“Con grande gloria ma non con lode unanime”: Isocrate e Alcibiade

The paper examines Isocrates’ passages on Alcibiades, from the extremely favourable and justifying vision of the oration On the team of horses to those, more nuanced and reliable, of the speeches Busiris and To Philip, very distant from each other from a chronological point of view and of different extension. \r\nIsocrates recognises to Alcibiades a certain greatness, for better or for worse; but he presents him as an ambiguous figure, able to obtain great fame (doxa), but not necessarily unanimous praise (epainos). Alcibiade appears in Isocrates’ work as a man of tenacious will and capable of great initiatives, but cause of tarache and kaka with serious and long lasting consequences for Athens.