We've talked now for several lectures in the context of Athenian Democracy. And it's worth pausing for just a moment to remind ourselves that within Athenian Democracy there was genuine egalitarianism among the citizens, in the assembly, in the council, in the juries and the law courts. At the same time however, there were also profound differences in class and status within this nominally equal citizen body. Today we're going to be talking about Alcibiades. But to understand him we're going to pause for a moment and consider a couple of the central features of Athenian life and society. Exemplary among them is the symposium. Now for us the word symposium has come to mean a kind of learned gathering of people talking about important things. The word actually means drinking together. And this was a ritualized event for citizens, that is for free native born adult males. And it asserts and embodies and enacts citizen privilege. The symposium was men, invited guests, generally reclining on couches around the edge of a room. And in the center was a great mixing bowl called a krater in which water and wine were mixed and served to the participants. There was a symposiarch, same word as archon, somebody who was, so to speak, the master of the revels, usually the host of the event. And he was in charge of keeping things progressing and keeping things orderly et cetera. As the great French scholar Francois[UNKNOWN] has observed, the mixture of water and wine in the crater is a symbol of the mixture of pleasures that the symposium is supposed to give, give its guests. There are food and drink. So Dionysus is the presiding divinity in this regard. There's also music. Here you can see a reveler reclining. If you look closely, you can see that his Hair has a garland on it and a slave is bringing him a lyre to play. So song and music were parts of the pleasure, sometimes provided by the guests, sometimes by hired entertainers as in this flute girl. In addition, conversation was highlighted and not only conversation but recitation of poetry and this had a, kind of, competitive aspect to it as well. We have seen over and over again that the term agon, the competition, informs so much of Greek life. And what you can see here, among other things, is these men, who are playing a game. Because this was another part of the pleasures, there were drinking games. And this is one called katabas, in which you take the last few drops of wine that are left in your cup. And you throw them at a target and try to either make it ring, or knock it over, and, this is represented over and over again as well. Games, drinking, singing, recitation, and, the vase paintings are sometimes Fairly straightforward. About the sexuality, this we have seen before, this is a Hetaira. A woman who is a professional entertainer, so to speak. And who is about to join one of the male revelers on his cot. The vase paintings, likewise, don't spare us some of the realities of what happens when you drink a lot. Here, you have a slave holding the head of a reveler who has overindulged, and is just about to throw up. Oh, well. But Eros, the erotics of the symposium, were also very important. This is a wall painting in, a place called the Tomb of the Diver in Paestum and you can see here men flirting with one another. We've not talked about this very much so far, but now we will for a little while. Because a certain degree of homoerotic activity was part of at least elite male behavior. It was highly codified. It generally involved an older male and a younger male who were called respectively the, the lover and the beloved. And their behavior was supposed to be strictly controlled by certain conventions. That is to say the lover was never to use force, the beloved was never to ask for gifts or to get bribed. And this is not I have to be very careful about this, be very precise about this. These men also had women friends and lovers, had wives, begat children. There's nothing like a sort of heterosexual and homosexual divide here. This was part of adult male behavior. We mentioned it very briefly when we talked about Sparta long ago about the alliances there between older and younger men in that process of upbringing. And we can also see it not only in the illustrations on the vases, many of which feature beautiful youths. Here a slave drawing wine from the krater. But if you look very, very carefully, you can see the word here kalos. Kalos and there would be the name here, of one Lycus. And what this means is that Lycus is beautiful. These pots were engraved, or painted with the names of young men, who were thought of as beautiful, who were objects of desire. And you might sort of declare your devotion to one of these by putting his name and then the epithet, is beautiful. It's out of this milieu then, that we understand Alcibiades. This idealized portrait bust from somewhat later makes him look a little bit like Alexander the Great. We've already mentioned him in connection with the intrigues in the Peloponnese and with his probable involvement in the, in the suppression of Milos. Who was he? He was an Alcmened. Yep, that family again. In other words, as blue-blooded as you can get. He was a nephew and a ward of Pericles. He was wealthy, he was callos, he was brilliant, and he was totally unscrupulous. He was, among other things, a victor in the most glamorous of the Olympic events, the chariot race in 416. And it may have been the, the reason for his not being directly named at Melos, and that he was back at Olympia training his horses. And as we'll see, he boasts that they came in first, second, and fourth. So, they won 3 prizes. As an Olympic victor, he is the topic of enormous public fascination on the part of the Athenian people. He was a friend, if I can put it that way of the philosopher Socrates. When we talk about Socrates, we'll talk a great deal again about Alcibiades who tried unsuccessfully to seduce the older man. Alcibiades was so used to being the object of desire that it came as sort of a shock to him when Socrates refused to engage in any sort of physical love. That's where the term platonic love comes from incidentally. Alcibiades we are told had on his shield the, an image of the god of love, Eros, armed with thunderbolts. What we're seeing here is a celebrity, he is a upatrid idol, for the people, for the demos of Athens. He will Influence the course of Athenian history disproportionately. And what we'll see next is his central role in the Athenian invasion of Sicily. .
