From the Acropolis to Mar-a-Lago: Trump and the ghost of Alcibiades

When democracies fall, it’s not always with a bang — sometimes it’s with applause for the man who mirrors their worst selves, writes William J Dominik.

HISTORY, in its quiet and relentless way, often leaves warnings disguised as biographies that echo through time like faint warnings only the attentive will hear.

Among the more instructive is that of Alcibiades, the dazzling and ruinous Athenian of the 5th Century BC, a man whose political genius was matched only by his ambition, whose gifts of persuasion, wealth and daring lifted him to the heights of power and ultimately helped to drag the Athenian democracy to its knees.

It is no exaggeration to say that in Alcibiades, Athens met its most seductive saboteur. In President Donald Trump, America may be facing its own.

To make this comparison is not a rhetorical flourish but a serious historical reflection. The ancient accounts – Thucydides’ austere realism, Plutarch’s moral portraits, Xenophon’s more practical observations, Plato’s philosophical dialogues – all draw a picture of a man who, though brilliant and capable, treated politics as personal theatre and the state as a means of gratifying his vanity.

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Alcibiades shifted loyalties without shame, defected to enemy states when it suited him and stirred up military disasters with reckless confidence. And yet, time and again, the people forgave him. They welcomed him back not because he was trustworthy or principled (he was neither) but because he was dazzling. He made them feel strong when he spoke. He told them what they wanted to hear.

Donald Trump is no Alcibiades in terms of education or military competence. Alcibiades was a cultivated aristocrat who was schooled by Socrates himself and a capable general who personally led Athenian campaigns during the Peloponnesian War (434–404 BC). But the similarity lies in their shared intuition that democratic crowds are easily seduced by spectacle and strength and that rational argument can be overcome by emotional appeal.

Trump’s method, like Alcibiades’, is not persuasion through reasoned debate but domination of attention. Both men operated on instinct more than ideology, always shifting to where power could be found, never bound by consistency, humility, or service.

There is a grim historical irony in the fact that Athens, the cradle of democracy, destroyed itself in part by following such a man. Alcibiades encouraged the disastrous Sicilian Expedition in 415 BC, then fled prosecution the same year by joining Sparta and later, around 411 BC, even sought favour from Persia, Athens’ most bitter enemy.

Still, when public opinion shifted, Alcibiades returned, cloaked in a fresh image, making promises of salvation. The Athenians, desperate and dazzled, invited him back. Their judgment failed. Their democracy could no longer distinguish between a patriot and a narcissist with a gift for performance.

So it has been with Trump. After inciting political turmoil, undermining electoral trust and reshaping civic discourse around personal grievance, he has returned again to the centre of power — indictments, impeachments and failed coups notwithstanding. His continued appeal is not grounded in any consistent vision of governance. He stands for little beyond himself, and that is enough for millions.

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The comparison is not flattering to America, just as Alcibiades’ story reflects more on Athens than on him. A democracy that cannot discern a demagogue does not deserve to be surprised when it collapses inward. The failure is not merely at the top. It begins in the hearts and minds of the citizens, who, lacking the intellectual and ethical tools to judge wisely, mistake celebrity for competence and vengeance for justice.

In the Life of Alcibiades, Plutarch wrote that Alcibiades was as much a reflection of Athens as a force upon it, a description that might well apply to Trump, whose rise is less an aberration than a symptom.

This is not a matter of Left or Right, but of civic health. A free society cannot survive long when its public sphere is dominated by spectacle, its electorate by grievance and its leaders by personal ambition unmoored from principle. Alcibiades did not single-handedly destroy Athens, but he exposed how weak it had become. He revealed that its democracy, no longer rooted in disciplined judgment or shared virtue, was vulnerable to manipulation by those willing to exploit its openness for selfish ends.

The United States, if it is to remain a republic in more than name, must take this lesson seriously. A democratic system is only as wise as the people who compose it. When education is neglected, when truth is sacrificed to entertainment and when citizens are no longer trained to think critically or morally, then demagogues will always find their way to power. They will always promise greatness and always leave ruin in their wake.

Alcibiades died in exile in 404 BC, hunted and betrayed, his ambitions unfulfilled. But his story remains. It is not a tale of triumph or tragedy alone, but of democratic failure, the kind that happens not when a tyrant seizes power by force, but when a free people gives it away.