ABSTRACT
In 407 bce, the larger-than-life soldier, politician, and bon vivant Alcibiades had the bad fortune to return from exile to his hometown of Athens during the Plynteria – “dour and secretive ceremonies” in honor of Athene, the divine patroness of the city, which involved, among other activities, disrobing her statue in the Parthenon and temporarily covering it. This was, according to Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades and Xenophon, a spectacularly inauspicious time to return, as the days of the Plynteria did not at all constitute the proper occasion on which to conduct civic business, including staging a returning and forgiven hero’s welcome. It does not take away from the historical accuracy of Plutarch and his sources to suggest that there is a mythological subtext at work in the latter part of the Life of Alcibiades – specifically, a subtext similar to what underlies the Callimachean aition of Teiresias’ blindness.
