The Irresistible Athenian

The Life of Alcibiades. By E. F. Benson. (Benn. 12s. 6d.) IT is curious that from the days of Cornelius Nepos till to-day no one except a few uninspired Germans have thought it

worth while to write a life of Alcibiades. In these tines when biography and history are considered more and more as things apart, it is well to remember that there is no better illustration to the history of a period than a life of one of its most typical, or, better still, its most admired men. Alci- biades came nearer than any other Greek to the Classical Athenian ideal.

Ile was physically irresistible, he was well-born and rich and spent his riches splendidly, he was exquisitely clever and witty and subtle-minded—perhaps the most adroit diplomat of all history ; his faults were those that Greece naturally overlooked—pride and sensuality and even deceit if clever enough were parts of a glorious life ; and the obloquy that later ages have poured on Alcibiades for his traitorous ter- giversations would have surprised the Greeks.

The Greek was essentially an individualist ; the State existed to help him towards the better life. If instead it persecuted him, he would be stupid not to cross to some other State which would appreciate and aid him. Alcibiades was an extreme case, but then he was consciously a great man. Thucydides was inclined to deplore the excesses of his private life rather than his vagaries as a statesman.

In a country so small that every free-born citizen was a public personage, so ideal an Athenian was bound to be in

perpetual limelight. Alcibiades, a wealthy aristocrat by

birth, was further the ward of Pericles and the best-beloved pupil of Socrates, whom he probably met at Aspasia's salon.

It is hardly remarkable that we have, as Mr. Benson points out, more information about his youth than about that of any other prominent person in history. It was a brilliant if unedifying youth ; his manifold attractions, his charm and his wit soon made him the darling of all Athens ; and his future promised to be as golden as Greek imagination could paint. But across every Greek triumph fell the shadow of Nemesis.

At first all went gloriously well. By the time that he was thirty-five, Alcibiades had already for several years filled

the highest posts in the State, and filled them brilliantly.

Then, on the eve of his most grandiose scheme, the Sicilian expedition, Nemesis struck. So quickly successful a career inevitably aroused distrust in the elder statesmen and jealousy in the demagogues ; and his enemies managed to implicate him in a charge of blasphemy.

We are apt to think of Greek religion as consisting of careless homage paid to discredited gods and goddesses whose deplorable goings-on provided material for tragedians ; but there was a different side expressed in the " Mysteries," secret and symbolic rites practised by initiates and treated with the utmost reverence ; and, more humbly, there were holy statues set about the city, notably the " Reims," statues of Hermes, which Mr. Benson ingeniously likens to the Madonnas set about in a city of Mediaeval Italy. One morning

the Herms were all found to be mutilated ; and though Alcibiades would never have stooped to so gauche a piece of idiocy, the merest connexion of his name with it was enough to set his popularity rocking. And a subtler blow was dealt by accusing him of holding a parody of the Eleusinian. Mysteries. Whether he was guilty or not—Mr. Benson thinks not, but it was not utterly unlike him—once he had left for Sicily and his charming presence absent, his enemies could push him into disgrace.

This was the turning-point. Alcibiades could not endure disgrace, and in his rage went over to the arch-enemy, Sparta. Henceforward his life was a failure. Though for a few years he was the most useful friend that the Spartans ever had, they could never utterly trust him nor he be happy with them. After a while, despite his treachery, his marvellous cleverness secured him a return in triumph to Athens as a virtual autocrat ; but Athens too could not believe in him now for long. Had he been a lesser man it might have been possible ; but when so great a figure falls aside he cannot right himself.

He had become a legend, a living terrible legend, but no longer an endurable ruler. And at last all Greece sighed with relief when as an exile he was done to death.

It is a splendid significant story, and Mr. Benson tells it well. Moreover, he has interspersed it with a readable account of that most complicated era, the Peloponnesian War.

He has taken the Greek point of view, drowning his dis- approval of Alcibiades' faults in his admiration for his brilliancy and charm. He is wise, for Alcibiades' power lay primarily in that charm, which never left him, from the gaiety of his youth to the stark tragedy of his end. There Mr. Benson is at his best. There is a haunting picture of the exile riding down from his castle retreat to warn the Athenians in vain before Aegospotami ; and then the curious story of his death. He was living on the charity of Pharna- bazus, satrap 'of Phrygia, when the order went out for his death. One day he dreamed that he was dressed in woman's clothes, while his mistress Timandra painted his face. Two

nights later he awoke to find his house set on fire. Stamping on the flames with his bed-clothes, he rushed sword in hand to meet his assailants. They fled :- " And then from the darkness into which they had vanished there came a javelin, and from another quarter an arrow. He was vividly outlined against the blaze behind him,. and now a shower of weapons sang through the air. He fell and moved no more, and they left him lying there, and reported to Pharnabazus that they had dealt with his guest as he had ordered. The fire died down ; Alcibiades had quenched the most of it with mattress and bed-clothes, and now, when he did not return to her, Timandra came out into the still night, and found him lying there, blackened and bleeding and naked but for the cloak he had wound round his left arm. She wrapped her own garments about him, even as he had dreamed, and carried him back into the smouldering house. She held the dear head in her arm and washed the smoke and the blood-stains from the face, and with paint and powder restored to it, as the custom was, the semblance of the living. Next day she emptied her purse to give him such meet and honourable burial as it could furnish."

There is a strange splendour in such an end : it is the climax of a book which is a vividly human history.