‘It would give me pain to tell you of the rumours that are
flying about among the people, and the number of discordant and
inconsistent opinions held about me.’—BOETHIUS.
AS Alkibiades entered the harbour of Katané, he was surprised to see a
well-known ship there, which certainly had not come with the rest—no
less a vessel than the sacred state trireme of Athens, the _Salaminia_.
His surprise was increased when, soon after his arrival, and while he
was preparing to go ashore to refresh himself after his voyage, Kryptos,
the captain of the _Salaminia_, came on board the _Eros_.
Alkibiades received him with the courtesy due to so high a state
official. Kryptos requested to be allowed to speak to him alone. When
they had gone beneath the silken awning which served as a sort of state
cabin on the stern-deck, Kryptos presented him with a despatch. There
was something strange about the old man’s manner. Alkibiades opened it
and read:
‘The Senate and the people of Athens to Alkibiades, the son of Kleinias,
strategos of the Athenian fleet and army in Sicily.—You are hereby
required on receipt of this to return immediately on board your own
trireme to Athens, in company with the sacred state trireme, the
_Salaminia_.’
The words grew indistinct for a moment as he read them, but he bowed to
the Senate’s messenger, and told him he was prepared to follow whenever
he should sail. The captain added that he was charged by the Senate to
inform the strategos it was their wish that he should not leave his ship
that night, so that he might be in readiness to sail next morning.
Alkibiades bowed again, something in the Eastern fashion, and said he
would obey in this, as in all other things, the mandate of the Senate.
Amongst the officers of the _Salaminia_ who had come on board with the
captain were some acquaintances of the officers of the _Eros_. They were
glad of an opportunity to meet their friends, and while the captain was
holding his interview with Alkibiades they hurriedly told what their
business was, and something of what had taken place at Athens since the
departure of the fleet. They said that the strategos was recalled and
his office taken from him. They invited their friends to come and see
them that evening on board the _Salaminia_. Then Kryptos, who had
summonses for others in the fleet, came up to them, and they left the
_Eros_.
Those who saw Alkibiades when he came out upon the deck of his ship
declared there was an awful look upon his face, such as they had never
seen before. The younger men approached him.
‘Are you going to suffer this, general? Will you go back now, just as we
are about to obtain the greatest conquest yet recorded? Let us send this
process-server home again. And when we return victorious the people will
forget our treatment of him. They will by that time, too, have found out
the injustice of their suspicions, and perhaps have condemned those who
have persuaded them falsely of your guilt.’
‘What guilt?’ cried Alkibiades, excited by the word out of his wonted
calm.
‘The Senate and the people, moved by the priests of Demeter and the rest
of the Eumolpidai, have decreed your recall and the revocation of your
appointment on the charge of having divulged and profaned the mysteries
of Eleusis.’
‘Ye gods,’ cried Alkibiades, ‘who know my innocence, Demeter and
Persephone be my witnesses that I will be revenged on those who have
done me this dishonour! And the people have decreed my revocation? The
worse for those who have misled them!’
He spoke with a fierceness so different to his usual gentleness that his
friends were terrified. Only Kolyphôn stood forth, known as the Silent
One, and mildest of them all.
‘Oh, my strategos, speak but the word, and we will this moment publish
through the fleet news of this dishonour done to us. The whole fleet is
yours; ‘tis to you it owes its existence. This state trireme shall be
sent back with a fitting message to your enemies, a word of courage to
your friends. Say but the word, and we will put Nikias on board the
_Salaminia_ with Kryptos, and send him home—the best place for such as
he.’
‘Peace!’ said Alkibiades. ‘We must obey the people. Go, you who have
been invited on board the _Salaminia_. When you return, I will speak
with you again.’
So he was left alone to ponder upon these things, a prisoner on board
the ship he had furnished for the state. He knew that if the expedition
was to succeed he must be there to lead it, and that it would break down
if he went from it. He knew the timid, procrastinating character of
Nikias—how he could never make up his mind on an emergency, and would
allow any excuse to prevail rather than take action. He knew, too, how
necessary immediate action was, before the Syrakusans recovered from
their alarm and felt their own strength, or learnt the weakness of
Nikias, or got help from Korinth or from Sparta. And now he was to go
and leave all; and by the time he could come back to Sicily, absolved
from this foul charge, as he then believed he assuredly must be, it
would be too late.
He thought of the quiet Kolyphôn’s advice to appeal to the whole force.
That would be a bold stroke. It might succeed; but it was disloyal to
those who had entrusted him with power, disloyal to his colleagues. Was
it not treachery to Athens?
Then he bethought him of his power over the Assembly. Had he ever
appealed to them in vain? Had he ever failed to move them? Could he fail
now? Was he not more popular than ever? Was not his cause more just?
Should he not go before them, throw himself upon their sense of right;
expose and destroy their enemies and his; tell them what he had done
already for them in Sicily against the cowardly advice of Nikias; ask
them who was their true friend, he or Nikias; and then—why, then, if
need be, die, and let them find out, when it was too late, when Nikias
brought back the fleet with nothing to show for all their great
expenditure, who it was that had been done to death through their
advisers?
What a noble retaliation! Yet, after all, he would be tried, not by the
Assembly of the people; they had but voted for his trial. He would be
tried by a limited number of dikastai, many of them his enemies, and if
the rest had been so influenced, in his absence, by those who were
conspiring together to destroy him, would he be listened to? Would he
get justice from them?
He saw the depth of the malice of Pythonikos—to get rid of him so that
he might work out his machinations without hindrance. He remembered,
too, the fickleness of the people—how they had turned on Perikles, after
all he had done for them. And religious frenzy! who can stem that when
once it rages in its delirious course let loose from rational control?
While here he was, as Kolyphôn had said, master of the situation. The
whole of the fleet friendly. Most of the soldiers his own. The Argives
and Mantineians cared more for him than for all the rest of the
Athenians put together. They had come upon the expedition mainly on his
account, while they of Korkyra and the Ionians who had joined the fleet
at Korkyra, and made up between them more than half the army, had learnt
to look on him as the genius of the enterprise, and knew that the plans
they had at heart against Syrakuse could only be carried out under his
direction. As for the other generals, they soon had seen that one was a
traitor to the cause, the other of no weight, and perfectly incompetent.
These were the thoughts which chased each other through his brain as he
paced the _Eros_, waiting for the news his friends might bring him from
the _Salaminia_.
It was late before they returned. There had been much to hear, and what
they heard had startled them. Before they had come back, Alkibiades had
made up his mind that any attempt to excite the army or the fleet to
rebel against the orders of the Senate was too hazardous, and might lead
he knew not where. Other schemes, indistinct as yet, and scarcely
entertained, began to shape themselves vaguely in his mind. Rejected,
they came again, born of indignant rage, of righteous anger. Might he
not have a revenge such as no other man had thought of? He clenched his
teeth, his hands, determined to resist the suggestions whispered to his
maddened mind. Then he mused again on all his wrongs—the venal,
treacherous Senate, the ungrateful, stupid people. He clenched his teeth
again, this time in anger. Then the unformed schemes took more decided
shape. He let them stay longer in his mind.
He had no further communication that night with his officers when they
returned. He retired when he saw them coming, after giving orders to his
ship’s master to be ready to set sail the first thing in the morning,
and to give him notice when he saw the _Salaminia_ weigh anchor. All
night visions of his past, and visions of his future, crowded on him as
he lay awake, and became his dreams when at last he slept.
The brilliant dawn of a bright September morning was breaking over the
sea and the fairest island in the world when his ship’s master gave him
warning that the _Salaminia_ had weighed her anchor, and was apparently
about to sail. He ordered his captain to prepare to leave the harbour in
the _Salaminia’s_ wake. Before he appeared on deck the _Eros_ was
outside the harbour, the _Salaminia_ some five hundred yards ahead.
It was a splendid morning, and the soft, fresh, exhilarating air of
Sicily breathed upon them as the two fine ships, with oars bending and
sails swelling, swept the Sicilian Sea. Alkibiades joined a group of his
friends on deck. He had assumed again his usual careless spirits.
‘And what news from Athens? Has Pythonikos, or Andokides, or my dear
brother Kallias—have they accused us before the dikastai, condemned us
to death already, and confiscated all our property?’
‘No, Alkibiades,’ answered Kolyphôn; ‘not yet; but if our news be true,
they and other enemies you suspect not are likely to do so soon.’
For all his assumed carelessness, a black cloud was seen by all of them
upon his face as he called sharply to that other to explain his meaning.
Then they told him all they knew; how that after the departure of the
fleet a sadness had fallen over everyone, partly reaction from the
excitement of its preparation and its setting out, more from the awe
that the outrage to the statues had produced. This feeling had changed
to one of wrath and indignation, roused by those who bribed some of the
meaner sort to bring false accusations. Then Agaristé, a strange woman,
some distant relation of Alkibiades—at least, of the same stock—declared
she saw him and Axiochos and Adeimantos make joke of the Eleusinian
mysteries in the house of Charmides.
‘This woman’s story,’ added Biôtides, a stout Athenian sailor, ‘was so
absurd, Kleibôn said, it would have been treated as an hysterical
delusion at any other time, but then it worked the common people into a
state of terrible alarm. This was increased when Lydos, a slave, turned,
it was thought, unwittingly upon the oligarchic party, and swore by all
the gods that he had seen the same thing done in the house of his
master, Perikles; and amongst the sacrilegious hands was Leogoras,
father of Andokides the orator.’
‘Ha, ha!’ cried Alkibiades; ‘Leogoras, who breeds the finest pheasants
in all Greece. I know the old man; and what said his fine son the
orator?’
‘Well, the Senate offered ten thousand drachmas and a pardon to anyone
who would denounce the spoilers of the images,’ said Kolyphôn. ‘And
then—and then a knave named Diokleides came in haste before the Senate
and declared that, while he was journeying from Athens, on the night
before the images of the god Hermes were cut, he saw about three hundred
men close to the theatre of Dionysos, that they then separated into
small bands, and that he would know them all again if he saw them. When
he came back next day, it seems, he found the reward which had been
offered by the Senate, and he went to Andokides, and threatened that if
he did not give him twelve thousand drachmas he would denounce him and
all his family. Andokides promised the money, but did not pay it, so he
and his father were denounced and both imprisoned, besides a number of
their relations. But the Senate having promised to pardon them if the
son would confess, Andokides made a clean breast of it, and said he had
been one of a large number who agreed to cut the statues. He gave the
names of twenty-three others, all well-known citizens, as his
accomplices. They were taken, condemned, and put to death, except a few
who escaped. Andokides himself has got away, and many think those who
were put to death, through his evidence, were innocent, and that the
famous orator gave them up to shield his friends.’
‘No one seems to know much for certain,’ said Biôtides. ‘The two charges
are mixed up together. It is impossible to get at the bottom of it all.
But the best thing is that one of the “searchers” appointed by the
Senate to find out all about the Hermai is himself denounced as one who
was mixed up in it. Some wise men think, so Minesias says, that
Andokides meant to lay the whole blame on you, Alkibiades, but was
afraid at last, because all men knew he was your greatest enemy, and so
might suspect him of having had the statues cut himself, which was the
truth. Others think it was done only to stop the expedition.’
‘As like as not,’ said Alkibiades.
‘Well, then,’ continued Biôtides, ‘this scoundrel Diokleides was found
out. Andokides had sworn there were no three hundred out that night, and
that those whose names had been given by the informer were never near
the theatre of Dionysos at all. The Senate asked Diokleides how he could
tell the faces of the men he said he saw by night. ‘Because it was full
moon and very clear,” said Diokleides. Now it happened to have been a
new moon and dark that night. So Diokleides was convicted of giving
false evidence, and was condemned to death, and serve him right.’
‘A pity all these clumsy conspirators have not been treated in the same
way,’ said Alkibiades.
‘But wait, sir. When he found himself condemned he said the whole tale
had been made up for him by Amiantos and your relative Alkibiades of the
deme of Phegusa. Orders were given at once for their arrest. They both
escaped, and Alkibiades, it is said, has gone to Sparta. The people are
beside themselves with fear. They know not what to do. Any base
informer, it seems, can get the best citizens condemned. The only safe
course left, when anyone may be accused, is to fly from Athens. There is
small chance of justice for any in Athens now, the people are in such a
panic. But, Alkibiades, the worst is yet to come. Thessalos, the son of
Kimon——’
‘Ah! what of him? I know the ingenuity of his malicious soul.’
‘Thessalos delivered to the dikasterion a formal accusation against
Alkibiades, the son of Kleinias, together with his friends Polytion,
Theodorus, and others, of having divulged and sacrilegiously made sport
of the Eleusinian mysteries.’
‘And the five hundred dikastai, what said they?’
‘Minesias says the people are in such bewilderment they will do
anything. Athens, when they left, was under arms by night and day. “The
Boiotians are coming on us!” say some. “The Spartans are at the
isthmus,” say others. “The Argives and the Spartans are both coming.
Alkibiades has sent them, and has told them how they may take the city”;
so many of them run up and down crying. And then the priests of Demeter
have cursed you openly, and say the earth will refuse to yield her
fruits, and the gods have abandoned Athens, and will not come back till
you have been recalled. And Pythonikos and Thessalos, and many others of
the oligarchs, and some of the democrats, too, are going about telling
the people no good will ever come of this expedition, and that the fleet
and all the army will be destroyed unless your command is taken from
you. They tell them that for years you have been the most arrogant of
men; that in secret and amongst your friends you used to laugh at the
demos, and declared you would soon upset the Constitution and make
yourself tyrant in Athens. A lot of lies like these and all the other
charges so exasperated the people against you, Alkibiades, that the
Assembly decreed that the office of strategos should be taken from you,
and that you should be recalled to Athens to be tried at once upon the
charge made by Thessalos. But Kryptos was especially ordered to say
nothing of your deposition while he was with the fleet, for fear of
causing a revolt among the sailors.’
When he had heard all this, which was told him in scraps, first by one,
and then another, as each remembered something of what he had heard the
night before, Alkibiades spoke as though thinking to himself:
‘Oh, so they have revoked my office, have they? And they think I shall
come back to let them try me before this dikasterion, do they?’
His mind was made up. The _Salaminia_ made for Thurii, on the south
coast of Italy. The _Eros_ followed close behind. As they neared the
land, Alkibiades called his friends round him, some of whom had been
ordered to return with him.
‘Are you all anxious to yield yourselves up patiently to the good demos,
who one day crown and cheer their leader, and the next day would deliver
him to death?’
‘Not I, nor I, nor I,’ cried they. ‘And this is what we have been
thinking of since we left Katané.’
‘Will Alkibiades give himself up to a people who are unworthy of him?’
asked Kolyphôn.
‘And be led away to death when he could overthrow them all?’ rough
Agrestides said.
‘Or make a name for vengeance gratified, which would astonish all the
world, and live in men’s memories for ever, as warning to an ungrateful
country?’ said Kolyphôn.
‘All this have I been thinking of, too,’ said Alkibiades, ‘since we have
been following that state trireme. No, Alkibiades shall not be carried
like a fly caught by a spider to its hole, there to be executed at his
captors’ will. Life is pleasant, and we have yet a greater name to make.
We shall put in at Thurii, I expect. I have friends there a little
pledged to me for favours I have done them. If they will help us to
avoid the old fool Kryptos, will you share your fortunes, come what
will, with me?’
‘Indeed we will,’ they said in graver tones than they were used to speak
in.
‘It may mean fighting to the death,’ said Alkibiades.
‘In fighting we would gladly die for you,’ said Agrestides, with
something of emotion on his rugged face.
‘What fate were nobler? And how delightful to enrage those hounds at
Athens!’ muttered Kolyphôn.
‘Keep with me, then, when we land at Thurii. We shall most likely dine
at the house of my friend Eumanthes; he is much indebted to me. That is
his great house more than half-way up the hill to the west there, almost
hidden in the olive-grove. His slaves must still be getting in the
vintage, one of the best in Italy. When we have dined, and you hear me
say the word “Athanatos,” go out one by one, and wait for me at the
shrine of Dionysos, which you will find at the right-hand side, at the
end of his garden, further up the mountain. Now, no more of this!
Remember, “Athanatos.”’
------------------------------------------------------------------------