Histories or Histories?

I am struggling to find fascination in things that I do day to day, so I have decided to rediscover all of the things I used to love. One of those things is history (as anyone who knows me even remotely can attest to). So, every so often I am now going to give you all a bit of a spiel about some fact or event or discussion or person from history that interests me. Today we will start with my all time favourite profligate, Alkibiades.

There is so much information out there on Alkibiades that I am going to give you a snapshot of this famous womanizer and statesman so you can grasp why he is my favourite. If you are interested, start at the true point of initiation for the modern scholar, Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkibiades

Alkibiades was an Athenian citizen who lived in the 5th century BCE (for those not in the know, being that we’re all politically correct these days we use BCE = Before Current Era & CE = Current Era instead of the traditional BC & AD). He famously changed sides during the Peloponnesian War and supported the Spartans for a while, then the Persians, and then Athens again, and has been credited with single-handedly instigating the fall of the Athenian Empire. Of course, that’s a pretty enormous statement to go making so I’m not going to make it.
I am going to give you a five point snapshot of things I like about Alkibiades:

1. This extremely popular politician went on a drunken bender the night before sailing to attack Sicily as a general and he and his mates smashed the phalluses off Hermes statues throughout Athens (this resulted in him being recalled from Sicily to answer charges of sacrilege – so he deserted his soldiers who mostly perished thanks to Sicily, and skipped off to Sparta)
2. He had to leave his newly adopted city of refuge due to a rather inappropriate (and poorly thought out) affair with the wife of one of the two kings of Sparta
3. He had a lisp
4. He was supposedly one of the most handsome men in the ancient world (upon hearing this in grade 11 ancient history class my friend Krista let out an exclamation of excitement, henceforth our teacher was convinced that she was boy-crazy. This caused me great amusement).
5. Unsubstantiated rumour has it that Alkibiades finally perished at the hand of the older brother of a village girl he’d decided to bed. Not the most gallant of ways to go… but fitting.

I refuse to back any of this up as I am not in a factual mood. To be honest, I’m just remembering this stuff from a university assignment from about eight years ago… I’ll make corrections and retractions in a later post.

Happy histories…
Sarah