Plutarch's Life of Alcibiades: Story, Text and Moralism

Preface

Preface This book offers a running commentary on Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades. The three words in the subtitle sum up the two premises upon which my analysis is based. The first is the distinction – fundamental to structuralist narratology – between a narrative text and the underlying story. Second, I believe that the reader of the Parallel Lives should always keep in mind that Plutarch wrote them with a moral purpose. The aim of this book, then, is to examine how the Life of Alcibiades functions within the moral programme of the Parallel Lives and to shed some light on the compositional and narrative techniques which Plutarch used to create this fascinating biography. Both premises will be further discussed in the Introduction, together with a number of other preliminary issues that are essential to my analysis, such as the way Alcibiades is depicted in the writings of earlier authors, Plutarch’s method of work and the relative chronology of the Parallel Lives. The Introduction will also draw attention to the pairing of the Life of Alcibiades with the Life of Coriolanus. As has long been recognized by Plutarch scholars, each pair of Parallel Lives should be read as a whole. Unfortunately, it is impossible to provide a detailed commentary on the entire Coriolanus-Alcibiades in a single book of reasonable length. Instead, I will try to bring up the Life of Coriolanus wherever a comparative reading contributes to the moral purpose of the pair. Likewise, the formal Comparison will not be analysed separately but referred to when it helps us to understand the meaning of (a passage in) the Life of Alcibiades. I discuss it in more detail in a paper that will appear in the proceedings of the conference on “Parallelism in Plutarch’s Lives” which was held at University College Cork in September 2005. Unless noted otherwise, Plutarch’s Lives are cited according to the latest edition in the Bibliotheca scriptorum graecorum et romanorum Teubneriana series. As will become clear in the course of the commentary , I have divided the Life of Alcibiades into a number of units on the basis of structural markers within the text or the unity of the events on the story-level. Where the Teubner edition has a different section division, I have added the line number between square brackets (e.g. Alc. 2.2-3[6]). Most translations are my own, although I have consulted Perrin 1916b, Scott-Kilvert 1960 and Waterfield 1998 for all passages from the Life of Alcibiades. It is a pleasure to record the many debts of gratitude that I have incurred in writing this book and the Ph.D. dissertation (K.U. Leuven, 2004) to which it goes back. I am most grateful to my supervisor Luc Van der Stockt for all the advice and support he has given me over the past nine years. I particularly appreciate his constant readiness to help his graduate students take their own stand in complex debates and his open-mindedness in doing so. I am also greatly indebted to my co-supervisor Christopher Pelling for his detailed criticisms of the drafts I sent him and the stimulating discussions we had during my two-month stay at Oxford University College in spring 2003. Several colleagues and fellow Plutarch scholars provided useful comments and suggestions on various parts of this commentary. I warmly thank (in alphabetical order) Jeffrey Beneker, Maarten De Pourcq, Jan Opsomer, Bram Roosen, Geert Roskam, Guido Schepens, Philip Stadter, Lieve Van Hoof, Birgit Van Meirvenne and Alfons Wouters. Special thanks are due to Marc Vercruysse, whose learning and friendship have proven invaluable to me ever since he became my Greek teacher in secondary school. All remaining errors and shortcomings are, of course, my own responsibility. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the K.U. Leuven Research Fund, the Fund for Scientific Research – Flanders (Belgium) and Vlaamse Wetenschappelijke Stichting. Earlier versions of (parts of ) chapters 1, 9 and 10 have appeared respectively in Pérez Jiménez & Titchener 2005b, Pérez Jiménez & Casadesús Bordoy 2001 and Ploutarchos, N.S. 2 (2004-2005). In each case, the present version takes precedence. 12 preface ...