This person was referenced by another doper so out of curiosity I took a look at the wiki. It was 2400 years ago but his entire life history and career is commented on down to the tiniest detail. The wiki list of sources is pages long.
Jesus was only 2000 years ago and we’re not even sure he existed at all and this guy’s history is almost absurdly detailed. Was everybody writing about this guy?
Well yeah, everyone who mattered did write about him. Alcibiades wasn’t some two-bit preacher out on the far edge of the empire. He was arguably the most significant public figure in Athens at the height of Athens’ influence. And the writers were so brilliant their works have been preserved ever since.
Keep in mind we do have descriptions of Jesus’ life. If people want to dispute the authenticity of Mark’s account of Jesus’ life, for example, that’s fine. But you could just as easily dispute the authenticity of Xenophon’s account of Alcibiades’ life and argue that Alcibiades was a mythical figure that Xenophon invented.
We know a lot about the Roman Emperors from almost 2000 years ago. We have a lot more detail on the history of Rome than of, say, Petra. Most of us probably recognize a lot more landmarks of, say, New York City or London than Dayton Ohio. We probably know more about and have more written about George Washington than Tyler or Polk.
Being in the middle of center stage as a major actor during an interesting time (and with luck, being the writings most reverently preserved) guarantees some sort of immortality.
He was a male, rich, and part of the influential urban elite. He took a major part, as a general and politician, in vital military and political events in Athens at the high of it’s prestige and literary tradition (in fact the events that brought about its much discussed decline, the Peloponnesian War).
If you wanted to be remembered from classical times, then those are the check boxes you want to tick. Not a rural spiritual leader from an obscure ethnic cult on the outskirts of the greco-roman world.
There are many ancient Greeks that I am at least somewhat acquainted with, but I don’t recall ever hearing about this one before.
The cases aren’t really comparable. There are extraordinary claims about Jesus’ actions (miracles, rising from the dead), but not about those of Alcibiades. The accounts of Jesus’ life weren’t set down by his contemporaries. There are contradictions in the accounts of Jesus’ life, but not in the case of Alcibiades (who was written about by many more people than Xenophon).
A better comparison with Jesus is Apollonius of Tyana, who also reportedly worked miracles, wasn’t written about by his contemporaries, and, aside from a disputed case, left no contemporary evidence. Did he exist?
Yeah, if you’re going to make the “anybody from the past might be fictional” argument, it’s probably best to pick somebody who wasn’t a contemporary of Thucydides.
It also helps that the Greeks just wrote a lot. That’s why we know what we know about the Persian empire of the time, for example - not that the Greek end of it was so important, but that that’s what’s survived in writing.
Xenophon would have had to have a little help from Plato, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Lysias and Andocides, amongst others. With the possible exception of Plato, none of them were associated personally with Alcibiades or any movement he belonged to.
Can we add to “male, rich, and part of the influential urban elite” some other important factors–he was handsome, charismatic, controversial and also probably romantically involved with some of the famous men of his time, including Socrates.
That bit not necessarily needed. Plenty of uncharismatic ugly men get remembered, plenty of handsome charismatic lovers get forgotten or remembered only as a footnote (e.g. Antinous who’s likeness appears in every major collection of Greco-Roman art, but we know almost nothing about him other than he was Emperor Hadrian’s lover)
Here’s an apparently serious sitedevoted to reviving the worship of Antinous.
I suppose part of the reason was Alcibiades was a major figure in ancient Greece’s most important city-state Athens. Athens was involved in a long war with Sparta that a lot of people wrote about. Jesus was from a relatively obscure part of the Roman Empire and since many of His followers were more concerned with the hereafter, they really didn’t write a major biography about His life, just his sayings. They believed He would return shortly and establish a Kingdom of Heaven on earth, so why bother writing about the missing years (title of a John Prine album).
Also many ancient Romans had a fascination with Greece to measure up to or surpass so their writings got saved, along with following centuries of the Catholic church.
But it is interesting we have so much writings from ancient Greece and not Mesopotamia or Egypt or Carthaginians,etc
Depends on whose side you`re on too.
We have a lot of Greek writings because they had an intellectual culture separate from their religion. A lot of the writings in Egypt, for example, center around their religion. Their obsession with the afterlife and divine pharaohs, meant that they spent a lot of their money and effort in preparation for funerals - grave goods, fancy tombs, etc. With that obsession, there was much less cultural attention to other aspects. The Greeks seem to have been much more relaxed about their religious observances. Plus, the Greek quasi-democracy meant that there was a respectable middle class, with the riches and leisure to explore assorted writings. You can go on about the differences - Egypt does not appear to have the tradition of stage performances that are captured Greek audiences; they don’t have a story tradition like the Iliad or Odyssey, possibly because a past hero would upstage the current living God?
I don’t know, not a historian; but I bet there’s enough of a topic for a book or thesis in this question. It just seems the Greek culture (a) was more fertile ground for the type of writings it produced than competing cultures and (b) became the intellectual godfather of the Roman culture, which disseminated their writings across the known world.
Oh, and let’s not forget © Alexander the Great and (d) Hellenistic expansion, which disseminated this culture across the eastern med and beyond, an expansionist tendency that helped ensure it was a dominant culture when Rome came along.
Am I the only one who is completely baffled by the OP’s premise? Why is Jesus being dragged into this? It’s not like he represents any kind of benchmark for biographical detail about historical figures, one way or the other.
I’m not really sure what needs explaining here. Jesus was an obscure figure in his own lifetime, and we don’t know much about his life. There is nothing unusual about that. Alcibiades was the kind of guy who would have been on the front pages of the tabloids every week, if ancient Athens had tabloids. He was a celebrity in a time and place that happens to be very well documented historically. However, there is also nothing super unusual about that. We know a great deal about many famous people from antiquity.
I’m not sure what the OP is getting at. Is the point supposed to be that since we don’t know much about the historical Jesus, it’s therefore somehow surprising that we know a lot about other people in history? If so: No, it’s not surprising. Or is that since we know a lot about Alcibiades, it’s somehow surprising that we don’t know much about the historical Jesus? If so: No, that’s not surprising either. Alcibiades and Jesus have nothing to do with each other.
I have a related question. What form did writing in Ancient Greece take? Were they using some form of ink with a stylus on parchment? Were they inscribing tablets? I’m decades away from being a schoolboy, so I can’t remember what we were told.
In addition to the holy men, a possibly interesting comparison that occurred to me recently is ancient mathematicians, such as Pythagoras or Euclid. Their ideas (at least some of them) have made a big impact on the world and are still with us today, but their biographies are obscure and clouded with legends. What their actual teachings and beliefs were, or whether they actually said and did everything that is attributed to them, is often unclear in many ways. I’ve actually heard it argued for both of those two mentioned that they might not even have existed, although going that far seems a bit of a stretch for both. And in any case, *someone *came up with the Pythagorean theorem and Euclidian geometry.
No, you can’t do it just as easily.
Look, it’s not like either Jesus or Alcibiades are getting special treatment from historians. If Xenophon had claimed that Alcibiades was the son of God and performed miracles, every single historian in the world would have called bullshit on that instantly, and no one would have complained. What people seem to be forgetting about the Gospel accounts is that they are eyebrow-raising in a pretty major way. Every other biographical account about any historical figure has to first of all pass the “is this obvious bullshit?” test before they can even be considered history. The Gospels tend to have a problem with getting over even that hurdle. The sources on Alcibiades don’t really have that problem.
When reconstructing the historical Jesus, what you have to work with is what is left after you discount the obvious bullshit. The exact same thing goes for Alcibiades. As it happens, you’re left with a bit more for Alcibiades than for Jesus.
Of course there wasn’t that much difference at the time. A mystic revealing truths about Gods was no different to one revealing truths about geometry. Pythagoras and his followers were probably just mystical as Jesus’ (they allegedly throw one of their number off a cliff for proving the existence of irrational numbers)