The Peloponnesian war went on much in the same way for some years after
the death of Pericles. There was no such great man left in Athens.
Socrates, the wise and deep-thinking philosopher, did not attend to state
affairs more than was his duty as a citizen; and the leading man for some
years was Nikias. He was an honest, upright man, but not clever, and
afraid of everything new, so that he was not the person to help in time
of strange dangers.
There was a youth growing up, however, of great ability. His name was
Alkibiades. He was of high and noble family, but he had lost his parents
very young, and Pericles had been his guardian, taking great care of his
property, so that he was exceedingly rich. He was very beautiful in
person, and that was thought of greatly at Athens, though he was laughed
at for the pains he took to show off his beauty, and for carrying out to
battle a shield inlaid with gold and ivory, representing Cupid hurling
Jupiter's thunderbolts. His will was so determined, that, when he was a
little boy at play in the street, and saw a waggon coming which would
have spoiled his arrangements, he laid himself down before the wheels to
stop it. He learnt easily, and, when he was with Socrates, would talk as
well and wisely as any philosopher of them all; and Socrates really seems
to have loved the bright, beautiful youth even more than his two graver
and worthier pupils, Plato and Xenophon, perhaps because in one of
Alkibiades' first battles, at Delium, he had been very badly wounded, and
Socrates had carried him safely out of the battle on his broad shoulders.
Socrates was very strong, but one of the ugliest of men, and the
Athenians were amused at the contrast between master and pupil.
[Picture: The Academic Grove]
But nobody could help loving Alkibiades in these early years, and he was
a sort of spoiled child of the people. He won three crowns in the
chariot races at the Olympic games, and feasted and made presents to his
fellow-citizens afterwards, and he was always doing some strange thing in
order to make a sensation. The first day that he was old enough to be
admitted to the public assembly, while he was being greeted there, he let
loose a tame quail, which he carried about under his cloak, and no
business could be done till it had been caught. Another time he came
very late, with a garland on his head, and desired to have the sitting
put off because he had a feast at his house; and the grave archons
actually granted his request. But the strangest thing he did was to cut
off the tail of his beautiful dog, that, as he said, the Athenians might
have something to talk about. In truth he made everything give way to
his freaks and self-will; and he was a harsh and unkind husband, and
insolent to his father-in-law; and, as time went on, he offended a great
many persons by his pride and rudeness and selfishness, so that his
brilliancy did little good.
There were Greek colonies in Sicily, but these were mostly in the
interest of Sparta. There had been some fighting there in the earlier
years of the war, and Alkibiades was very anxious to lead another
expedition thither. Nikias thought this imprudent, and argued much
against it; but the effect of his arguments was that the Athenians chose
to join him in the command of it with Alkibiades, much against his will,
for he was elderly, and out of health, and, of all men in Athens, he most
disliked and distrusted Alkibiades.
Just as the fleet for Sicily was nearly ready, all the busts of Mercury
which stood as mile-stones on the roads in Attica were found broken and
defaced; and the enemies of Alkibiades declared that it was done in one
of his drunken frolics. Such a thing, done to the figure of a god was
not mere mischief, but sacrilege, and there was to be a great inquiry
into it. Alkibiades wanted much to have the trial over before he sailed,
that he might clear himself of the suspicion; and, indeed, it seems
certain that whatever follies he might commit when he had nothing to do,
he had then far too much to think of to be likely to bring himself into
trouble by such a wanton outrage. But the Athenians chose to put off the
inquiry till he was gone, and the fleet set sail--the largest that had
ever gone from the Piraeus--with sound of trumpet, libations poured into
the sea from gold and silver bowls, songs and solemn prayers, as the 100
war galleys rowed out of the harbour in one long column. At Corcyra the
fleet halted to meet their allies, who raised the number of ships to 154,
containing 5000 heavily-armed men, with whom they made sail for Rhegium,
the Italian foreland nearest to Sicily, whence they sent to make
inquiries. They found more of the Greek cities were against them than
they had expected, and their friends were weaker. Nikias wanted merely
to sail round the island, and show the power of Athens, and then go home
again. Lamachus, another general, wanted to make a bold attack on
Syracuse at once; and Alkibiades had a middle plan, namely, to try to
gain the lesser towns by force or friendship, and to stir up the native
Sicels to revolt. This plan was accepted, and was going on well--for
Alkibiades could always talk anyone over, especially strangers, to whom
his gracefulness and brilliancy were new--when orders came from Athens
that he and his friends were to be at once sent home from the army, to
answer for the mischief done to the busts, and for many other crimes of
sacrilege, which were supposed to be part of a deep plot for upsetting
the laws of Solon, and making himself the tyrant of Athens.
This was, of course, the work of his enemies, and the very thing he had
feared. His friends wrote to him that the people were so furious against
him that he had no chance of a fair trial, and he therefore escaped on
the way home, when, on his failing to arrive, he was solemnly cursed, and
condemned to death. He took refuge in Sparta, where, fine gentleman as
he was, he followed the rough, hardy Spartan manners to perfection,
appeared to relish the black broth, and spoke the Doric Greek of Laconia,
as it was said, more perfectly than the Spartans themselves. Unlike
Aristides, and like the worse sort of exiles, he tried to get his revenge
by persuading the allies of Athens in Asia Minor to revolt; and when the
Spartans showed distrust of him, he took refuge with the Persian satrap
Tissaphernes.
In the meantime, after he had left Sicily, Nikias was so cautious that
the Syracusans thought him cowardly, and provoked a battle with him close
to their own walls. He defeated them, besieged their city, and had
almost taken it, when a Spartan and Corinthian fleet, headed by Gylippus,
came out, forced their way through the Athenians, and brought relief to
the city. More reinforcements came out to Athens, and there was a great
sea-fight in front of the harbour at Syracuse, which ended in the total
and miserable defeat of the Athenians, so that the army was obliged to
retreat from Syracuse, and give up the siege. They had no food, nor any
means of getting home, and all they could do was to make their way back
into the part of the island that was friendly to them. Gylippus and the
Syracusans tried to block their way, but old Nikias showed himself firm
and undaunted in the face of misfortune, and they forced their way on for
three or four days, in great suffering from hunger and thirst, till at
last they were all hemmed into a small hollow valley, shut in by rocks,
where the Syracusans shot them down as they came to drink at the stream,
so thirsty that they seemed not to care to die so long as they could
drink. Upon this, Nikias thought it best to offer to lay down his arms
and surrender. All the remnant of the army were enclosed in a great
quarry at Epipolae, the sides of which were 100 feet high, and fed on a
scanty allowance of bread and water, while the victors considered what
was to be done with them, for in these heathen times there was no law of
mercy for a captive, however bravely he might have fought. Gylippus
wanted to save Nikias, for the pleasure of showing off so noble a
prisoner at Sparta; but some of the Syracusans, who had been on the point
of betraying their city to him, were afraid that their treason would be
known, and urged that he should be put to death with his fellow-general;
and the brave, honest, upright old man was therefore slain with his
companion Demosthenes.
For seventy days the rest remained in the dismal quarry, scorched by the
sun, half-starved, and rapidly dying off, until they were publicly sold
as slaves, when many of the Athenians gained the favour of their masters
by entertaining them by repeating the poetry of their tragedians,
especially of Euripides, whose works had not yet been acted in Sicily.
Some actually thus gained their freedom from their masters, and could
return to Athens to thank the poet whose verses, stored in their memory,
had been their ransom.
All the history of the Peloponnesian war is written by Thukydides,
himself a brave Athenian soldier and statesman, who had a great share in
all the affairs of the time, and well knew all the men whom he describes.
[Picture: Decorative chapter heading]