Latest / The History of Greece: Philosophy, Empire, and Endless Reinvention — Fexingo History / Alcibiades: The Brilliant, Treacherous Wild Card of the Peloponnesian War
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, we've spent a lot of time in the Peloponnesian War — the Melian Dialogue, the Sicilian Expedition, Cleon, the peace of Nikias. But one figure keeps pulling at the threads of nearly every major event in that war, and we haven't talked about him properly. Alcibiades. Luna: Ah, the wild card. I know the name but I'd love the full story. Lucas: He's the kind of figure historians love and hate. Brilliant, gorgeous, charismatic, a pupil of Socrates — but also ruthless, ambitious, and he switched sides three times during the war. Thucydides called him a man whose private extravagance and lawlessness eventually destroyed Athens, but also one whose military skill might've saved it. Luna: So he's the ultimate what-if. Lucas: Exactly. Alcibiades was born around 450 BCE into one of Athens' most powerful families, the Alcmaeonidae — the same family that had been cursed for killing the supporters of Cylon. His guardian after his father's death was Pericles himself. So he grew up in the center of Athenian power. And he was stunningly handsome, brilliant, and utterly convinced of his own superiority. Lucas: Plutarch tells a story — probably apocryphal but revealing — that when Alcibiades was a boy, he was wrestling with another boy and the boy bit him. Alcibiades shouted, 'You bite like a woman!' And the boy said, 'No, like a lion!' The point is, Alcibiades saw himself as a lion. And he had the talents to back it up. Luna: What was his relationship with Socrates actually like? Lucas: Socrates was fascinated by him, and Plato's Symposium gives us a portrait: Alcibiades crashes the party drunk and delivers a speech about how Socrates is the only man who ever made him feel shame. He says Socrates is like those little statues of Silenus that open up to reveal a god inside. Socrates saved his life at the battle of Potidaea, and Alcibiades returned the favor at Delium. But Alcibiades was also too ambitious to be a true philosopher. He wanted power, not wisdom. Lucas: His first major political act was around 420 BCE, when he was about thirty. He maneuvered Athens into an alliance with Argos, Mantinea, and Elis against Sparta — a reversal of the Peace of Nikias. The battle of Mantinea in 418 was a Spartan victory, but Alcibiades escaped blame. His real moment came in 415, when he pushed for the Sicilian Expedition. Luna: That was the invasion of Syracuse, right? The one that ended in disaster. Lucas: Yes — and Alcibiades was the main advocate. He argued that conquering Sicily would give Athens the resources to dominate the entire Mediterranean. Nikias opposed it, but the assembly was swept up by Alcibiades' rhetoric. Just before the fleet sailed, however, something happened that would change everything. Lucas: In one night, someone mutilated the Herms — those stone statues with a head of Hermes and an erect phallus, which stood outside Athenian houses. It was seen as a terrible omen and an act of sacrilege. Alcibiades' political enemies — who also accused him of parodying the Eleusinian Mysteries — blamed him. He demanded a trial before sailing, but his enemies knew he'd be acquitted, so they let the fleet go and planned to recall him later. Luna: So he sailed to Sicily with a sword hanging over his head. Lucas: Exactly. When the recall order came, Alcibiades was in Catana. He boarded his own ship, but instead of returning to Athens, he escaped to Sparta. And that's where the story gets really interesting. At Sparta, he gave the Spartans advice that nearly won the war: send a general to Syracuse to help them, fortify Decelea in Attica as a permanent fort, and cut off Athens' silver mines at Laurion. All of which they did. Lucas: He also allegedly seduced the wife of the Spartan king Agis II. So after a while, he had to flee Sparta too. He went to the Persian satrap Tissaphernes and began advising him — telling him to play Athens and Sparta off against each other, to let them exhaust themselves while Persia took control. And he started angling for a return to Athens by promising Persian support. Luna: So he's the reason Persia got involved on both sides. Lucas: Right. In 411 BCE, while Alcibiades was in Persia, a coup in Athens overthrew the democracy and established the oligarchy of the Four Hundred — partly because the oligarchs thought they could get Persian money through Alcibiades. But when the coup failed, the Athenian fleet at Samos — which was still democratic — invited Alcibiades to become their commander. He accepted, and over the next few years he won a string of victories against Sparta, including the battle of Cyzicus in 410, which gave Athens control of the Hellespont and its vital grain route. Lucas: The Athenians were so grateful they voted to recall him from exile. In 407, he returned to Athens in triumph — the same city that had condemned him to death eight years earlier. The people lined the streets, the priests blessed him, and he was given supreme command of all Athenian forces. Luna: What a turnaround. Did it last? Lucas: No. In 406, Alcibiades left his fleet in the hands of a subordinate while he went to collect money. The Spartans under Lysander caught the Athenians off guard at Notium and defeated them. Alcibiades was blamed, and he went into voluntary exile again — this time to a fortress in the Thracian Chersonese. He hired mercenaries and lived like a local warlord. Lucas: After the final Athenian defeat at Aegospotami in 405, and the fall of Athens in 404, Alcibiades was a marked man. He fled to the Persian satrap Pharnabazus in Phrygia. But both the Spartans and the new Athenian regime wanted him dead. In 404 or 403, assassins — probably sent by the Spartan general Lysander and the Thirty Tyrants — surrounded his house and set it on fire. Alcibiades rushed out with a dagger and was shot down by arrows. He died alone in the flames. Luna: What a life. So was he a traitor or just someone who put himself first? Lucas: That's the question. Thucydides, who knew him personally, is ambiguous. Plutarch, writing centuries later, saw him as a man of great talent ruined by his own ambition. And in a sense, his story is the story of Athens itself — brilliant, reckless, and ultimately self-destructive. He could have been its savior, but his ego made him its enemy. And that's why we're still talking about him. Lucas: You know, I think that's part of what makes diving into these stories so rewarding — you get a sense of how complex these people really were. If you've been finding value in these conversations, it's worth mentioning that the show stays ad-free because of listeners who chip in at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to keep this kind of deep dive going without interruptions. Lucas: And we appreciate it. So, back to Alcibiades — one final footnote. There's a story that before his assassination, he had a dream that he was wearing the robes of a courtesan and being fondled by his mistress. He interpreted it as a bad omen — but he didn't run. He stayed, and he died. That mix of arrogance and fatalism is pure Alcibiades.