Original French edition, Alcibiade, ou, Les dangers de l`ambition. Copyright � �Editions de Fallois, 1995"--Title page verso. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Richly endowed -- Insults and scandals -- First interlude : Alcibiades between two lifestyles -- Political debut : the Argive alliance -- The grand design -- The scandals -- Exile : defending treason -- In Asia Minor -- With the Athenians on Samos -- Second interlude : Alcibiades between two historians -- A triumphal return -- Slightly more than one hundred days -- A final appearance -- Repercussions.
Summary:
"A translation of a biography of the Athenian general Alcibiades by Jacqueline de Romilly, a French scholar and member of the French Academy"---Provided by publisher. "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." ---Publisher's description
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.