page_title: Cultural depictions of Alcibiades
section_title: Ancient comedy
hierarchical_section_title: Cultural depictions of Alcibiades / Ancient comedy
context_page_description: The prominent Athenian statesman Alcibiades has been criticized by ancient comic writers and appears in several Socratic dialogues. He enjoys an important afterlife, in literature and art, having acquired symbolic status as the personification of ambition and sexual profligacy. He continues to fascinate the world and appears in several significant works of modern literature.
context_section_description: Alcibiades excited in his contemporaries a fear for the safety of the political order. Thereby, he has not been spared by ancient Greek comedy, and stories attest to an epic confrontation between Alcibiades and Eupolis resembling that between Aristophanes and Cleon.
  Aristophanes mentions Alcibiades several times in his satirical plays, for instance making fun of his manner of speech and his lisp. According to Aristophanes the Athenian people "yearns for him, and hates him too, but wants him back". Aeschylus in Aristophanes' Frogs illustrates Alcibiades' ambivalent personality saying:
  You should not rear a lion cub in the city,
  [best not to rear a lion in the city,]
  
  but if one is brought up, accommodate its ways.
   
  Aeschylus sees Alcibiades as a powerful creation arousing admiration, but also as a "savage figure" unacceptable and dangerous when released in the city.
caption: Jean-Baptiste Régnault (1754–1829): Socrates Tears Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure, 1785
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