The Historians' History of the World 03

One day he was to be seen with Socrates, welcoming with avidity the noble lessons of the philosopher, and weeping with admiration and enthusiasm; but on the morrow he would be crossing the agora with a trailing robe and indolent, dissolute mien, and would go with his too complacent friends to plunge into shameful pleasures. Yet the sage contended for him, and sometimes with success, against the crowd of his corruptors. In the early wars they shared the same tent. Socrates saved Alcibiades at Potidæa, and at Delium Alcibiades protected the retreat of Socrates.

From his childhood he exhibited the half heroic, half savage nature of his mind. He was playing at dice on the public way when a chariot approached; he told the charioteer to wait; the latter paid no heed and continued to advance; Alcibiades flung himself across the road and called out, “Now pass if you dare.” He was wrestling with one of his comrades and not being the strongest, he bit the arm of his adversary. “You bite like a woman.” “No, but like a lion,” he answered. He had caused a Cupid throwing a thunderbolt to be engraved on his shield.

He had a superb dog which had cost him more than seven thousand drachmæ. When all the town had admired it he cut off its tail, its finest ornament, that it might be talked of still more. “Whilst the Athenians are interested in my dog,” he said, “they will say nothing worse concerning me.” One day he was passing in the public square; the assembly was tumultuous and he inquired the cause; he was told that a distribution of money was on hand; he advanced and threw some himself amid the applause of the crowd: but according to the fashion among the exquisites of the day he was carrying a pet quail under his mantle: the terrified bird escaped and all the people ran, shouting, after it, that they might bring it back to its master. Alcibiades and the people of Athens were made to understand one another. “They detest him,” said Aristophanes, “need him and cannot do without him.”

One day he laid a wager to give a blow in the open street to Hipponicus, one of the most eminent men in the town; he won his bet, but the next day he presented himself at the house of the man he had so grossly insulted, removed his garments and offered himself to receive the chastisement he had deserved. He had married Hipparete, a woman of much virtue, and responded to her eager affection only by outrageous conduct. After long endurance she determined to lay a petition for divorce before the archon. Alcibiades, hearing this, hurried to the magistrate’s house and under the eyes of a cheering crowd carried off his wife in his arms across the public square, she not daring to resist; and brought her back to his house where she remained, well-pleased with this tender violence.

Alcibiades treated Athens as he did Hipponicus and Hipparete, and Athens, like Hipparete and Hipponicus, often forgave this medley of faults and amiable qualities in which there was always something of that wit and audacity which the Athenians prized above everything. His audacity indeed made sport alike of justice and religion. He may be excused for beating a teacher in whose school he had not found the Iliad: but at the Dionysia he struck one of his adversaries, in the very middle of the spectacle, regardless of the solemnity; and at another time, in order the better to celebrate a festival, he carried off the sacred vessel which was required at that very moment for a public and religious service. A painter having refused to work for him he kept him prisoner until he had finished decorating his house, but dismissed him loaded with presents. On one occasion when a poet was pursued by justice, he tore the act of indictment from the public archives. In a republic these actions were not very republican. But all Greece had such a weakness for Alcibiades! At Olympia he had seven chariots competing at once, thus eclipsing the magnificence of the kings of Syracuse and Cyrene; and he carried off two prizes in the same race, while another of his chariots came in fourth. Euripides sang of his victory and cities joined together to celebrate it. The Ephesians erected him a magnificent pavilion; the men of Chios fed his horses and provided him with a great number of victims; the Lesbians gave him wine and the whole assembly of Olympia took their seats at festive tables to which a private individual had invited them. Posterity, less indulgent than contemporaries, whilst recognising the eminent qualities of the man, will condemn the bad policy which made the expedition to Sicily, and the bad citizen who so many times gave the scandalous example of violating the laws and who dared to arm against his own country, to raise his hand against his mother. Alcibiades will remain the type of the most brilliant, but the most immoral and consequently the most dangerous citizen of a republic.

[421-420 B.C.]