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Like Timon, Alcibiades is a historical figure who lived during the Peloponnesian War. The historical Alcibiades was a renowned military general who, upon being banished from Athens, sought retaliation by allying himself with Athens’s chief rival, Sparta. Shakespeare’s Alcibiades is similarly banished when he attempts to save his friend from execution. His forceful pleas for clemency rub the senators the wrong way, leading them to declare him an exile. Alcibiades takes this declaration as an insulting expression of Athenian ingratitude. After all, he is a highly decorated military leader whose contributions to the city-state are now dismissed as irrelevant. It is this fury that unexpectedly aligns him with Timon, whose misanthropic self-exile mirrors Alcibiades’s bitter banishment. Though Alcibiades’s grievances are legal and political in nature, and Timon’s are primarily ethical, their shared hatred of the Athenians inspires a tenuous alliance. Timon gives Alcibiades gold to support his attack on the city, and Alcibiades reciprocates by seeking punishment for those who wronged Timon. Along with Flavius and Apemantus, then, Alcibiades may be read as one of the few figures who demonstrate loyalty to Timon after his financial downfall.
