Notte di Hermes : Alcibiade, Crizia e la festa ultima di Atene

Three fifth-century BC feasts featuring Alcibiades, Critias – together or separate and far each other. The first feast, in Athens in the summer of 415, before the expedition to Sicily, is the night of the mutilation of herms, during Adonis’ rites, when Athenian women in the hanging gardens were mourning for the death of the god and singing to propitiate his rebirth. The second one is the civil feast of 407, when Alcibiades, after his condemnation, banishment and exile, comes back to Athens because of a decree of grace signed by Critias and the whole city, which - as Aristophanes writes - “loves him, hates and detests him, desires him” – is on the shore of Piraeus waiting for him in celebration. The third is the ultimate feast: in 403, Alcibiades again fleeing from Athens has taken refuge with the Persian satrap Pharnabazus and the killer arrives from Sparta, with the consent of Critias: the murder is the ultimate seal that binds each other, indissolubly together, the best sons of Athens.