‘I fly from pleasure because pleasure has ceased to please. I am
lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my
presence the happiness of others.’—RASSELAS.
AS soon as Peisandros and the other envoys were arrived at Athens the
people assembled in their Ekklesia to hear and discuss the news from
Samos. Peisandros began by moving for the recall of Phrynichos on
account of incompetence and cowardice, and gave such good reasons for
his motion that it was carried without difficulty. He then laid before
them the business that had brought him there, and the result of his
mission to the court of Tissaphernes. His task, as may well be imagined,
was not an easy one—to propose before an assembly of the people the
abolition of their power and existence as a governing power, and that
people the Athenian demos.
His proposal, put in many ways, and with great tact, was the recall of
Alkibiades, the government of the few, and an alliance with Persia which
would give them the victory over Sparta.
Such a hubbub, such an outcry, as followed this address has seldom come
from human lungs or from human throats. One after another the champions
of the people rose, with the one answer, supported by six thousand
voices, ‘Never!’ The orators declared the democracy eternal. The enemies
of Alkibiades protested against the enormity of recalling one who had
been convicted of the worst possible offence against the laws of Athens,
one who was still civilly dead. The Eumolpidai, the privileged priests
of the cult of Demeter, who felt, perhaps, as strongly for their
exclusive rights and emoluments as for the honour of the goddess,
reminded the assembly of the awful curses which still rested on him for
his profanation of the mysteries of which they were the guardians, and
which he had treated with derision and contempt.
When the opponents of his proposition had expended all their wrath,
Peisandros rose again to answer them.
‘Of what use is it to preserve the mere form and semblance of a
constitution when the spirit of the thing is gone, and the state is
tottering? Is it not better to modify somewhat your existing laws than
to lose them altogether, and with them your power of making others? We
ask only that you will let your democratic forms be in abeyance while we
treat with the Great King. He is ready to come to your assistance if you
will meet him in a reasonable spirit. Let, then, the power of the many
for a time be entrusted to the keeping of your wisest counsellors,
chosen by yourselves, men whom all of you can trust; and when the
clouds, which now are big and bursting with destruction, shall have
passed away, you can have back again your glorious and time-honoured
constitution. There is but one man who can save you in this hour of
need; he is a lover of the people: that man is Alkibiades.’
The force of this argument, and the apparent truth of these assertions,
had so much influence on the assembly that objectors were silenced, and
the people took the first step towards the abdication of their power,
though they were not prepared to make so violent a change as that which
had been just suggested to them all at once. They decreed that ten
deputies should be sent with Peisandros to Tissaphernes to arrange the
best terms on which an alliance with Persia might be carried out.
Before Peisandros left for Asia, he resorted to other devices to further
his designs on the democracy, of which he had hitherto put himself
forward as a firm supporter. He set the secret clubs in motion. The
secret clubs in Athens, chiefly of the oligarchic faction, were of
immense political importance. It was by them that the work of party
intrigue was carried on. At no time in history, not even during the
French Revolution, have secret clubs been better managed for this
purpose than they were at this time in Athens, nor did they ever work
together in more perfect order. While the democracy was unbroken and
Athens flourished they dared not show themselves or their doings too
openly. The time was now come for their hidden power to manifest itself.
Their members need now hesitate at no crimes which might advance their
political designs. Crimes might be done by them and be forever
undiscovered, and so committed with impunity. Having set these secret
societies to work, Peisandros left, with the ten deputies, for the court
of Tissaphernes.
Alkibiades had found the full length to which he could go with his
friend the satrap, or, which was nearly the same thing, the amount of
power the satrap had independently of the king. Stopping the pay of
Spartan sailors was all very well: it saved the Persian’s purse. Keeping
his master’s fleet in safety and idleness at Aspendos was better than
furnishing it with its full complement of men and arms, and letting it
be knocked about by the Athenian sailors. But an alliance out and out
with Athens was different altogether. It meant parting with the Spartans
finally, and all real chance of recovering dominion over the islands and
coast towns of Ionia. The king was not under the spell of the favourite
of Tissaphernes. He never would believe that the Athenians intended to
give up a dominion they had bought at so great a cost and had exercised
so long. Tissaphernes knew his master would decline the Athenian
alliance, even when urged with the same arguments which his friend had
used with so much force on him. So he was forced to tell his guest, with
much regret, that there were difficulties in the way.
But neither was Alkibiades willing that all the terms of the propounded
treaty should be accepted. He distrusted Peisandros, and despised the
wretched Phrynichos. He did not believe in an oligarchic government for
Athens. Much as he longed to get back home again, he would not go there
but with honour. Little as the people deserved his care and sympathy, he
declined to inflict further punishment upon them. We shall see how—like
another exile who, seventeen hundred years afterwards, rejected the
desire of his soul, and refused to return to his beloved birthplace upon
conditions which he deemed unworthy of him—he nobly refused the great
object of his life, rather than obtain it to his country’s detriment.
Such was the condition of affairs when Peisandros arrived for a second
time at Magnesia with his ten colleagues.
Alkibiades, rather weary of the effeminate life at the palace of the
satrap, had been staying at a small country house which his indulgent
friend had given him, in a secluded spot, far from the turmoil of the
court, and some way inland, not far from the marble quarries at Melissa.
Thither Tissaphernes had come in search of his friend, and had forced
him to return with him to Magnesia. It was while staying there, and on
the journey back, that he sounded the viceroy as to the limit of his
powers, and made up his mind as to the answer he must give the Athenian
envoys on his return. He undertook to receive the deputation in the
presence of his host.
Seeing that the treaty could not be carried out with honour to Athens,
and refusing to have anything to do with it on any other terms, he
insisted on conditions with the deputies which he knew they must reject.
Peisandros lost patience, broke off the conference, and returned to
Samos. There he declared amongst his friends and partisans that his
belief was that Alkibiades had never really wished to aid the oligarchic
rising, and that he was using his power with the satrap to destroy the
oligarchic party. This bad news roused the clique to energy; they
determined to act without him, and to invite their friends at Athens to
do the same. For this purpose Peisandros set out with the ten deputies
for Athens, recruiting a force of fighting men to help them on the way.
To the amazement of Peisandros and his friends, when at last they
reached Athens, they found the engine he had set to work had acted with
a success beyond his expectations. The democracy as a governing body had
disappeared. It was as though the earth had gaped and swallowed up its
mountains, towns, and rivers. The face of everything was changed.
Loathsome animalcules, crawling and breeding underground, waiting for a
sign of weakness in the body politic, seeing their time was come, had
risen to the surface of the soil and seized upon their victim. In her
robust and healthy state they might have swarmed about her harmless till
they were crushed or sent back to the dirt from which they had emerged.
But the demos tottered from the moment it first listened to a
possibility of compromise. When it allowed the suggestion of an
abdication to go unpunished, the process of its abdication was begun.
Assassins pounced upon the few strong men left, and disappeared in
darkness, no one knew where. The rest were too frightened to inquire.
Daggers grew bolder, and struck right and left. Panic set in. Men dared
not to speak their thoughts. They knew not who was or was not in the
plot.
When the minds of weak men had been reduced to the required point of
fear, the skulking conspirators, with Phrynichos at their head, and a
professional rhetorician named Antiphon, came out, and by one final blow
abolished, with the people’s trembling consent, the power of the people.
They elected in its place a government of four hundred subservient
tools, chosen beforehand by themselves. This was the new régime
Peisandros found when he came back to Athens.
Very different events were taking place at Samos. For a short time the
oligarchic faction there attempted the same plan of action, and slew
poor Hyperbolos, the potter. Poor Hyperbolos! One always feels inclined
to laugh when his name is mentioned. Yet there must have been something
in him. He rose above the common level both at home and at Samos. But
his name sounds so absurd by the side of those great ones who had been
ostracized before him that we can hardly help a smile.
The hoplites stationed at Samos did not smile. They had a short time
back listened for a moment to Peisandros, when he talked eloquently to
them of the necessity of modifying somewhat their old form of
government; but they never liked the notion of the change, and only
tolerated it on the condition that Alkibiades was to come back to them,
with or without the Persian fleet and Persian gold. It was the man they
wanted more than the help of barbarous Persians.
The healthy democrats of Samos did not long suffer oligarchic daggers to
be used on them. Luckily two of the generals of the Athenian army there
were democratic. The stirring times called forth two other men, of whom
we shall hear a good deal before long—Thrasyboulos, captain of a
trireme, and Thrasyllos, now only a soldier serving in the ranks.
News of the attempted rising and its speedy overthrow was sent off to
Athens by the _Paralos_, the other sacred state trireme, whose sturdy
crew had given invaluable help in quelling the abortive Samian
revolution. It was supposed that this good news would be joyously
received at the Peiræus. One can imagine the astonishment of Chaireas,
the captain, and the crew of the sacred ship, when they saw the change
which had come over Athens, and found that they were, almost as
prisoners, taken from the _Paralos_ and sent off on board another vessel
to Euboia. Chaireas alone escaped, and after hiding at Athens for some
time made his way back to Samos.
There he painted before his fellow-countrymen in vivid, highly-coloured
pictures the state of things at home, and how it had been brought about:
the miserable condition of the people; the savage triumph of the
oligarchs; no assembly of the people now, no tribunals to which the
injured could appeal. The traitors, he said, were even making overtures
to Sparta to come and sustain them in their power on the ruins of the
state.
On hearing this, the soldiers could hardly be prevented from rushing on
any whom they suspected of having been in the late plot. They were only
restrained by some with cooler heads, who pointed out the danger of
fighting among themselves while Sparta’s fleet was but a few miles off
at Miletos, ready to come down upon them and destroy both parties. They
had good reason to be united and to respect themselves. Athens gone, who
was there left to carry on Athenian institutions but this band of
Athenians at Samos? Athens was there.
Thrasyllos and Thrasyboulos came forward and impressed upon them the
responsibilities they lay under. By keeping united, by firmness and good
faith, they might restore order and right at home, and make such
examples of the traitors as would be a warning to all others who might
in the future contemplate like treason.
‘You have here—indeed, you are yourselves—the chief part of all the
force now left to our ill-fated land. Here is a strong town from which
you can issue to attack the enemy, and to which you can retire at need.
Athens has little left now but you. Expect no further aid from her. Rely
upon yourselves. Continue the war. And if the worst should happen, you
have ships to carry you to some place where you will not want for fields
to till, nor towns to live in, and where you may found a new and happier
Athens beyond the seas.’
The soldiers rose and swore a solemn oath to act together, and never to
separate till they had done their duty to their old country. Some of the
suspected leaders they deposed. Thrasyboulos and Thrasyllos were chosen
in their place. The soldiers were animated by a new confidence in one
another, and in their mission, ready to live and die in the cause of
liberty.
But to make sure against their twofold enemy a strong general was
wanted, and they felt, too, that if aid could be obtained on honest
terms from Persia, they would be more than a match for Sparta. In this
state of feeling they met again a few days afterwards. Thrasyboulos
boldly advised that Alkibiades should be invited to come to Samos, and
be invested with supreme command. The proposal was received with
acclamation, and Thrasyboulos himself went off to the Court of
Tissaphernes with the invitation. He found the great Athenian still at
Magnesia amid his eastern pleasures, with the satrap as much under his
influence as ever.
Alkibiades at first supposed it was on some fresh quest for Persian help
that this new deputy was come. When he heard what the message was his
heart bounded; he could scarce conceal his feelings. To be free from the
clogging atmosphere of Asia, the cloying, enervating, unworthy life; to
breathe again among free men; to have fresh opportunities of action—here
was at last one step on towards his end, the end of these long years of
effort and of disappointment. He broke the news to the regretful
Tissaphernes, and set out with his new-found friend, with whom he was
soon to do so much for Athens.
The troops and sailors and all the people were looking out for him at
Samos. As the triremes came out to meet and welcome him on the bright
May day on which he reached the port, he could almost imagine that his
long exile was already ended. An assembly of Athenians was speedily
called together. Alkibiades stood up before them; but what could he say
to them? His usual clear, incisive sentences were broken by his
unconcealed emotion. He could not but be affected when standing once
more before his countrymen, after his long and weary wanderings. It was
a foretaste of another great assembly, in another place, to which he
knew he would be recalled some day, and in which he would be received
with even greater shouts and gratulations by the people.
He spoke to them at first a little of his wanderings and sufferings. But
this, he said, was not a time for speaking of the past. It was as active
men, prepared to meet with many difficulties and a dangerous future,
that he met them there that day. He spoke with courage and with the
certitude of final triumph. Whatever he could do to aid them with his
right arm, or his counsel, they might claim from him. Whatever influence
he had with Persia, through the Ionian satrap, he would use to its
utmost on their behalf. He told them of his great friendship with the
satrap, and how that potent Minister of the Persian king had promised to
assist them.
The story of what he had undergone through the unjust suspicions of his
countrymen, excited by the slanders of his enemies, moved all who heard
him. His self-reliance, his ability, cheered and encouraged them. His
assurance of Persian aid raised their hopes to the highest pitch of
expectation. They chose him with one voice commander of the Athenian
forces, with absolute power to deal with friends and foes.
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