Abstract

Reviews David Gribble, Alcibiades and Athens: A Study in Literary Presentation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) ix + 304pp. Yet another biography of Alcibiades? Well, no. This is a study of Alcibiades' bios, the way he lived his life and how the ancient sources portray it, set against the background of Greek attitudes towards the relationship between the individual and the city. Building on the work of scholars such as Christopher Gill and his own supervisor, Christopher Pelling, Gribble begins in the introduction with a discussion of what we should understand by the term "individual" in the Greek context and the type of individuality into which Alcibiades falls ("the empowered, confident, assertive individual, possessing the power to make moral choice, and endowed with status: the citizen. Contrast the repressed and powerless person, the subject", p. 7). But Alcibiades, like the heroes of the Iliad and Themistocles, is a "great individual", superlative rather than unique and with superlative status, and this puts him in some ways outside his society and a danger to it. The great individual's love of honour (philotimia) leads him into conflict with his community, and the key qualities of his phusis (nature) are excellently examined by Gribble with reference to the philosophical discussions of Plato and Aristotle. In the first part of chapter 1 Gribble discusses the Alcibiades tradition, which he divides into three stages. In the fifth and early fourth centuries attitudes towards Alcibiades were polarised—to his supporters he was the supreme citizen, to his opponents he was a dangerous threat to the polis. By the later fourth century, when he was no longer a live issue, an ambivalent portrayal of Alcibiades was developing, as writers like Demosther es looked back to the great days of the Athenian empire and noted both Alcibiades' hybris and his public achievements. Socratic writings emphasised his moral development or degeneration, and as the 217 218 RHETORICA tradition entered its third stage in the Hellenistic period moral anecdotes came to predominate, while the political (and "factual") side of Alcibiades' life became less important. It will have been in this period that Alcibiades' later role as a favourite topic of declamation had its origins, though the rhetorical texts, with one possible exception (see on [Andocides] 4 below), are lost. In the second part of this chapter Gribble examines the relationship between the élite individual and the democratic city in terms of conspicuous public expenditure (on liturgies and the pan-Hellenic games), contacts with the élite of other cities (through guestfriendship and marriage) and private luxury spending; and this leads to a discussion of Alcibiades' relationship with Athens in four key areas: his betrayal of the city as a result of tension between personal and civic values, his participation at the Olympics of 416, his uncontrolled behaviour concerning bodily pleasures and his foreign contacts. Gribble's analysis here is perceptive and persuasive, bringing out out well the kinds of behaviour which enabled élite individuals to gain power, but at the same time put them outside the norms of the democratic city and so undermined them. After this excellent general discussion of the portrayal of Alcibiades' relationship with the city, Gribble moves on to more detailed study of the sources. Separate chapters on the rhetorical works, Thucydides, and Plato and the Socratics are followed by a concluding chapter on Plutarch's Life ofAlcibiades. Gribble analysis of the trials of Alcibiades' son in the 390s and the speeches connected with them (Isocrates 16, Lysias 14 and 15) is invaluable, especially the discussion of the intertextual relationship between Isocrates 16 and Lysias 14. Gribble argues convincingly that Lysias 14 represents closely the speech delivered at the trial, whereas the encomium of Alcibiades in Isocrates 16 raises suspicions of later editing. In Part B of this chapter Gribble brings [Andocides] 4 and the speeches of Alcibiades in Thucydides into a full discussion of the competing rhetorical presentations of Alcibiades' position with regard to Athens, his patriotism and treachery. He is surely correct to argue that [Andocides] 4 is a later composition, and makes a strong case for a Hellenistic dating (he might have considered the stylistic argument against Andocidean authorship; see, for example, my summary of S...