Plutarch on the childhood of Alkibiades (Alk. 2-3)

Abstract

Almost four decades ago, Donald Russell published in this journal an analysis of the first sixteen chapters of the Life of Alkibiades , which consist largely of short self-contained anecdotes about Alkibiades' childhood, youth and early career (Russell 1966b). As Russell demonstrated, most of these anecdotes are juxtaposed without any causal link. Although there are the occasional chronological markers – indications, for example, that Alkibiades is getting older and passing from childhood to early manhood – some are plainly out of chronological order and it is impossible to extract a clear chronology from them. Russell argued, however, that to try to extract such a chronological narrative would be to misunderstand the function of this material, which is not to provide a narrative of Alkibiades' early years but rather to illuminate and illustrate his character. Russell's argument, in particular the stress on Plutarch's interest in character, was seminal; together with two other papers published at roughly the same time, it marked the beginning of a new appreciation of Plutarch as an author of literary merit. But Russell was rather less convinced of the logic of selection of the first five anecdotes, which relate to Alkibiades' youth and comprise some one-and-a-half pages of Teubner text ( Alk. 2–3).