''More devoted to his own interests than to the welfare of his
native city, the rich and talented Alcibiades was the idol of the
young men of Athens and the spoiled darling of the Athenian
demos or citizen body, who rarely criticized his scandalous
behavior and waited breathlessly for news of his latest
escapades.''
But then, he was a brilliant military strategist, who would even
resort to seducing the wife of an enemy just to win a military
campaign. This is what we'd now call amoral, as differentiated
from immoral. The ancient Greeks, by the way, had no concept
of evil as Christians conceive it, but only the supreme virtue of
excellence and its opposite.
In Aristophanes' ''The Frogs,'' the god Dionysus compares him
to a baby giving Athens such birth pangs. To determine which
poet he would take back from Hades to save Athens' cultural
life, Dionysus asks the shades of Aeschylus and Euripides the
confounding question: ''What shall we do with Alcibiades?''
Since it is selfish and useless to the community, Euripides
recommends throwing away the baby, out of the city walls.
Aeschylus recommends a compromise: Since the man is the best
military leader they can have at the moment, it is better to live
with his ways for the moment, however unreliable,
self-indulgent, mercenary or capricious. In other words, let him
be. Life has a way of rounding up things.
Alcibiades was the embodiment of what came to be known as
the necessary evil. Finally ostracized by the Athenians, he was
assassinated by the Persians through the instigation of the
Spartans.
See? No need to ask Euripides.
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