Socrates and Alcibiades

de Ariel Helfer

In the classical world, political ambition posed an intractable problem. Ancient Greek democracies fostered in their most promising youths a tension-ridden combination of the desire for personal glory and deep-seated public-spiritedness in hopes of producing brilliant and capable statesmen. But as much as active civic engagement was considered among the highest goods by the Greek nobility, the attempt to harness the love of glory to the good of the city inevitably produced notoriously ambitious figures whose zeal for political power and prestige was so great that it outstripped their intention to win honor through praiseworthy deeds. No figure better exemplifies the risks and rewards of ancient political ambition than Alcibiades, an intelligent, charming, and attractive statesman who grew up during the Golden Age of Athens and went on to become an infamous demagogue and traitor to the city during the Peloponnesian War. Ariel Helfer gathers Plato's three major presentations of Alcibiades: the Alcibiades, the Second Alcibiades, and the Symposium. Counter to conventional interpretation, Helfer reads these texts as presenting a coherent narrative, spanning nearly two decades, of the relationship between Socrates and his most notorious pupil.