Πολιτικός Ἔρως: Alcibiades’ love in Thucydides and Plato

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2013
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Throughout Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, erotic language is spoken by the war-time leaders Pericles, in his famous Funeral Oration, and Alcibiades, in his speeches to the Athenians and the Spartans. This language is also present in Thucydides’ discussion of the myth of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. Thucydides’ usage of ἔρως is anomalous for the very reason that the History – a self-styled κτῆμά τε ἐς αἰεὶ, a possession unto eternity – is decidedly un-erotic (1.22.3; Wohl 2002, 30). Thucydides, criticizing the romantic stories found in Herodotus, qualifies his investigations thus: ἐς μὲν ἀκρόασιν ἴσως τὸ μὴ μυθῶδες αὐτῶν ἀτερπέστερον φανεῖται, “in a hearing equally their lack of fabulousness will appear unpleasing” (1.22.4). This history then is not an account meant to please, but one meant to instruct “those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future” (1.22.4).
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