The Bravest of the Greeks: Alcibiades Through Western Eyes

Christopher A. Baron (University of Notre Dame)

In this paper I will argue for the existence of a specifically Western (Siceliote/Italiote and Roman) historical tradition surrounding Alcibiades.  Pliny the Elder notes (HN 34.26) that statues once stood in the Comitium in honor of Pythagoras as the wisest of the Greeks and Alcibiades as the bravest, and he expresses amazement at both choices.  Numerous scholars have commented on the passage, and the Pythagorean presence at Rome has been much-discussed.  But another piece of evidence for a Western view of Alcibiades has gone largely overlooked.  In his biography of the Athenian statesman, Cornelius Nepos claims (11) that while most authors criticized Alcibiades, three authoritative writers praised him.  One of these is Timaeus of Tauromenium, a Sicilian who wrote a history of the Western Greeks while in exile at Athens in the first half of the third century B.C.

Although the evidence is fragmentary, Timaeus appears to have had a significant influence on the development of historical writing at Rome, and he continued to enjoy popularity there well into the imperial era.  Since Pliny dates the erection of the statues in the Comitium to the time of the Samnite Wars, we cannot attribute the Romans' favorable view of Alcibiades to Timaeus himself.  Rather, I will argue that we are dealing with a broader historiographical phenomenon prevalent in, if not peculiar to, the West, one which offered an alternative evaluation of Alcibiades and his career.  Such an interpretation was not so much anti-Athenian as it was non-Athenocentric.  This should not surprise us at Rome, whose early contacts with the Greek world came via southern Italy and the Adriatic.  Timaeus, too, clearly fits into this tradition; although writing at Athens, part of his project was to explain the importance of the deeds of the Western Greeks and to justify the historical coverage he was giving them.

Alcibiades proved to be a figure well-suited for such an alternative history.  From an Athenian point of view, he was a traitor, a would-be tyrant, and a man who never proved capable of working within the democratic system of the polis.  But from an outsider's perspective, he could be seen as the man who convinced the Spartans to occupy Decelea and to seek help from Persia, steps which led to the defeat of Athens and the "liberation" of Greece.  From Timaeus' point of view in particular, Alcibiades could have provided an excellent mirror-image of the author's own experience, an interpretation which, as we know, Timaeus did employ in the case of Thucydides' career (FGrH 566 FF 135/6).  But as the Roman evidence shows, Timaeus was not completely out on a limb here—his praise of Alcibiades lies within the context of a Western viewpoint distinct from the more well-known Athenian portrayals of this controversial figure.