and advice that were not neces-
sarily offered at a single moment or in a public way. Thucydides may also
have brought out principles that were never so clearly brought to light. It
is evident, however, that he did not invent the revelations, the counsel, or
the principles Alcibiades expounded, and certainly not the brilliant inso-
lence of his tone.
Leaving aside for the moment the practical aspect of the speech, the
justifi cations constitute a defense with three points. First there are two
justifi cations relating to Sparta: Why would Alcibiades help Sparta when
he had been against it? And how could he support an oligarchy when he
had been on the side of Athenian democracy? And then followed a more
general moral justifi cation: Why would he help in a war against his home-
land (6.92.204)?
The answers were not obvious.
First, help Sparta, when he had supported a policy of war against her?
Absolutely!
Because it was Sparta, then, that had offended him! In the beginning,
he had wanted to renew the functions of proxenos that had once belonged
to his family. He had attempted to help the Lacedaemonians taken pris-
oner at Pylos. He had tried. But Sparta, instead of turning to him, turned
to Nicias! Was that not cause for offense? What did he do to retaliate? He
attacked Sparta in the Peloponnese . . .
This clever justifi cation calls for two comments.
First, this is the same type of rhetorical argument that consists of eras-
ing blame by reverting to an earlier time: “If I did this, it is because I was
the fi rst one wronged; in other words, I did not start it.” 8 Our brilliant Athenian, the ward of Pericles, has experience with this kind of argument.
8. See, starting in book 1, the argument offered by Corcyra in 34.1, and then by Corinth in 38.2.
Exile 93
But at the same time, what an admission! And with what tranquil in-
solence he makes it! The reasoning argued here corresponds nicely with
Thucydides’s account and with his analysis in 5.43.2: he, too, spoke of the
age-old proxenos and of the prisoners taken at Pylos, and he also states,
speaking about Alcibiades, that his conduct had in part been dictated by an
ambition stemming from pride, “because the Lacedaemonians had turned
The Life of Alcibiades Page 14