Abstract
The focus of this paper is not, as usual, the function and significance of Alcibiades’ speech within the philosophical and conceptual project of Plato, but rather the portrait of his character as sketched in the Symposium. Being a highly enthralling tribute to the greatness of the master, his eccentric and paradoxical performance reflects a personal and almost idio-syncratic perspective, typical of a self-centered, transgressive and overflowing personality, inclined in words and gestures to amplification and hyperbole.