Alas, Alcibiades, what condition you suffer from!

An excerpt from my new book: The Quest for Character — What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us about Our Search for Good Leaders

[If you like this excerpt, please consider getting and reviewing The Quest for Character.]

The year is 430 BCE. The place, Athens. The time, shortly after the beginning of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, which — twenty-six years later — will end in Athens’s defeat and a general weakening of the Greek city-states, so much so that they will soon become easy prey, first of Philip II of Macedon and then of his son Alexander “the Great.”

But that will come later. Right now, two friends are in the midst of a momentous conversation that will mark not just their lives but the future of the city they love: Socrates and Alcibiades, the philosopher and the future statesman and general. Socrates is about forty years old, while his companion has just turned twenty. Despite his youth and inexperience, or more likely because of it, Alcibiades is full of self-confidence. He tells Socrates that he doesn’t need anyone or anything. He can rely on his own strengths, from his undisputed physical beauty to his penchant for daring, from his noble ancestry to his considerable wealth.