there is a fundamental disconnect between men like Alcibiades and Leonardo da Vinci and their own times--they are not men determined by their own time, they represent or embody something older and stronger that is in some sense “out of place” in its own time and can therefore overcome an age of decadence. While this same age of decadence is in an indirect way the “cause” or the opportunity both for the emergence of Alcibiades and of his weaker and decadent contemporaries, Alcibiades is not determined by these or by their horizon in his life or action, let alone in his thought: “Great men are necessary, the age in which they appear is accidental; that they almost always become masters over their age is only because they are stronger, because they are older, because for a longer time much was gathered for them. The relationship between a genius and his age is like that between strong and weak, or between old and young: the age is relatively always much younger, thinner, more immature, less assured, more childish.”