Boris Johnson is no Pericles

Former British PM Boris Johnson’s memoir Unleashed imagines him, like Cincinnatus, leaving his plow, saving Rome, and returning to it. But given that Boris is among the international elite, perhaps Alcibiades (c. 451-404 BC) would fit him better.

Athenian elites had long had connections with the other powerbrokers of the classical Greek world, Sparta and Persia. Born into such a family, the young Alcibiades, at the death of his father in 447 BC, was placed in the care of the great Athenian statesman Pericles, who chose Socrates as his mentor (we are told he tried to seduce Socrates but failed). A charismatic and handsome young man, he led a life of “lawless self-indulgence” but, as a formidable strategist, he built an alliance to sustain the long war against Sparta, though it was defeated in 418 BC. But many Athenians still adored him, and in 415 BC, Alcibiades persuaded them to put him at the head of an expedition to conquer Sicily. The fleet set off but was called back on the grounds of sacrilege committed by Alcibiades and friends during a drunken party on the eve of departure.

Well aware of his enemies in Athens, Alcibiades jumped ship and offered his services to the grateful Spartans. He told them of Athens’s plans for Sicily — Spartan intervention led to Athens’s loss of the whole expedition — and urged them to bring in the Persians against Athens. But he also had a child by the king of Sparta’s wife. Wisely fleeing to his contacts in Persia, he suggested they support Athens. But Persia decided for Sparta, and in 410 BC Alcibiades promptly offered his services back to the Athenian fleet, which greeted him with adulation. This provided a turning point in Athens’s fortunes, but a disastrous mistake in 406 BC saw him deposed. He retired, and then tried his luck again in Persia — where in 404 BC it ran out.

Like Boris — except in dealings with Sparta — Alcibiades had a “world king” mentality. In 405 BC the comic poet Aristophanes, knowing he was both loved and loathed, raised with his audience the question: “What should we do with Alcibiades?” Not a question anyone would have asked of Cincinnatus…

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 2024 World edition.