Life of Alcibiades

de Romilly Jacqueline, Trapnell Rawlings Elizabeth

Description

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.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• Ancient warfare
• Ancient Greece
• Ancient history

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501739965
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Life of Alcibiades

Avolumeintheseries CornellStudiesinClassicalPhilology

EditedbyFrederickM.Ahl,CharlesBrittain,KevinClinton, David P. Mankin, Sturt W. Manning, Alan J. Nussbaum, Hayden Pelliccia, Pietro Pucci, Hunter R. Rawlings III, Eric Rebillard, Jeffrey S. Rusten, Barry S. Strauss

Alistoftitlesinthisseriesisavailableatwww.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

TheLifeofAlcibiades

DangerousAmbitionand the Betrayal of Athens

JacquelinedeRomilly

Translatedby Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings

CornellUniversityPress IthacaandLondon

tion,enchediiganlrFOirAlcibiade, ou, Les dangers de l'ambition. Copyright © Éditions de Fallois, 1995. Englishlanguagetranslationandtranslator’sprefacecopyright©2019 by Cornell University Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview,thisbook,or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. Firstpublished2019byCornellUniversityPress LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData

Names:Romilly,Jacquelinede,author.|Rawlings,Elizabeth,translator. Title:ThelifeofAlcibiades:dangerousambitionandthebetrayal  of Athens /Jacqueline de Romilly ; translated by Elizabeth Trapnell  Rawlings. Othertitles:Alcibiade.English Description:Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress,2019.|Series:Cornell studies in classical philology | Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Identifiers: LCCN 2018059296 (print) | LCCN 2018060257 (ebook) |  ISBN9781501739965 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501739972 (epub/mobi) |  ISBN 9781501719752 |ISBN 9781501719752 (cloth) Subjects:LCSH:Alcibiades.|Statesmen—Greece—Athens—Biography.|  Generals—Greece—Athens—Biography. | Greece—Foreign relations—  To 146B.C. | Greece—History—Peloponnesian War, 431–404 B.C. Classification:LCCDF230.A4(ebook)|LCCDF230.A4R66132019  (print) | DDC938.05/092 [B]—dc23 LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2018059296

Cover illustration: FrançoisAndré Vincent,Alcibiade recevant les leçons de Socrate, 1777.

ForBernarddeFallois,asatokenofgratitudeandfriendship

Translator’sPreface

Author’sPreface

Chronology

1.RichlyEndowed

2.InsultsandScandals

Contents

FirstInterlude:AlcibiadesbetweenTwoLifestyles

3.PoliticalDebut:TheArgiveAlliance

4.TheGrandDesign

5.TheScandals

6.Exile:DefendingTreason

7.InAsiaMinor

8.WiththeAtheniansonSamos

ix

xi

xix

1

15

31

35

52

70

89

104

123

vi i i

Contents

SecondInterlude:AlcibiadesbetweenTwoHistorians

9. A Triumphal Return

10.SlightlyMoreThanOneHundredDays

11.AFinalAppearance

12.Repercussions

Conclusion

Index

137

141

154

166

178

191

201

Translator’sPreface

JacquelinedeRomilly’slifelongcontributionstoancientGreekliterature and history made her a major figure in French culture. In 1973 she became chair of Greek at the Collège de France, the first woman nominated to this distinguished institution. In 1988, she was elected to the Académie Fran çaise as its second female member. In her later years she became famous in France for her ardent advocacy of classical education for all. Romilly (1913–2010) was well known on both sides of the Atlantic as an intellec tual and cultural critic and served as A. D. White ProfessoratLarge at Cornell University from 1974 to1980. I was drawn to Romilly’s work in 2010, when I undertook the trans lation of her seminal bookHistoire et raison chez Thucydidebuprst,fi lished in Paris in 1956. That study altered the course of scholarship on Thucydides’s history of the Peloponnesian War by revealing the au thor’s rhetorical and literary artfulness, the means by which he refined and shaped the “facts” of history. The title chosen for my translation, The Mind of Thucydides(Cornell University Press, 2012), aptly captures Romilly’s purpose and achievement.