After between two and three months of active preparations, the
expedition[41] was almost ready to start, when an event happened which
fatally poisoned the prevalent cheerfulness of the city. This was the
mutilation of the Hermæ, one of the most extraordinary events in all
Grecian history.
The Hermæ, or half-statues of the god Hermes, were blocks of marble
about the height of the human figure. The upper part was cut into a
head, face, neck, and bust; the lower part was left as a quadrangular
pillar, broad at the base, without arms, body, or legs, but with the
significant mark of the male sex in front. They were distributed in
great numbers throughout Athens, and always in the most conspicuous
situations; standing beside the outer doors of private houses as well
as of temples--near the most frequented porticoes--at the intersection
of crossways--in the public agora. They were thus present to the eye
of every Athenian in all his acts of inter-communion, either for
business or pleasure, with his fellow citizens. The religious feeling
of the Greeks considered the god to be planted, or domiciliated, where
his statue stood, so that the companionship, sympathy, and
guardianship of Hermes became associated with most of the
manifestations of conjunct life at Athens, political, social,
commercial, or gymnastic. Moreover the quadrangular fashion of these
statues, employed occasionally for other gods besides Hermes, was a
most ancient relic handed down from the primitive rudeness of
Pelasgian workmanship; and was popular in Arcadia, as well as
peculiarly frequent in Athens.
About the end of May 415 B.C., in the course of one and the same
night, all these Hermæ, one of the most peculiar marks of the city,
were mutilated by unknown hands. Their characteristic features were
knocked off or leveled, so that nothing was left except a mass of
stone with no resemblance to humanity or deity. All were thus dealt
with in the same way, save and except very few; nay, Andocides affirms
(and I incline to believe him) that there was but one which escaped
unharmed.
It is of course impossible for any one to sympathize fully with the
feelings of a religion not his own; indeed, the sentiment with which,
in the case of persons of different creed, each regards the strong
emotions growing out of causes peculiar to the other--is usually one
of surprize that such trifles and absurdities can occasion any serious
distress or excitement. But if we take that reasonable pains, which is
incumbent on those who study the history of Greece, to realize in our
minds the religious and political associations of the Athenians--noted
in ancient times for their superior piety, as well as for their
accuracy and magnificence about the visible monuments embodying that
feeling--we shall in part comprehend the intensity of mingled dismay,
terror, and wrath which beset the public mind on the morning after
this nocturnal sacrilege, alike unforeseen and unparalleled. Amidst
all the ruin and impoverishment which had been inflicted by the
Persian invasion of Attica, there was nothing which was so profoundly
felt or so long remembered as the deliberate burning of the statues
and temple of the gods.
If we could imagine the excitement of a Spanish or Italian town, on
finding that all the images of the Virgin had been defaced during the
same night, we should have a parallel to what was now felt at
Athens--where religious associations and persons were far more
intimately allied with all civil acts and with all the proceedings of
every-day life--where, too, the god and his efficiency were more
forcibly localized, as well as identified with the presence and
keeping of the statue. To the Athenians, when they went forth on the
following morning, each man seeing the divine guardian at his doorway
dishonored and defaced, and each man gradually coming to know that the
devastation was general--it would seem that the town had become, as it
were, god-less--that the streets, the market-place, the porticoes were
robbed of their divine protectors, and what was worse still, that
these protectors, having been grossly insulted, carried away with them
alienated sentiments--wrathful and vindictive instead of tutelary and
sympathizing. It was on the protection of the gods that all their
political constitution as well as the blessings of civil life
depended; insomuch that the curses of the gods were habitually invoked
as sanction and punishment for grave offenses, political as well as
others; an extension and generalization of the feeling still attached
to the judicial oath. This was, in the minds of the people of Athens,
a sincere and literal conviction--not simply a form of speech to be
pronounced in prayers and public harangues, without being ever
construed as a reality in calculating consequences and determining
practical measures. Accordingly, they drew from the mutilation of the
Hermæ the inference, not less natural than terrifying, that heavy
public misfortune was impending over the city, and that the political
constitution to which they were attached was in imminent danger of
being subverted.
Such was the mysterious incident which broke in upon the eager and
bustling movement of Athens, a few days before the Sicilian
expedition was starting. In reference to that expedition, it was
taken to heart as a most depressing omen. It would doubtless have been
so interpreted, had it been a mere undesigned accident happening to
any venerated religious object--just as we are told that similar
misgivings were occasioned by the occurrence, about this same time, of
the melancholy festival of the Adonia, wherein the women loudly
bewailed the untimely death of Adonis. The mutilation of the Hermæ,
however, was something much more ominous than the worst accident. It
proclaimed itself as the deliberate act of organized conspirators, not
inconsiderable in number, whose names and final purpose were indeed
unknown, but who had begun by committing sacrilege of a character
flagrant and unheard of. For intentional mutilation of a public and
sacred statue, where the material afforded no temptation to plunder,
is a case to which we know no parallel: much more, mutilation by
wholesale--spread by one band and in one night throughout an entire
city. Tho neither the parties concerned, nor their purposes, were ever
more than partially made out, the concert and conspiracy itself is
unquestionable.
It seems probable, as far as we can form an opinion, that the
conspirators had two objects, perhaps some of them one and some the
other:--to ruin Alcibiades[42]--to frustrate or delay the expedition.
How they pursued the former purpose, will be presently seen: toward
the latter, nothing was ostensibly done, but the position of Teukrus
and other metics implicated renders it more likely that they were
influenced by sympathies with Corinth and Megara, prompting them to
intercept an expedition which was supposed to promise great triumphs
to Athens--rather than corrupted by the violent antipathies of
intestine politics. Indeed the two objects were intimately connected
with each other; for the prosecution of the enterprise, while full of
prospective conquest to Athens, was yet more pregnant with future
power and wealth to Alcibiades himself. Such chances would disappear
if the expedition could be prevented; nor was it at all impossible
that the Athenians, under the intense impression of religious terror
consequent on the mutilation of the Hermæ, might throw up the scheme
altogether. Especially Nicias, exquisitely sensitive in his own
religious conscience, and never hearty in his wish for going (a fact
perfectly known to the enemy), would hasten to consult his prophets,
and might reasonably be expected to renew his opposition on the fresh
ground offered to him, or at least to claim delay until the offended
gods should have been appeased. We may judge how much such a
proceeding was in the line of his character and of the Athenian
character, when we find him, two years afterward, with the full
concurrence of his soldiers, actually sacrificing the last opportunity
of safe retreat for the half-ruined Athenian army in Sicily, and
refusing even to allow the proposition to be debated, in consequence
of an eclipse of the moon; and when we reflect that Greeks frequently
renounced public designs if an earthquake happened before the
execution.
But tho the chance of setting aside the expedition altogether might
reasonably enter into the plans of the conspirators, as a likely
consequence of the intense shock inflicted on the religious mind of
Athens, and especially of Nicias--this calculation was not realized.
Probably matters had already proceeded too far even for Nicias to
recede. Notice had been sent around to all the allies; forces were
already on their way to the rendezvous at Corcyra; at Argeian and
Mantineian allies were arriving at Piræus to embark. So much the more
eagerly did the conspirators proceed in that which I have stated as
the other part of their probable plan; to work that exaggerated
religious terror, which they had themselves artificially brought
about, for the ruin of Alcibiades.
Few men in Athens either had, or deserved to have, a greater number of
enemies, political as well as private, than Alcibiades; many of them
being among the highest citizens, whom he offended by his insolence,
and whose liturgies and other customary exhibitions he outshone by his
reckless expenditure. His importance had been already so much
increased, and threatened to be so much more increased, by the
Sicilian enterprise, that they no longer observed any measures in
compassing his ruin. That which the mutilators of the Hermæ seemed to
have deliberately planned his other enemies were ready to turn to
profit.