Plutarch's closing synkrisis weighs two brilliant, self-destroying political-military careers against each other and finds Alcibiades the more likable traitor and Coriolanus the more incorruptible but more inhuman man.
This short comparison chapter is the formal synkrisis that Plutarch appends to his paired Lives of Alcibiades and Coriolanus (Gaius Marcius), the Athenian statesman-general who repeatedly switched sides during the Peloponnesian War and the Roman patrician who, exiled by his own city, led an enemy army against it. Plutarch does not retell either biography; he assumes the reader already knows both and instead runs the two men side by side point by point: their generalship, their political style, the nature and motives of their treason, their handling of money, their capacity to charm or repel other people, and the underlying flaws of character that undid each of them.
The comparison unfolds as a series of paired judgments rather than a narrative. Plutarch grants that as generals both men were nearly equal in daring and skill, but gives Alcibiades the edge for winning by land and sea alike. On politics, he judges both blameworthy but finds courting the mob less shameful than ruling by fear and contempt, which sets up his harsher treatment of Marcius' haughtiness. He examines the two acts of treason closely: Alcibiades betrayed Athens out of personal danger and, Plutarch argues, still ultimately served Athenian interests through the alliances he engineered, while Marcius turned wholesale on his own fatherland out of unappeasable anger, ravaging Italian cities that had done him no wrong. Money separates them sharply -- Alcibiades took bribes and spent lavishly on vice, while Marcius refused all such rewards, yet his very incorruptibility curdled into an arrogance that made his virtues burdensome rather than winning. The essay closes on the Volscian withdrawal: Plutarch faults Marcius not for sparing Rome but for the graceless, purely private way he did it, at his mother's plea rather than through honorable terms, which he says dishonored the city he spared as much as it flattered his mother.
Historically this synkrisis matters because it is Plutarch's own stated method laid bare: he did not write the Parallel Lives to entertain but to use paired biography as a moral instrument, letting Greek and Roman careers illuminate each other's virtues and vices by direct comparison. The Alcibiades-Coriolanus pairing is one of his sharpest because both men are genuinely gifted and genuinely destroyed by the same underlying passion -- wounded pride answered by vengeance against their own people -- so the comparison becomes less about which nation produced the better man and more about which flavor of self-ruin, charming faithlessness or rigid self-will, is the more forgivable. The chapter also preserves an anecdote about Aristotle's gift for persuasion, attributed to a letter of Antipater, showing how Plutarch layers outside testimony and named sources (Thucydides, Dionysius, Dio, Plato) into his moral argument.
“Neither, then, is to be praised; yet the man who plays the demagogue and courts favor is less blameworthy than those who abuse the many in order not to seem to play the demagogue.”
— Comparison Of Alcibiades With Coriolanus
“for it was not out of rivalry, nor out of political contest or competition, as with the other, but in gratifying his own anger — from which, as Dio says, no one ever got any benefit — that he threw many parts of Italy into confusion”
— Comparison Of Alcibiades With Coriolanus
“Now in one of his letters Antipater, remarking on the passing of the philosopher Aristotle, says, "besides everything else, the man also had the gift of persuasion."”
— Comparison Of Alcibiades With Coriolanus
“for he withdrew neither persuaded by those he was warring against, nor having persuaded those warring alongside him.”
— Comparison Of Alcibiades With Coriolanus
“The cause of all this was the unsociable and excessively haughty and self-willed quality of his character, which in itself is burdensome to the many, but when joined to ambition becomes altogether savage and implacable.”
— Comparison Of Alcibiades With Coriolanus
It is the formal comparison Plutarch appends to a pair of parallel Lives, in this case Alcibiades and Coriolanus (Marcius), weighing their careers point by point on generalship, political conduct, treason, money, and character rather than retelling the biographies. This chapter is a complete example of the technique.
Plutarch is harder on Marcius. He credits Alcibiades' treason with at least serving Athens indirectly through the alliances it produced, while he says Marcius turned on his fatherland purely to gratify his own anger and wasted cities that had done him no wrong.
He contrasts Alcibiades' habit of taking bribes and spending lavishly on vice with Marcius' refusal of all such rewards, but argues Marcius' incorruptibility was tainted by arrogance, since it made him seem to insult the poor out of contempt rather than genuine principle.
It says Alcibiades knew how to be agreeable to those he dealt with, so even his errors carried charm, while Marcius' haughty self-will made his virtues burdensome, meaning the Romans admired him but never loved him.
He argues it was not an honorable act of statesmanship but a private favor granted to his mother's pleading after he had already rejected public terms of settlement, which he says dishonored Rome even as it spared the city.
Plutarch cites them as counterexamples: men who also refused to court the crowd's favor but, unlike Marcius, did not turn vindictive when denied honors, showing that aloofness from the mob need not curdle into vengefulness.
No. He grants Alcibiades a slight military edge and more charm, but explicitly says Marcius deserves comparison with the finest and most upright Greeks in self-restraint and control over love of money, and pointedly not with Alcibiades on that score.
He names Thucydides for Alcibiades' deception of the Spartan envoys, Dionysius (of Halicarnassus) for Marcius' slander of the Volscians at the games, Dio for the remark on anger's uselessness, Plato on solitude and self-will, and a letter of Antipater on Aristotle's persuasiveness.
Aemilius Paulus · Agesilaus · Agis · Alcibiades · Alexander · Antony · Aratus · Aristides · Artaxerxes · Caesar · Caius Gracchus · Caius Marius