THE LIFE OF ALCIBIADES

By E. F. BENSON. London. E. Benn, 1928, and New York, Appleton, 1929.

This book ought to be bad biography and bad history because, though a biography, it does not, in the approved modern manner, present Alcibiades as being merely the result of his "conditioning;" it makes him something more than a Frankenstein complex of reactions to stimuli. Admirers of the dramatic Ludwig and the romantic Maurois may find this biography a bit old fashioned. As a history of the Peloponnesian War it deviates similarly from modern theories of history. It presents Alcibiades as a sort of demiurge and the war as his creation. The proletariat, the darling of the modern historian, is passed over in almost complete silence, but somehow one doesn't seem to mind. In fact, it is quite refreshing.

If one would read again of the most Quixotic of the Greeks and of the most tragic of Greek, if not of all, wars, one would do well to read this life of Alcibiades, a scholarly book because Mr. Benson is an accomplished Hellenist, an entertaining one because he is, of course, a distinguished British novelist.

Department of Greek and Latin.