Book Reviews
Phoenix: A Father, a Son, and the Rise of Athens
A vivid, novelistic history of the rise of Athens from relative obscurity to the edge of its golden age, told through the lives of Miltiades and Cimon, the father and son whose defiance of Persia vaulted Athens to a leading place in the Greek world.
When we think of ancient Greece we think first of Athens: its power, prestige, and revolutionary impact on art, philosophy, and politics. But on the verge of the fifth century BCE, only fifty years before its zenith, Athens was just another Greek city-state in the shadow of Sparta. It would take a catastrophe, the Persian invasions, to push Athens to the fore.
In Phoenix, author David Stuttard traces Athens’s rise through the lives of two men who spearheaded resistance to Persia: Miltiades, hero of the Battle of Marathon, and his son Cimon, Athens’s dominant leader before Pericles.
Miltiades’s career was checkered. An Athenian provincial overlord forced into Persian vassalage, he joined a rebellion against the Persians then fled Great King Darius’s retaliation. Miltiades would later die in prison. But before that, he led Athens to victory over the invading Persians at Marathon.
Cimon entered history when the Persians returned; he responded by encouraging a tactical evacuation of Athens as a prelude to decisive victory at sea. Over the next decades, while Greek city-states squabbled, Athens revitalized under Cimon’s inspired leadership. The city vaulted to the head of a powerful empire and the threshold of a golden age. Cimon proved not only an able strategist and administrator but also a peacemaker, whose policies stabilized Athens’s relationship with Sparta.
The period preceding Athens’s golden age is rarely described in detail. Stuttard tells the tale with narrative power and historical acumen, recreating vividly the turbulent world of the Eastern Mediterranean in one of its most decisive periods.
A History of Ancient Greece in 50 Lives – David Stuttard
The political leaders, writers, artists and philosophers of ancient Greece turned a small group of city states into a pan-Mediterranean civilization, whose legacy can be found everywhere today. But who were these people, what do we know of their lives and how did they interact with one another?
In this original approach to the history of ancient Greece, David Stuttard weaves together the lives of fifty of the most remarkable and influential people from the Greek world into a compelling narrative, from the early tyrant rulers Peisistratus and Polycrates, through the stirrings of democracy under Cleisthenes to the rise of Macedon under Philip II and Alexander the Great and the eventual decline of the Greek world as Rome rose to power.
One of the 50 lives: ALCIBIADES (450–404) – Politician and General
A fabulously rich Alcmaeonid, Alcibiades was orphaned in 447 at the age of three. As a result Alcibiades found himself inheriting a fortune and growing up as the ward of Pericles, his mother’s cousin, in the most powerful house in Athens. Intensely charismatic and with smouldering good looks, he ensured that his name was constantly on everybody’s lips.
In democratic Athens public recognition may have been key to gaining power, but individual patronage was crucial too. One way to achieve it was through forming homoerotic relationships with older men. Courted by some of the most influential citizens of Athens, the young Alcibiades chose his lovers well, calculating how best to manipulate each to further his career. Only Socrates resisted him, although the two enjoyed a close friendship.
In other ways, too, Alcibiades was careful to consolidate his powerbase. An arranged marriage to Hipparete, daughter of Hipponicus, reputedly the richest Greek alive, should have opened many doors. Not only was her name attractive to a young aristocrat, the fact that she was an heiress made her irresistible. Yet despite giving Alcibiades a son (also called Alcibiades) and a daughter, hers was not a happy marriage. Irritated by her husband’s many public affairs and indiscretions, Hipparete tried to divorce him. Proceedings were halted when Alcibiades dragged her forcibly from the courts. She died soon after.
Alcibiades is curiously absent from the records of the first part of the Peloponnesian War, but when peace was made in 421, he was swift to make his presence felt. Relishing the opportunities that only war could bring, he did his best to sabotage the treaty. As proxenos for Sparta, it was his responsibility to represent Spartan interests in Athens. Instead, he undermined them, earning popular acclaim by humiliating their ambassadors in front of the Assembly. Not for the last time Alcibiades allowed personal ambition to eclipse the national interest, and as a short-term strategy it worked beautifully – the People appointed him one of the strategoi. So, although direct hostilities between Sparta and Athens were suspended for almost six years, thanks to Alcibiades’ disruptive efforts there was constant skirmishing between their allies. Wherever battle was, there too was Alcibiades. At the head of an alliance of Peloponnesian states united in their opposition to Sparta, he harried the enemy and won some minor victories. Then in 418 at Mantinea the Athenians were defeated, and his star seemed in danger of being eclipsed.
But not for long. At the Olympic Games of 416, he staged a spectacular comeback, parading not just his riches but a new nexus of powerful Ionian backers – Ephesus, Chios and Lesbos – all of which hoped to bathe in his reflected glory. In an unprecedented show of wealth Alcibiades entered seven chariots, coming first, second and third. Moreover, thanks to the largesse of his east Aegean sponsors, he entertained the entire Olympic audience to a banquet served from Athenian state silverware ‘borrowed’ for the occasion, a display of opulence calculated not just to enhance his fame but to intimidate. For he was already contemplating a new campaign: first against Sicily and then, so rumour had it, on to Carthage. Should he be successful the rewards would be incalculable. Hence the support of the Ionians.
Alcibiades still needed the People’s backing. In the last recorded use of the mechanism his rivals tried to ostracize him. They failed. Claiming that he had won his Olympic victory purely to gain kudos for Athens, Alcibiades first formed an unlikely alliance with Nicias, then in the Assembly outmaneuvered him in the debate over Sicily.
To Nicias’ horror he, Alcibiades and the veteran soldier Lamachus were appointed to lead the campaign, which almost certainly would not only reignite the Peloponnesian War but plunge the whole of the Greek world into conflict. But in 415, on the eve of the expedition’s departure, most of the city’s herms were discovered inexplicably smashed, an act of gross impiety that Alcibiades’ enemies were quick to lay at his door – quite literally, as his was one of the only houses whose herm had not been broken. Alcibiades was allowed to sail for Sicily, but on reaching Catana he found himself recalled to Athens to face indictment not only on this count but on the capital charge of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries by staging a grotesque parody that revealed their secrets to non-initiates.
Rather than return to face trial Alcibiades evaded his guards at Thurii and disappeared. In his absence an Athenian jury condemned him to death, while priests cast a curse on him. Not that Alcibiades cared. He had already found safe haven – in Sparta. In return for his protection he exchanged crucial military advice with his city’s old enemy. In Alcibiades’ absence Athens’ fleet and army were defeated in Sicily, while in Attica itself – since, as predicted, the Sicilian expedition rekindled the war with Sparta – the Spartans seized and permanently fortified the strategic site of Decelea.
In exile Alcibiades sloughed off his reputation for luxury. But not every Spartan relished his presence. When King Agis II grew suspicious that his wife, Timaea, was secretly referring to her new-born baby Leotychidas as ‘Alcibiades’, the extent to which his guest had integrated himself into Spartan high society was revealed.
While touring Ionia in 412 to incite poleis including his Olympic backers, Ephesus and Chios, to switch sides from Athens to Sparta, Alcibiades learned of Agis’ plot to kill him. His options increasingly limited, he once again defected – to virtually the only state that he had not yet offended: Persia.
Even in Persia Alcibiades could not resist playing a double game.
Athens had been hard hit by her defeat in Sicily and, with an oligarchic coup appearing increasingly inevitable, Alcibiades entered into discussions with its potential leaders about the possibility of his return. In 411, however, Athenian troops on campaign in Ionia, unhappy with the progress of the war and believing that Alcibiades could bring Persia in on their side, hailed him as their general. When he set foot on his native soil, Alcibiades was determined it should be in style and with a string of victories to his name. For almost four years he remained in the east, raising money, leading campaign after campaign against the Spartans and playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Persia.
The day he returned to Piraeus, Athens was marking the festival of the Plynteria. The quayside was crowded with cheering well-wishers waving crowns of gold and bronze. Overcome by emotion, 43-year-old Alcibiades wept as he stepped ashore.
For more than a year, he enjoyed extraordinary power. All charges laid against him back in 415 were dropped, his confiscated property was returned and the inscription recording the curse against him was hastily removed and flung into the sea. He was appointed to the new and unprecedented post of Supreme Commander. He reached the pinnacle of his ambitions; but soon the kaleidoscope would twist once more and its pattern break unrecognizably.
Thanks in no small part to Alcibiades’ earlier intrigues Ephesus had defected to the Spartans. Now in 406 Alcibiades was determined to win it back. But his plans were thwarted. In his absence on a mission of his own and in contravention of all orders his helmsman, Antiochus, whom he had left in charge of Athens’ fleet, joined battle with the Spartans at Ephesus. He was roundly defeated. Innocent for once of any wrongdoing, Alcibiades nevertheless was blamed for the debacle and summoned home. Of course, he did not go. Once again Alcibiades was on the run.
During his years of campaigning, Alcibiades had built a powerbase of his own in the Chersonese. Now at the top of everyone’s ‘most wanted’ list, he took refuge there on his estates, a middle-aged warlord ruling his small empire and watching as, without him, Athens’ fortunes once again unravelled. But in 405 news came which he could not ignore. Athens’ fleet was in the Dardanelles. So were the Spartans. But the Athenians had chosen a disastrous position for their base by the sluggish creek of Aegospotamoi. Foreseeing dire consequences, Alcibiades rode into their camp and sought out their generals. Desperately he tried to persuade them to move to a better location, but they ignored him. When they subsequently joined battle, they were comprehensively defeated and all but a handful of Athens’ 180 triremes were lost. Without a navy, and with the Black Sea corn route now in Spartan hands, Athens could not survive for long. In 404 the starving city finally surrendered. It was in no position to make terms. The Spartans dismantled the city walls and the Long Walls to the sea, installed the oligarchic government of the Thirty Tyrannoi and spared the population. In victory, the fiercest fighting force in Greece had shown a tender clemency. But there was one man whom the Spartans could not forgive. In the months after Athens’ fall, with the aid of a small band of local vigilantes – vengeful brothers of a girl whom (they claimed) he had seduced – they tracked down Alcibiades to a village in Phrygia. Silently they surrounded the house in which the two were sleeping. Then they set it alight. As Alcibiades ran out, a sword in his right hand, a blanket wrapped round his left arm as a shield, he was shot down in a hail of javelins and arrows. He died as he lived, loved and hated in equal measure – but ultimately alone.
About the author
David Stuttard is a writer, lecturer, theatre director, dramaturg and Fellow of Goodenough College, London. He serves on the advisory board of The Transatlantic Forum for Education and Diplomacy (TFED), and is represented by Bill Hamilton at A.M. Heath.
David is a classicist well-known for translating and directing Greek plays. His career represents an admirable commitment to popularising classical culture and making it accessible to new non-specialist audiences.
In 2021, Bloomsbury Academic Press published Looking at Agamemnon, the latest in a series of books that David edits featuring chapters from international scholars, and including his own translation.
David is currently working on Hubris: Pericles’ Parthenon Project and the Invention of Athens for HUP and Looking at Persians for Bloomsbury.
Meanwhile, David’s new literary show, Lovers, Traitors and Bloody Greeks, with Sian Phillips and Stephen Greif, which premiered in October 2020, will be performed at Goodenough College, London in July and at Crazy Coqs, Soho in September 2021. Later in 2021 and in 2022 David will lecture for Noble Caledonian on cruises to Sicily.