The Life of Alcibiades

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Release : 2019-10-15
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
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Book Rating : 964/5 ( reviews)

The Life of Alcibiades - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Life of Alcibiades write by Jacqueline de Romilly. This book was released on 2019-10-15. The Life of Alcibiades available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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.

Nemesis

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Release : 2018-04-16
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
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Book Rating : 661/5 ( reviews)

Nemesis - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Nemesis write by David Stuttard. This book was released on 2018-04-16. Nemesis available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Alcibiades was one of the most dazzling figures of the Golden Age of Athens. A ward of Pericles and a friend of Socrates, he was spectacularly rich, bewitchingly handsome and charismatic, a skilled general, and a ruthless politician. He was also a serial traitor, infamous for his dizzying changes of loyalty in the Peloponnesian War. Nemesis tells the story of this extraordinary life and the turbulent world that Alcibiades set out to conquer. David Stuttard recreates ancient Athens at the height of its glory as he follows Alcibiades from childhood to political power. Outraged by Alcibiades’ celebrity lifestyle, his enemies sought every chance to undermine him. Eventually, facing a capital charge of impiety, Alcibiades escaped to the enemy, Sparta. There he traded military intelligence for safety until, suspected of seducing a Spartan queen, he was forced to flee again—this time to Greece’s long-term foes, the Persians. Miraculously, though, he engineered a recall to Athens as Supreme Commander, but—suffering a reversal—he took flight to Thrace, where he lived as a warlord. At last in Anatolia, tracked by his enemies, he died naked and alone in a hail of arrows. As he follows Alcibiades’ journeys crisscrossing the Mediterranean from mainland Greece to Syracuse, Sardis, and Byzantium, Stuttard weaves together the threads of Alcibiades’ adventures against a backdrop of cultural splendor and international chaos. Navigating often contradictory evidence, Nemesis provides a coherent and spellbinding account of a life that has gripped historians, storytellers, and artists for more than two thousand years.

Plato: Alcibiades

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Release : 2001-09-06
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
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Book Rating : 144/5 ( reviews)

Plato: Alcibiades - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Plato: Alcibiades write by Plato. This book was released on 2001-09-06. Plato: Alcibiades available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The first modern edition of Plato's Alcibiades, aimed at both students and scholars.

Alcibiades

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Release : 2011-07-12
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
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Book Rating : 826/5 ( reviews)

Alcibiades - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Alcibiades write by P. J. Rhodes. This book was released on 2011-07-12. Alcibiades available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The renowned classicist presents an authoritative biography of one of the most infamous and colorful characters of Ancient Greece. A charismatic Athenian and close associate of Socrates, Alcibiades came to prominence during the Peloponnesian War when he helped form an alliance against Sparta. Although his gambit led to defeat, his prestige remained high, and he was elected to lead the Sicilian Expedition of 415 BC. Shortly after arrival in Sicily, however, Alcibiades was recalled to face charges of sacrilege allegedly committed during his pre-expedition reveling. Jumping ship on the return journey, he defected to the Spartans. Alcibiades quickly ingratiated himself with the Spartans, helping them to victory against his former countrymen. But he soon overstepped the bounds of hospitality by sleeping with the Spartan queen. On the run again, he began to play a dangerous game of shifting loyalties. He had a hand in engineering the overthrow of democracy at Athens in favor of an oligarchy, which allowed him to return from exile, though he then opposed the extreme excesses of that regime. For a time, Alcibiades restored Athens' fortunes in the war, but was soon forced into exile once again. This time he took refuge with the Persians, but as they were now allied to the Spartans, the cuckolded King Agis was able to arrange his assassination by Persian agents.

Sophocles and Alcibiades

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Release : 2014-12-05
Genre : History
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Book Rating : 927/5 ( reviews)

Sophocles and Alcibiades - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Sophocles and Alcibiades write by Michael Vickers. This book was released on 2014-12-05. Sophocles and Alcibiades available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Literary historians have long held the view that the plays of the Greek dramatist, Sophocles deal purely with archetypes of the heroic past and that any resemblance to contemporary events or individuals is purely coincidental. In this book, Michael Vickers challenges this view and argues that Sophocles makes regular and extensive allusion to Athenian politics in his plays, especially to Alcibiades, one of the most controversial Athenian politicians of his day.Vickers shows that Sophocles was no closeted intellectual but a man deeply involved in politics and he reminds us that Athenian politics was intensely personal. He argues cogently that classical writers employed hidden meanings and that consciously or sub-consciously, Sophocles was projecting onto his plays hints of contemporary events or incidents, mostly of a political nature, hoping that his audience's passion for politics would enhance the popularity of his plays. Vickers strengthens his case about Sophocles by discussing other authors - Thucydides, Plato and Euripides - in whom he also demonstrates a body of allusions to Alcibiades and others.