Alcibiades, Pericles’ handsome, charismatic nephew known during…
423 BCE
Alcibiades, Pericles’ handsome, charismatic nephew known during the 420s BCE for his personal extravagance and his courage in battle, has also become a recognized speaker in the Ecclesia (assembly), and as Athens moves toward peace, he hopes that the ties that had once existed between his family and Sparta will enable him to secure the credit for bringing peace to Athens.
Although the highly intelligent Alcibiades is strongly attracted to Socrates and the ways of philosophy, politics has provided a natural outlet for his energy and ambition.
By the time that he turns thirty in 420 BCE or so, he has abandoned the intellectual integrity that Socrates demands, in favor of the rewards of the kind of politics that Socrates despises.
Laches, a rich Athenian aristocrat, is an associate of Socrates and is a conservative.
Elected general in 427 BCE, he had been replaced in 425 BCE after undertaking an unsuccessful mission to support Athenian interests in Sicily and was prosecuted by Cleon (Aristophanes will satirize the trial in his comedy The Wasps).
Temporarily eclipsed, he has gained politically by the Athenian defeats of 424 BCE at Megara and at Delium and proposes the decree that brings the one-year armistice concluded in the spring of 423 BCE between Athens and Sparta.
Euripides completes Heracles around 423 BCE, and around the same time produces a satyr play, Cyclops, for the annual competitions.
Aristophanes, in his 423 BCE play, The Clouds (Nephelai), presents Socrates as a superficial charlatan, aligned with the Sophists, who the play attacks as masters of specious reasoning and an evil influence on society. (He will revise the play in 418 BCE.)
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