c. 450 B.C.E.–404 B.C.E.

Politician

Creating the Right Impression.

Public figures in Greece often dressed to create an impression, and none more so than Alcibiades, the Athenian general who assumed the leadership of the extreme democrats in Athens in 420 B.C.E. and contributed as much as anyone to the Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War which ended in 404 B.C.E. with the surrender of Athens to Sparta and her allies. Alcibiades intended for his fashions and his private life to attract notice as a member of the "smart set" in Athens, a group typically condemned by conservative Athenians as having no respect for principles or tradition. Plutarch (c. 46–later than 120 C.E.), in a short biography of Alcibiades, compared his shrewdness as a statesman with the profligacy of his private life.

But with all these words and deeds, and with all this sagacity...