The Life of Alcibiades : Dangerous Ambition and the Betrayal of Athens / Jacqueline de Romilly.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Romilly, Jacqueline de, Author.

Contributor:

Rawlings, Elizabeth Trapnell

Series:

Cornell studies in classical philology.

Cornell scholarship online.

Cornell Studies in Classical Philology ; 68

Standardized Title:

Alcibiade. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Alcibiades.

Statesmen--Greece--Athens--Biography.

Statesmen.

Generals--Greece--Athens--Biography.

Generals.

Greece--Foreign relations--To 146 B.C.

Greece.

Greece--History--Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (228 pages).

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English and French.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Translator's Preface

Author's Preface

Chronology

1. Richly Endowed

2. Insults and Scandals

3. Political Debut: The Argive Alliance

4. The Grand Design

5. The Scandals

6. Exile: Defending Treason

7. In Asia Minor

8. With the Athenians on Samos

9. A Triumphal Return

10. Slightly More Than One Hundred Days

11. A Final Appearance

12. Repercussions

Conclusion

Index

Notes:

Translated from the French.

Previously issued in print: 2019.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9781501739965

1501739964

OCLC:

1079411710