Alcibiades and Athens

Alcibiades (c. 450-404 BC); general, statesman, adopted son of Pericles, lover of Socrates, profaner of the Mysteries, was called by some the saviour of Athens, by others its greatest enemy. This book is not a biography of Alcibiades, but a study of the explosive mixture of fear and fascination he excited in his contemporaries and in classical texts. It examines his portrayal in Thucydides, Plato, and Athenian rhetoric, and the conflict between the powerful and fascinating individual and the community.