Alcibiades is a sort of mythical characters and I wanted to learn something more about him.
This is a good analysis of the founts and I was fascinated by the explanations and what I read.
I learned something new about this man but I think that you must have some basis of Ancient Greek history in order to appreciate it.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Alcibiades is a layman accessible historical biography of the Athenian general by Dr. P.J. Rhodes. First published in 2011, this reformat and re-release from Pen & Sword is due out 30th Aug 2021. It's 160 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

This is an academically rigorous but (mostly) layman accessible study of the infamous Athenian general which concentrates on his life through anecdotes and histories contemporaneous and written after his lifetime. The book contains numerous illustrative maps and illustrations to help readers orient themselves with the various battles and travels in which Alcibiades and his compatriots took part. Quite apart from the text, I found the maps, illustrations, photos, and background explanations from the author concerning sources and methodology to be fascinating and enriching. I am not (nor have I ever been) an antiquities scholar, but I find the ancient world fascinating and this was an enlightening (if difficult) read for me.

The book is written with chapters in more or less chronological order: background, childhood, Sicily and first exile, Sparta Persia & Athens, Athenian navy, and his final years and death. The book is meticulously annotated throughout and the chapter notes and bibliography will provide readers with many (many!) hours of further reading. I personally found the text difficult to assimilate in places (mostly because all the battle locations and casts of thousands listed in detail overwhelmed me). It's academically rigorous and will undoubtedly prove a valuable resource to readers who are interested in ancient history and Athens or more specifically the Peloponnesian War.

Four stars for me personally. For fans of the specific era and/or Alcibiades himself, I cannot imagine a more in-depth biography, five stars. There are also numerous black & white photos with captions which I found engaging and instructive.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

As someone who is trying to learn about Ancient history- particularly those of Greek and Rome, and when I saw this available on netgalley I immediately requested this.

When I first clicked on request I not realise this was a republished book when I first requested it but was still very curious to see what I could learn.

I must admit that I know nothing of Alcibiades, but saw he was around in Ancient Greece and a major player in the Peloponnesian wars, and this was enough for me to press request. In addition, the plot description of this man as “flamboyant... infamous” piqued my interest.

Unfortunately, when I first opened this on my kindle the maps would not show fully but as completely fragmented and Misty/cloudy- I was not able to make out what this was meant to be showing.
Due to this it took ages to get to the preface/beginning and I was getting fed up flicking through these cloudy pages (maybe they need to have a version so maps are compatible with kindle?)

Going into the book I was not expecting a full on chapter on the sources used and recounting Thucydides as a person and relationship to Alcibiades. Thucydides is not the only one that was mentioned, but other names had deep delved history as well, making me lose track of Alcibiades as a whole. I felt a lot of these would’ve been better placed as a footnote or perhaps a short sentence.
Not only does the author use ancient sources but also modern ones and they proceed to list them- again I can’t help thinking that maybe this would’ve been so much better at the back of the book, or as footnotes.characterise Alcibiades history.

The chapter then delved into Alcibiades childhood but altogether I was just finding this book very difficult to read. It was not really an insight into Alcibiades; which I was expecting. The book tended to go off topic or delve into other things such as voting rights in Athens and Athenian changes over time. In addition, some words were hard to understand, definitions and translations of the Ancient Greek words would’ve benefitted a lay person like me.

However, despite the DNF I did did learn some facts such as Alcibiades being exiled due to to his profanities of the Eleusinian mysteries. I also learned about male childhood and certain ceremonies that rich Athenian males would undertake. I also learned that Alcibiades knew Socrates and Pericles, and Pericles later became Alcibiades guardian after Alcibiades father died in war.

Overall, this book was not engaging enough for me to continue. It definitely is not aimed at the lay person like me and you would’ve probably had to have studied Ancient Greek wars and Alcibiades beforehand to understand and appreciate this. Unfortunately, this was lost on me.

Destined from a young age for, if not quite greatness, then certainly for something, the ward of Pericles, a renowned speaker (despite a speech impediment), the subject of plays, a possible lover of Socrates, fearless warrior, seducer, occasional demagogue - meet the “shamelessly outrageous” man known as Alcibiades (III).
PJ Rhodes begins by giving us a clear background to the structure of Athenian society, democracy and its ongoing rivalry with Sparta, the two great city states in Greece in the 5th century BC. Attempting to make lucid sense of Alcibiades’ complicated life, PJ Rhodes is unafraid to point out discrepancies in the many tall stories attributed to him, which early on give an impression of an often violent, arrogant and unfeeling man who ignored the conventions of polite society.
Soon Alcibiades is trying to engineer a new alliance against Sparta and commanding armies in battle. Alcibiades escaped the threat of ostracism (exile) by manipulating his rival to vote against the initiator of the threat. After being sentenced to death for religious crimes, he fled the country and threw his lot in with Sparta. Soon falling out of favour there, he found himself accepted once again by the Athenians. This stage of his life ended in self-imposed exile.
If nothing else, Alcibiades was a skilful manipulator and was described by a contemporary as being able to adapt quickly to his present situation, and he knew the power of good publicity. Always engendering ambivalent opinion in others, Athens “longed for him, it hated him, it wanted to have him”.
Such was the see-saw life of Alcibiades, a man who, somehow, always managed to “gain the credit for everything”. PJ Rhodes skilfully navigates the confusing history of Alcibiades in a complex but lucid narrative. The sources available are untrustworthy and prone to exaggeration, often relating events that their author wasn’t a witness to, so this book cannot be a strict biography, but it is an erudite examination of a remarkable character in a remarkable era.