Alcibiades and the City

Chapter 8 examines how Plutarch constructs the relationship between Alcibiades and the city of Athens in the early part of the Life of Alcibiades (chs. 4–8). It argues that, through these apparently disconnected stories, Plutarch combines the portraits of Alcibiades in Thucydides, Plato, and Aristophanes with material from the orators and the anecdotal tradition both to bring out Alcibiades’ domineering behaviour (hybris) and luxurious self-indulgence (tryphe) and also, through a series of shifting focalizations and voices, to characterize the Athenians and the dynamics of their interaction with Alcibiades. Furthermore, even though these anecdotes concern Alcibiades’ ‘personal’ life, they have explanatory force on the political level: that is, they explore and explain the mechanisms by which Alcibiades became so politically dominant, and would later be rejected so decisively. This is a portrait, in other words, not only of the great individual but also of the city which produced him.