‘Each by each was thought
The man who did the deed, but no man’s guilt
Was proved, for each denied it.’
ANTIGONE.
THE fleet was to have been ready to sail by the beginning of the
following June. In the meantime each Athenian tried to outdo his
neighbour in his eagerness to make the undertaking glorious. The
citizens, whether bound to serve or not, pressed in to be enrolled as
soldiers. The rich men emulated one another in the strength and size of
the great ships they offered. Ambassadors were sent to all allies
demanding aid for the important conquest—aid in men, in money, and
provisions. The generals were allowed a free hand in their expenditure.
By the time appointed everything was ready, but by an unfortunate
coincidence the date fixed for the departure of the fleet fell on the
Adônia, the days when the Athenian women kept their yearly mourning for
the lamentable death of the beautiful youth, beloved of Aphrodite, and
then celebrated their rejoicing at the glad festival of his happy
resurrection. Clearly the fleet must not put to sea at such a time.
Other unforeseen delays postponed the sailing till the first of August.
Before that day arrived a horrid and unspeakable event occurred at
Athens. The religious custom of the time had placed in every street a
stone image of the divine champion Hermes, and a rough statue of this
god, so dearly loved and reverently worshipped, stood at all the
cross-roads, before every temple, and many of the private houses. These
images were more than sacred: they were objects of peculiar devotion,
for Hermes was not only messenger of Zeus, he was protector of the state
and Constitution. To do offence to him was to offend the state, and
tempt the potent deity to desert the city.
Some days before the fleet was to have sailed, when everyone was up and
about betimes, and full of eager preparation, it was discovered by
someone who had gone first abroad that one and then another of these
statues had been shamefully cut and disfigured. Dismayed and horrified,
those who first heard of it spread the dreadful news about the town.
Then, by degrees, the fact was realized that not one or two, but almost
every image of the god before the temples and the houses, as well as at
the cross-roads, had been treated in the same disgraceful, sacrilegious
manner, and in many instances reduced to a mere shapeless block of
stone.
To understand the great horror of the people, we must recollect how
religious feeling in a Greek permeated his whole being, lived in his
life, his thoughts, his actions, and, as it were, controlled him; how it
was closely bound up with the state political; how he believed that the
gods were incorporated with the city; how the deity, too, was almost
identical, and embodied with his statue. To do reverence to the statue
was to reverence the god; the reverse had never been conceived as
possible.
Astonishment was soon turned to indignation. Rumour ran wild. The timid,
the more religious, the superstitious, feared the wrath of Heaven, the
destruction of the state. Others saw in it the work of traitors in their
midst. It was the work of secret emissaries of Syrakuse, or of Korinth,
the parent country of the Syrakusan colony. Or it was a party of the
citizens, too cowardly to oppose openly the Sicilian expedition, who had
thus attempted to turn men’s thoughts away from the great enterprise; or
perhaps it was a deep-seated plan of the ever-suspected oligarchs to
overthrow the democratic Constitution. All were, at any rate, agreed
that, whoever the sacrilegious culprits were, their punishment should be
exemplary, so that the anger of the gods might be averted and the honour
of the city vindicated.
The Senate immediately met and appointed three citizens, whom they
called ‘searchers,’ to sift the matter to the bottom, and report to the
Assembly. The perpetrators of the outrage, it was evident, must be very
numerous. It was impossible that a few conspirators could, in one short
summer’s night, have worked this havoc on hundreds of the cherished
effigies. Rewards were offered, and other inducements were held out to
all men of whatever rank, even to slaves, to give any information which
might lead to the discovery of participators in the abomination. Even
pardon was assured to an accomplice who should inform against his
co-conspirators.
In the midst of this religious zeal and fury a meeting of the Ekklesia
was summoned to give its last instructions to the generals. For a time,
while the concluding counsels were being taken, and the plan of the
campaign settled,—and it was being arranged how, after succouring Egesta
against its enemies, the people of Leontini should be restored, and how,
when Syrakuse had been taken, its inhabitants should be sold as
slaves,—the cloud which had hung over Athens for the last few days was
almost dissipated.
The Assembly was about to separate, having given full powers to their
trusted generals to act, in all contingencies, as it might seem best to
them for the good of Athens and her allies, when Pythonikos mounted the
Tribune and demanded silence.
‘Athenians,’ cried he, ‘one of the men to whom you have given the care
of this great armament, a general to whom you have confided the safety
of your soldiers, your sailors, your ships, and perhaps the future of
the State, is a profaner of the mysteries of Eleusis. I am here by my
witnesses to prove it; do to me as to you seems good if I fail to
establish this accusation.’
On minds already strung to the highest pitch by that other dire
undiscovered sacrilege this charge fell like a thunderbolt. The Ekklesia
was paralyzed, and sat in stupid silence. Pythonikos continued:
‘I will call before you one Andromachos, a slave, who, being himself
uninitiated, will tell you how he saw the mysteries profaned, and on his
oath before the gods declare it was Alkibiades himself who did it.’
The slave was called, but before he gave his evidence all who had not
been initiated were ordered by the President to leave the Ekklesia, lest
they might hear what it was not lawful for them to know about the holy
mysteries. Andromachos related to those who stayed, scarce knowing what
they listened to, in their horror and astonishment, all he pretended to
have seen and heard—how, being in the house of Polytion, he had seen
Alkibiades and Miletos and Nikiakles burlesque and parody the sacred
rites.
Alkibiades rose in indignation, denounced the charge as a conspiracy of
certain oligarchs and of his personal enemies to deprive him of the
command with which the people had invested him, and declared the base
charge had been kept back till the last moment in order that he might
not have an opportunity of meeting it before he sailed. He called upon
them to judge him then and there, and not only to deprive him of his
command, but decree that death he well deserved if this accusation
should be proved against him.
His open adversaries, as well as his secret enemies, were frightened by
his boldness. They knew his power with the people, who were more than
ever devoted to him since the part he had taken in the Sicilian
campaign. Those who were ordered out of the Assembly before Andromachos
gave his evidence carried the news of the horrible charge into the city.
It rang through the town. The Argive and the Mantineian contingents that
had come to fight for Athens said it was mainly for their love of
Alkibiades they had been induced to come, and if any wrong were done to
him they would go back again.
The people vowed vengeance upon his enemies. The excitement rose. Their
zeal against the Syrakusans was for a moment turned against Pythonikos
and his associates. Pythonikos knew this, and the impossibility of
hitting the object of his hatred while he was there in Athens. So he
prayed that the further hearing of his charges might be postponed for
the present.
No one could say of him that he had not made them in the presence of the
accused. ‘Let him go forth,’ he said, with assumed generosity—‘let him
go forth and lead the fleet, and when he returns, as we all hope,
triumphantly, he shall present himself before the proper judges, and be
tried according to the law.’
Alkibiades saw through the scheme.
‘No,’ said he; ‘let me not go on such a long and arduous enterprise with
a charge like this hanging over me, filling my thoughts, embittering my
days, weakening my arm while I am fighting for you. This, indeed, were
too unjust. If guilty, I am not worthy to go; if innocent, ought I to
bear so great a punishment?’
His prayer prevailed not. The people would on no account allow the
conquest of Sicily to be put off. Without knowing it, they drove their
ablest citizen, their strongest bulwark, from them, placed him in the
power of unscrupulous assailants, drove him into the arms of their
inveterate enemies, and took the first step towards their own
destruction.
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