Marble statues of the Greek philosophers Socrates, right, and Plato sit in front of the Athens Academy. Socrates tried and failed to teach Alcibiades, a controversial political and military leader in ...

In 415 BC the Athenian assembly, led by Alcibiades, voted to invade Sicily. The city-state of Segesta had promised huge financial aid in return for assistance against its enemy Selinus. With a ...

I HAVE NEVER really understood the extraordinary magnetic charisma generated by Alcibiades, both throughout his lifetime (c. 450-404 BCE) and among the many modern scholars who have continued to be ...

In 418 BC Sparta defeated its neighbor and oldest rival, Argos, a city theoretically allied to Athens. One again, hostilities began to brew. In Athens, the charismatic aristocrat Alcibiades had been ...

Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series. Born around 450 B.C., Alcibiades had the mixed fortune of losing his father Cleinias as a boy and becoming the ...

Socrates was remarkably full-blooded for an ascetic philosopher. In Xenophon’s Symposium, he says, “For myself I cannot name the time at which I have not been in love with someone.” By all accounts, ...