Story Time: Alcibiades the Playboy
This is a great story. There is drama and sex (though surprisingly not violence). Alcibiades is a famous rake of antiquity. Originally from Athens, he changes allegiances more often than most people change clothes; he is intelligent, charming, and persuasive. I still can’t understand why people continually put Alcibiades in positions to do the damage he does. But they do, and if they didn’t, this story wouldn’t have ever existed outside of fiction.*
The tale with Alcibiades coming to Sparta, having been exiled by his home of Athens for some old-time sacrilege. He has a great time, taking up the culture enthusiastically and drinking a lot. Soon one of the two queens of Sparta, Timaea, becomes pregnant; rumours fly that Agis, the king, is not the father. The climate in Sparta grows a bit hostile to Alcibiades, and, wily enough to know when he isn’t wanted, he heads out to Persia to hang out with his friend the satrap Tissaphernes.
The kid, Leotychides, is born, but Agis doesn’t recognize him as his heir, saying that the child isn’t his, but Alcibiades’; the king wasn’t even around nine months before the birth. The next in line for the throne is Agis’ brother, Aegilaus. Agesilaus is lame, a trait not highly admired by the burly Spartans, but remarkably cunning.
I’ll turn to the amazing Plutarch for help recounting this story. Among his writings (around 75 CE, nearly 500 years after all of this happened) is a scandalous book on Alcibiades. Here’s what he has to say about this incident:
For while king Agis was absent, and abroad with the army, he [Alcibiades] corrupted his wife Timaea, and had a child born by her. Nor did she even deny it, but when she was brought to bed of a son, called him in public Leotychides, but, amongst her confidants and attendants, would whisper that his name was Alcibiades, to such a degree was she transported by her passion for him. He, on the other side, would say, in his vain way, he had not done this thing out of mere wantonness of insult, nor to gratify a passion, but that his race might one day be kings over the Lacedaemonians.
There were many who told Agis that this was so, but time itself gave the greatest confirmation to the story. For Agis, alarmed by an earthquake, had quitted his wife, and for ten months after was never with her; Leotychides, therefore, being born after these ten months, he would not acknowledge him for his son which was the reason that afterwards he was not admitted to the succession.
Alcibiades, you see, is a bad man. Things look pretty good for Aegisalaus’ kingship prospects, but there’s always a twist. Agis, on his deathbed, declares the son to be truly his after all! In Plutarch’s life of Lysander, we find this:
In the presence of many [Agis] declared Leontychides to be his; and desiring those who were present to bear witness to this to the Lacedaemonians, died.
I can only imagine the chaos this caused. A great argument starts. A leading man, Diopithes, cites an oracle, which predicts that putting a lame person in charge of Sparta will bring great ruin. Lysander counters by claiming that the “lameness” isn’t physical, but impurity of blood. There’s a good bit of rhetoric here involving omens, but eventually Agelisalaus gets the crown and goes on to be a good, if not ruthless, king.
So was Alcibiades the father? Was justice done? It’s not clear, and it probably won’t ever be, unless some authoritative ancient text come out of hiding. But it’s a great story.
August 27th, 2004 at 10:38 am
Ah, “corruption” is such a fun concept to look at, the cause of much crazy legal wrangling. It’s not as much fun as “mingling” of course.
December 10th, 2005 at 3:17 pm
And to think, people get paid to write soap opera’s when all one has to do is tell the stories of history.