CHAPTER XX

‘Thassay so sharp, so hard the conquering.’

CHAUCER: _Par. of Foules_.

THERE was plenty of work to do at Samos all that summer—defences to be

made secure, old ships to be repaired and new ones built, military

exercises to be gone through day by day. There were constant alarms to

keep them on the alert. The Spartan fleet, which had been laid up for

the most part at Rhodes through the past winter, pending the arrival of

the long-promised armament from Persia, had been launched again, and

taken in state to Miletos, where it stood threatening those at Samos. A

Lakedaimonian general, they heard, had marched north towards the

Hellespont, and was engaged in stirring up the cities on the way which

were still faithful to the Athenian alliance. Abydos and Lampsakos had

already thrown off the yoke. Spartan emissaries were at Byzantion, and

in treaty with Pharnabazos, satrap of the Propontis, who, three years

ago, had made offers of alliance to Sparta.

Then appalling news came that Tissaphernes was again negotiating with

the Lakedaimonian commissioners. It was reported that he had actually

concluded a fresh treaty with them, by which he pledged himself to renew

his promised pay, and bring that wonderful fleet at last from Aspendos,

that much-desired aid which was always coming, but which never came.

As soon as Alkibiades was elected general, he determined to go and see

for himself what his Persian friend was doing. He knew the weakness of

the Viceroy’s character—how easily, in his absence, the Spartans might

persuade or frighten him into carrying out his promises to them. The

whole Athenian fleet at the new Athens, as Samos was called, escorted

him some way upon his journey, making no secret of the mission upon

which the general was going to Tissaphernes. The _Eros_ was refitted,

and if not quite so gay as it had been before time, and if hard work had

made both the ship and its commander look less glorious than they had

once appeared, yet, as he stood once more on the well-known deck, he

could almost fancy that all was as it had been four years ago.

There was no attempt to avoid the Lakedaimonian navy as he went: he

rather courted their attention. One of his purposes in going was to show

the Spartans the power that he still had with Tissaphernes, although

they, in his absence, had been endeavouring to undermine it. He landed

with his retinue at Paniônion, and his armed cavalcade made an imposing

show as it wound through the lovely grove where the Ionian cities met in

solemn conclave to discuss the policy of all the several colonies, and

where the Paniônian games were held, and thence along the delightful

valley which lies between Mount Thorax and the Maiandros, and so through

vales and hills, till it reached the residence of the Persian satrap.

How different was his entry into Magnesia now from what it had been

when, a fugitive from treacherous Spartans, he came to ask for shelter

and asylum! The state with which he travelled was not without its

special reasons. If he wished to impress the Spartans and his

fellow-countrymen with his power over the Viceroy, he also wished to

show the Viceroy his power over his fellow-countrymen. The meeting

between them was as cordial as ever. Poor Tissaphernes shed tears on

seeing his friend, thinking how soon they would have to part again. The

want of his Athenian counsellor when he was gone was as the losing of a

prop, a strong support to lean upon. He thought, too, of the happy days

when his friend had come as a suppliant asking his protection.

Alkibiades got all that he demanded, and more than he expected, from the

Viceroy. Though he knew that, when he was gone, the Persian would be

prevailed upon, and perhaps would be obliged, to break his promises, yet

promises were made, and they would last some little time. And so it was

that the Persian fleet remained for the present at Aspendos, nor came to

help the foes of Athens, and the poor satrap got worse into disgrace

with his allies, and was openly accused by them of treason. The Spartan

admiral, Astyochos, who all along had been faithful to his friend, got

into trouble, too, with the commissioners for his remissness in

executing the barbarous order of the king and ephors, and was recalled,

while Mindaros, a rising sailor, was put into his place. These were some

of the results of the stately visit of Alkibiades to the viceregal court

of Tissaphernes.

On his way back a terrible temptation came over him, such as has seldom

fallen upon any man. We have seen how, when Chaireas brought tidings of

the doings of the four hundred oligarchs to Samos, the Athenian warriors

were roused to such a pitch of fury that they were almost beside

themselves with rage. The first act they called on Alkibiades to do for

them, when they chose him general, was to take them straightway to

Athens, to avenge the wrong that had been done to their country and

restore her liberties. It was only his influence, backed by the loud

voice of Thrasyboulos, that had restrained the soldiers and kept them

for the defence of Samos. He was stronger now. He had good reason to

believe, if he appeared with that large fleet and all his soldiers at

the port of Athens, nothing could resist him. Why, then, not take them

there on his return to Samos? His power at Samos was secure, his

popularity unbounded; his influence with Tissaphernes greater, at any

rate, than that of any other. The condition of Athens was most critical.

A strong man, backed as he would be, would soon restore her native

energy and scare away the swarm of bats whose unclean wings now flapped

about the sacred city. Was not this the very moment to make the stroke

he had been so long meditating, and give the _coup de grace_ to the

cowardly, the treacherous four hundred?

Once there, his course was clear. Leader of the people, as Perikles had

been—greater indeed than Perikles, for he would come not as a leader

only, but as a saviour—might he not expect to rise to greater fame and

more enduring honour than even Perikles had gained?

This was the temptation, and it came upon him like the nightmare which

had weighed him down during the ride he had by night in this same

country more than a year before. As he shook it off and resisted it with

effort, it came again, and yet again. It was, in truth, a specious and

splendid-looking prospect that was now displayed before him.

On the other side was duty—his devotion to his country, and his

willingness to renounce for her his own particular plans of personal

advantage. Was this the time to stir up civil war, to leave Samos and

the other islands to the mercy of the enemy? Athens had but one army

left, and one navy; both were under his command at Samos, guarding the

remnant of her Ionian possessions. To take that force to Athens would be

to leave all outside Attica without any defence to her enemies. Could he

be right in doing that, even for the holy purpose of restoring liberty

and vitality to Athens? Was this a time to gratify ambition and

aggrandize himself, and wreak his vengeance on his enemies, when

Byzantion, Abydos, Lampsakos, were falling off?

He thrust the temptation from him. He refused to purchase his return to

Athens at such a price; he determined he would never set his foot upon

his country’s soil until he came with hands full of blessings to her.

When he returned to Samos he found his forces had been gaining strength.

Some had come who had escaped from the tyranny at home, others from the

islands. Among these arrivals was an embassy from the four hundred

formally announcing the change in the government, and seeking to gain

the army at Samos to its side. These deputies were received in open

assembly, but the Athenian soldiers were so much enraged they could

hardly be persuaded to listen to them. When they heard their excuses for

the wrongs that had been inflicted on the people at home their anger

became fiercer; it required all the power of Alkibiades to save the

deputation from his soldiers’ violence.

As soon as they were gone, the whole army once more entreated him to

take them forthwith to Athens. They declared that the four hundred could

not prevent their landing or their march from the Peiræus; that the

people would hail them as deliverers, and that the hoplites serving

under the usurpers would immediately desert their detested paymasters.

For a moment he paused. The anger of the troops was overwhelming and

dangerous. Had he power to restrain them any longer? If he refused to

lead them, might they not depose him and choose a more pliant leader? So

near the completion of his work, was he to see it all destroyed? His

hopes so nearly realized—were they all to be abandoned? And for what?

For a too sensitive regard for a place and people which had thrust him

from them as an evildoer. Must he stay there always to protect her

outposts when, by a word, he might be ruling in her midst? How long was

he to watch over her here at Samos, while miscreants ate her life out of

her at home, and were even now negotiating with her enemies to come and

enslave her—enslave his Athens—if only for a little while they might so

prop up their falling tyranny? Was it not his duty to put a stop to

that? The temptation was getting too strong for him.

Stand firm now, oh man. It may be some years yet before you see her. Not

more than half your wandering, troubled exile may be over. And when you

do return to her, your sad fate may send you quickly off to fight for

her again, and you may again be sacrificed by her. And then through all

the ages that shall come, when historians record your exploits, your

victories, your wrongs, your triumphs; when new peoples shall have risen

on the earth who can afford to smile at all the extraordinary fuss once

made about your four-horse chariot races; when there shall be no more

wars, and no more massacres of human folk or mangling of poor helpless

animals; when nations shall no longer intrigue or conspire against each

other, this shall be writ and read concerning you, as your most glorious

deed—that you refused at such a time to go to govern Athens at the risk

of hurting her, or to return at all to her till you could come unto that

lovely mother with hands and arms full to overflowing with the blessings

you could shower upon her head.

He rejected the temptation. With such a leader, whom even hostile

writers hail as the liberator, the saviour of Athens—with such a one to

lead them, his warrior citizens could also wait.

He pointed out to the excited sailors and hoplites what the result must

be of abandoning this last Athenian outpost. Though they might save

Athens from the usurpers, there would be little left to her when all her

insular dependencies were gone.

‘Let the usurping tyrants alone for a while. Through their own

rottenness they will fall to pieces of themselves. Athens will have

greater cause to thank us if we preserve her distant territories than if

we abandon them, even to save her.’

Thus he recalled the troops to reason and to their duty when some of

them were in the act of leaving Samos in their ships.

When this ardour was quieted for a time, there came a welcome embassy

from Argos. Those old friends and allies of his were true to him still,

although he had beaten fifteen hundred of them at Miletos. They had been

disgusted with the proceedings of the rest of the Athenians, but now

that they heard he was at the head of affairs at Samos, they sent to

offer their assistance in restoring to Athens her democracy.

Things were in such a good way in that island now that he was able to

send Thrasyboulos with five triremes to blockade Eresos, in the island

of Lesbos, which had revolted, and he was preparing another squadron to

help the other fleet, which was still blockading Chios, when most

exciting news came, interrupting all his other plans and preparations.

He had kept himself well informed of what was going on at Magnesia. The

immediate future, perhaps the long-distant future, for both Athens and

Sparta depended at this moment on Tissaphernes. The two Greek fleets

balanced each other pretty evenly. Any addition to either would turn the

scale. An addition of three hundred, or even one hundred, big warships

to either side must swamp the other hopelessly. So now, when on the

tenth of August, according to our style, 411 years before our era,

Agrestides came with secret intelligence that Tissaphernes, at length

seriously frightened by threats of Spartan commissioners to break off

the alliance and return to Sparta and leave Athens to recover her old

dependencies, had actually set off himself for Aspendos to fetch the

Persian fleet, and had taken the commissioner Lichas and the commander

Philippos with him, that they might see for themselves that he really

was this time in earnest, then Alkibiades felt he must act at once, and

with the greatest speed and energy, if this decisive action was by any

means to be prevented.

When Agrestides left the mainland for Samos with the news, Tissaphernes,

in his state long-ship, followed by the Spartans in two triremes, had

also left Miletos, and was now coasting down the Asiatic continent, and

must, by the time the message reached Alkibiades, have got some distance

on his way. The general knew Persian habits, and that Persians were not

fond of moving too rapidly. He knew it took some time to overcome the

_vis inertiæ_ that was in their nature, and that in the case of

Tissaphernes the habitual deliberation which marked their movements

would not be easily startled into action on a business which, for more

than one reason, he wished to be indefinitely postponed. Alkibiades

knew, too, that there were no three hundred ships lying off Aspendos,

and that Persian authorities did not waste their wealth on ships of war,

which might never be wanted after all. He knew how many and great were

the opportunities of spending their revenues in a way which more nearly

concerned their own enjoyments. So he guessed that the voyage of

Tissaphernes to Aspendos would not be rapid if he were left to himself.

But there were two energetic Spartans with the satrap, and these might

urge him on. So Agrestides had hardly finished his disquieting news

before orders had been given to get thirteen of the quickest triremes in

readiness to start in pursuit of the satrap and the persistent Spartans.

It was a hot, dreamy day when the _Eros_, followed by the twelve swift

Athenian ships, stood out of the harbour of Samos. They gave Miletos a

wide berth. This was not a time for fighting; the general had other

cares just now, and though his oarsmen pulled their hardest, the pace

seemed all too slow for Alkibiades. His first object was to get to

Kaunos, in Karia, before Tissaphernes left that port. Tissaphernes, he

believed, must stop at Kaunos for water.

The great eyes carved on the prow of the good ship _Eros_ seemed to

start with expectation and impatience as it breasted the smooth sea. By

Kos and Knidos they scudded on. They saw the Spartan ships that had been

left in Rhodes harbour still lying there, as at last with full swing

they turned up north-easterly to Kaunos before the sun had set. But for

all this haste, when they reached the port the Persian satrap and his

Spartan monitors had been there and were gone.

They got in water and what provisions were required, and left again at

daybreak, the sea still smooth as glass. Not a breath of wind came to

fill the sails, and though a hundred times that day Alkibiades reminded

himself that Tissaphernes and the Spartans were as much delayed by the

incidents of weather as he was, it was difficult to console himself with

that thought. He wanted to go fast and faster, to keep pace with his

anxious mind.

‘Are we gaining on them?’ he said to Antiochos, his pilot.

Antiochos did not know. No one knew. They only knew that the Persian

state ship was the swiftest one the Viceroy had, and that the Spartans

were not likely to have chosen slow ones for their present purpose.

Phaselis was the next port Tissaphernes must make for on his journey to

Aspendos.

‘When could they reach Phaselis? Can anyone see Phaselis? Were there

three triremes anywhere ahead?’

‘No; only land on the left-hand side, no triremes.’

He called to the master of the rowers to redouble the vigour and the

quickness of their strokes. But the poor sweating rowers had all day

been toiling their very hardest at the oars. No Persian slaves on the

state trireme, for all the whips of all the masters, could ever row like

these men.

‘We must be gaining on them.’

On and on they went, due east now, right through the Lykian on to the

Pamphylian Sea, for many slowly-passing hours that seemed interminable.

Now they turned up northerly, past the point Hieron, past the small

island of Kambrousa.

‘How much further to Phaselis now? A hundred stades?’

‘More than that.’

‘What is that rock, those two distant rocks? Are they not rocks jutting

out from the sea, with a thin line on each side of them? If the Spartans

shall have made the weary Tissaphernes leave Phaselis before we get

there, and we are kept long in watering, they will be at Aspendos before

us after all, and what of the Persian fleet then? Perhaps we may be yet

in time to stop their leaving.’

The two high rocks grew higher out of the water, more distinct. An old

sailor whom the general called up to his side knew them.

‘Yes, that is Phaselis.’

‘Can anyone see three triremes there?’

‘No, not yet. There are some specks about.’

Antiochos went aloft again.

‘They look long; they must be ships. They cannot be common

fishing-boats; too big.’

‘Are they triremes?’

‘Perhaps they are.’

The old sailor was standing near the pilot, shading his eyes with his

hand.

“Are they triremes?’

‘Yes, they are.’

‘Which way are they looking?’

‘Seaward, I think.’

‘Row on now as you have never rowed before. Each one of you shall have

his name up at the Agora at Athens—a drachma a day for life.’

‘Are they moving?’

‘No—yes, yes. By Zeus! I see the oars move now. They are out of port.’

‘Ye gods! shall we ever catch them? Turn your prow straight for them.

Never mind Phaselis; make for the longest ship.’

‘They are well out now, making fast north-north-east, right for

Aspendos. They see us. The smaller ships are behind. They are gaining on

the long one; she is slacking. Now they are close to her; now they are

nearly alongside of her.’

‘What are they doing now?’

‘The long ship has stopped. We shall catch them yet.’

In fact, when Tissaphernes heard it was the _Eros_, Alkibiades’ own

ship, that was pursuing him, he ordered his rowers to slacken speed,

and, when the high commissioner Lichas and the commander Philippos came

up to him in wonder, he declared he dared not go on with the Athenian

fleet upon them; at any rate, he must wait to hear what message these

vessels might be bringing.

So before nightfall Alkibiades had come aboard the Persian state

long-ship, and Tissaphernes had embraced his friend once more. Lichas

and Philippos had been allowed to leave under cover of the darkness, in

great disgust at the weakness of the satrap, and had gone back towards

Miletos, and the Athenians went on, together with the Persian state

ship, to Aspendos.

It was a gay and happy time for Tissaphernes as he was rowed slowly in

his great ship over the pleasant water, rid at last of those troublesome

Spartans, who were always in earnest, always wanting to talk politics.

He had his friend with him to amuse him and join him in his pleasures as

of old.

They found the fleet—that terrible great fleet indeed!—lying off

Aspendos. Certainly they were a goodly array of ships to look at from a

distance. Though not three hundred—there were a hundred and forty-seven

of them there—joined as auxiliaries with the Spartan force, they would

have settled the question between Athens and Lakedaimon.

On closer inspection, even Tissaphernes had to admit they were not

perfect. Dirty beyond description, with oars broken, planks starting and

torn sails, to the Athenian sailors, accustomed to Greek niceness and

perfection, they looked pitiable and disgusting objects.

Tissaphernes ordered them all back to the Phœnikian coast, and, with the

help of his witty friend, made up and sent to Lichas the following

curious reason for not keeping the promise he had made to Sparta:

‘Whereas by some, at present undiscovered, accident, my lord the King

had not sent more than one hundred and forty-seven long-ships, and, as

it appears to me, his viceroy, unworthy of the King of Kings that he

should send to aid so great and powerful a people as the Lakedaimonians

so small a fleet, I, Tissaphernes, the aforesaid viceroy, have sent them

back again.’

This cynical defence, suggested by Alkibiades, for the breaking of the

solemn promises given at least three times in as many separate treaties,

pleased his Persian friend. It suited the wily nature of the man; and

when the two parted at Aspendos, as soon as Alkibiades could get away,

their love and friendship seemed stronger and likely to be more lasting

than it had ever been before. And grave historians ever since have been

puzzling their heads why it was that, although Tissaphernes allowed the

Spartan envoys to go with him to fetch the fleet, the Spartans never did

get it after all, and why he gave so curious an excuse for sending it

back to the Phœnikian coast again.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Book III

‘That is Alcibiades. In the flower of his manly prime, in the

bloom of his wonderful talents ... there stands the great moral

antithesis, the living type of the Athenian character—the

warrior, the fop—the statesman, the voluptuary—the demagogue,

the patriot—the orator ... the lisper on whose utterance

assemblies hung—the spendthrift, whose extravagance did honour

to his native land—the man who would have made his country

mistress of the world....’—SIR D. K. SANDFORD.

CHAPTER XXI

‘The fish swam by the castle wall,

And they seemed joyous each and all;

The eagle rode the rising blast:

Methought he never flew so fast

As then to me he seemed to fly;

And then new tears came in my eye.’

_Prisoner of Chillon._

STRANGE events were happening at home while Alkibiades was successfully

chasing the Persian satrap and his Spartan companions. When the envoys

of the four hundred to Samos returned to Athens, the account they gave

of the force they found there, its strength and unity, and the complete

confidence of all in their commander, revived the slumbering or drooping

energy of the Athenian people, and roused them to do something more than

sigh for their lost liberties. It also alarmed the usurpers, and the

more moderate or more timid among them began to tremble for themselves.

Alkibiades, they in their guilty consciences thought, with his stalwart

hoplites and his gallant sailors, might be on them any day, and they

dreaded what would come from the pent-up anger of the people when it was

once set free.

Theramenes, one of the earliest promoters of the new order, was the

first to desert his colleagues. He was followed by a large number of the

four hundred. These reformers of the others proposed a constitution

which would allow all citizens capable of bearing arms to be joined to

the new government. Antiphon, Phrynichos, and Peisandros opposed this

proposition with all their might. To save themselves from their

impending doom, Antiphon and Phrynichos went off in haste to Sparta,

empowered to offer the most shameful terms to the old inveterate enemy

of Athens.

There is a point of land called Eetiôneia, which, starting from the spot

where the long walls ended at the Peiræus, juts out some way into the

harbour. This piece of land the four hundred had been for some time

mysteriously fortifying by erecting a wall along it on the harbour side,

and connecting it with another wall already existing on the other side

at its extreme point, where they met and ended in a tower. They also

enclosed the great granary and warehouse at the harbour, and compelled

the corn ships coming from Euboia to unload there.

These fortifications were pushed on apace, but not without exciting the

suspicions of the people. It was spread about—and Theramenes was at the

bottom of the rumour—that the real design of this new fort was to give

the four hundred, as they were still called, absolute command of Athens,

and power to admit a Spartan force, whenever it might come to help them.

Theramenes, more and more breaking away from the others, as he found the

people willing to listen to him, at length declared, without disguise,

what the object of the new wall at Eetiôneia was. He told them that

Antiphon and Phrynichos had gone to Sparta to implore the Spartans to

send a fleet to Athens, to make the people the slaves of the usurpers

and their enemy, who had combined together for their ruin.

This so enraged the people against Phrynichos that, soon after his

return, he was openly slain in daylight by a young soldier in the

market-place, and his bones were afterwards cast out of Attika as being

those of a traitor and unworthy of sepulture within that territory, and

the soldier was rewarded for the deed.

The hoplites who were engaged upon the building of the defence-works

rose against the government, and began to demolish the new walls they

had been ordered to construct, and imprisoned one of the officers set

over them. Then news came that a Spartan fleet was actually approaching,

and that forty-two ships were seen off the coast of Salamis. The whole

city rushed down to the Peiræus to defend it, got together as many ships

as they could find, and, hastily arming, followed the enemy’s fleet,

which, passing Sunion, put in at Orôpos.

The Athenian armament, with its sailors hurriedly got together and for

the most part inexperienced, were no match for their opponents. They

were utterly defeated. Twenty-two ships of the small remnant of Athens’

fleet were lost, and their crews were either killed or taken prisoners.

The Lakedaimonians got possession of Euboia, the granary of Athens—a

blow almost as fatal as if they had taken the town itself. No greater

consternation ever seized upon the city. This was worse than the loss of

her fleet and men at Syrakuse.

The government was at its wits’ end, and the members of it were divided

amongst themselves. Their overtures to Sparta being spurned, they

trembled for their lives. The people met, as though by inspiration, in

their old meeting-place, and, without a sign from their late tyrants,

proceeded to depose them. So they disappeared after a reign of barely

five miserable months. Many of them went over to the enemy at Dekeleia,

and did what further injury they could to Athens. Others were allowed,

with ignominy, to return to their former obscurity. Only Antiphon,

perhaps the best among them, and one other publicly suffered the death

they all deserved. The spot where their houses once stood was marked by

a stone recording that there had lived a traitor. Athens again enjoyed

the constitution, with the assembly, the senate and the executive, which

had been given to it by Perikles.

Samos was still jubilant at the fall of the four hundred and the

restoration of the democratic government at home when the _Eros_, at the

head of the twelve other ships, rowed into the port. The good tidings of

the exciting and successful chase had scarce been told before an

Athenian messenger came from the restored senate and Ekklesia to the

commander of the forces at Samos, confirming him in the high office

already conferred upon him by the Samian garrison. But he found the main

fleet he had left behind with Thrasyllos gone. In his absence Mindaros,

the new Spartan admiral, had stolen quietly out of Miletos, but

Thrasyllos, having had notice of his going, had followed in his wake

with fifty-five warships, had picked up Thrasyboulos with his five

triremes at Eresos, and had met Mindaros and had a brush with him

already in the Hellespont.

A despatch soon came from Thrasyllos describing these movements, and

imploring the chief to come without delay and bring them reinforcements,

as a serious conflict was every day expected. For, when Philippos

returned to Miletos and exposed the way in which the Spartans had been

cheated by the fickle Tissaphernes at Pharselis, Mindaros, despairing of

getting aid from the Lydian satrap, made overtures to Pharnabazos, the

powerful viceroy of the Propontine provinces, offering to join him in

his province. Alkibiades knew that the offer would be accepted, and that

Pharnabazos had been endeavouring for the last four years to make

alliance with the Spartans against Athens. He had not much doubt that

the sudden departure of the Spartan fleet northward to the Hellespont

was for the purpose of joining Pharnabazos. The combined forces, unless

they were successfully opposed, would have little difficulty in getting

possession of the Hellespontine towns which were still faithful to

Athens. Abydos and Lampsakos had already fallen off; a little show of

power on the Spartan side would decide the rest.

It was a time of great anxiety, and it would be of the utmost importance

if the coalition forming in the north could be destroyed. He had

confidence in Thrasyllos, but one false step, one check, at this moment

would be well-nigh fatal. He was working night and day getting supplies

together. There were only fifteen ships in all now left at Samos. It was

of no use to attempt to go to reinforce Thrasyllos with so small a

squadron. He managed to get seven more together from Kos, and to obtain

a large sum of money from Halikarnassos, when a fresh despatch came from

Thrasyllos, who had come up with Mindaros between Troas and the Thrakian

Chersonese. There a stubborn action had been fought, the Athenian line

stretching from Sestos round the promontory of Kynossema. At first the

Spartans and Syrakusans had the best of it, but in the end the Athenians

destroyed thirty ships of the hostile fleet, took eight others, and

forced the rest to retreat into the harbour of Abydos.

News of this victory came to Alkibiades at the very moment when an

embassy arrived from Athens, formally announcing to him that, on the

motion of Kritias and Theramenes, the people had decreed his recall to

Athens, and praying him to return at once to save her. Had this

announcement come at any other time, it would have been difficult to

describe the joy with which it was received. Was it not this he had been

living for every day since that withering sentence had been passed upon

him? Now his desire was accomplished. He was not ungrateful. Great as

was his power of resentment, his generosity was greater. He could

forgive as greatly as he could punish.

But the message came to him when he was resisting the final blow aimed

at the heart of Athens. He showed his gratitude to her by his noble

refusal of her invitation. The time had not yet come. With Mindaros and

Pharnabazos combined, the victory of his lieutenants could only postpone

a more serious attack, and they were not strong enough to meet it. So he

must stay at his post in this supreme hour of danger, and, if necessary,

die in defence of Athens, and could not obey her voice calling on him to

return.

It was, indeed, a time for straining every nerve. He saw in his mind’s

eye his triremes in the Hellespont ranged against a united force of

nearly twice their number, perhaps even now engaging, perhaps smashed

and destroyed, before he could get to their assistance. Doing all he

could, by the middle of October he had collected only two and twenty

ships altogether, and, despairing of being able to get more, he set

their prows northward.

The two Athenian commanders, since their victory at Kynossema, had stood

watching their opponents, while gathering what supplies they could find

with which they might support their crews. Their opponents were

repairing their damaged ships and collecting others from friendly ports.

While both sides were thus engaged, one morning at daybreak a squadron

of fourteen Syrakusan vessels, on their way to reinforce the enemies of

Athens, entered the Hellespont. The Athenian fleet weighed anchor, and

bore down upon them before they could join the Spartan fleet lying off

Abydos. The Syrakusan admiral, finding he could not avoid the Athenians,

ran his ships ashore, disembarked, and posted a number of his men in a

good position on the Trojan coast, in order to protect the ships. The

Athenians attacking were kept off by the hoplites on the ships, and

assailed by darts and arrows from the men posted on the high, rocky

shore.

Now, it so happened that Mindaros had gone that morning to Ilion to

offer sacrifices to Athene. Thence he saw the Syrakusan vessels entering

the Hellespont and the Athenians coming down upon them. He sent off at

once to Pharnabazos, and, getting his own ships together, eighty-four in

all, hastened to relieve the Syrakusans. Thrasyllos saw this great fleet

coming, and, drawing his own ships off into the open, ranged them in

line of battle. He held the left wing, Thrasyboulos the right.

Mindaros came up with his fleet, more than covering the whole length of

the Athenian line; the Athenians were on the west, or Thrakian, side;

the Spartans, and the Syrakusans, who by this time had got their ships

afloat again and joined their allies, on the east, near the Dardanian

shore. Shouts and paeans arose on either side as the oars lashed the

water into foam; trumpets sounded as the great ships dashed at one

another. In courage and determination the combatants were equal, but the

Athenians were fighting for existence, the Lakedaimonians for victory,

the Syrakusans only for revenge.

The Lakedaimonians had a far larger number of ships, but the Athenians

were superior in the management of theirs. At that time much depended on

the management of vessels. It was a warfare of ramming and avoiding, but

it was a splendid warfare. When ship grappled ship, the very attitude in

hurling the javelin was graceful and healthy. With open chest, and every

muscle starting, with the body set well back upon the legs, the air of

heaven was breathed more fully than nowadays as we fight. Then was the

noble tug and tussle, where man clasped man, and where individual

strength exhibited called forth the admiration of opponents.

All that day the battle raged with varying success. The Spartans lost

more than the Athenians; they could afford to lose more. As the October

day was drawing in, and the Athenians showed signs of wavering, and

their commanders began to fear the enemy would prevent them from

carrying off the remnant of their disabled triremes—just in their final

struggle, the full sails of a fresh squadron were seen coming, with a

fair wind, round the Sigeion Cape. Mindaros thought it must be the

reinforcement he was expecting from Miletos, but as it came on before

the wind, with all sails set, a purple ensign was run up—the well-known

purple ensign—and the _Eros_ came bursting through the waves, and on its

prow, in shining panoply, thirsting for the fight, stood Alkibiades, his

armour flashing in the red rays of the setting sun.

Onward they came, and when the Athenians recognised their general, they

plucked up heart and redoubled all their efforts, and sent up such a cry

of joy and thanks, that the Spartans and Syrakusans, when they heard it

and saw who it was that came speeding through the sea against them, lost

their courage, and before Mindaros could rally his astonished crews the

Athenian leader was upon them, breaking through their line and

scattering their ships on all sides in disorder.

Mindaros sounded a retreat, and his fleet made for Abydos. Most of the

triremes ran ashore; the crews and soldiers leapt out, and ranged

themselves upon the bank. The Athenians followed, and, notwithstanding

the darts and arrows from the shore, they were in the act of grappling

the deserted triremes, when Pharnabazos rode up with all his cavalry and

charged the Athenians, the satrap himself leading his men and fighting

in the sea, with the water up to his horse’s girths. But for this

barbaric aid the whole of the Spartan fleet would have been lost. As it

was, the Athenians took more than thirty of their big ships and carried

them off in triumph.

Great was the rejoicing of the victors when they got back to Sestos,

bringing their spoils with them. Fresh hope and confidence sprang up

amongst them—hope, which had been a stranger to Athenian arms for many a

day, and confidence, which seemed to have abandoned them. They had shown

themselves worthy sons of Athens, able to hold their own, and to protect

their liberated mother from the force of Lakedaimôn and Persian

barbarian combined against her. They raised a trophy on the promontory

of Kynossema by the side of that one which Thrasyboulos and Thrasyllos

had placed there more than a month before, and then, with games and

feasts, they celebrated the funeral rites of those who had fallen in the

fray.

It was not a time, though, to indulge long in feasts and triumphing. The

enemy was still strong and not far off, while they were poor, wanting in

almost everything except in courage and in hope. Next day Thrasyllos

went off to Athens to carry tidings of the fight and victory, and to

get, if possible, some reinforcements. Thrasyboulos visited the cities

on the coast, collecting tribute and provisions for the fleet, and going

as far south as was consistent with his duties as its commander.

Alkibiades accompanied him so far, and then went on to Paniônion. He had

heard that Tissaphernes had returned from his journey to Aspendos, and

was at Magnesia purposing to come north to visit Pharnabazos. Alkibiades

saw that this meeting of the two satraps must be stopped at any hazard.

The _Eros_, decked out in its best array, with the ensign of the

strategos flying at its masthead, looked like itself again as it coasted

the Ionian shore and entered the little harbour near Paniônion.

Alkibiades received information that Tissaphernes was at Magnesia still,

but that he was just on the point of leaving on his progress to visit

Pharnabazos, if he had not already started. A Persian friend he met at

Paniônion warned him somewhat mysteriously that it would be wiser not to

venture inland, or trust himself at all just now in Persian territory.

But he believed still in his influence with Tissaphernes, and was sure

that, if he could but see him before he left, all would be right; and

though the significance of the warning he had just received did not

escape him, it made him the more determined to push on without delay to

Magnesia.

Taking, therefore, only a lieutenant named Mantitheos with him, and a

couple of sailors to carry some presents he was bringing for his old

friend, he set off at full speed for the place he knew so well. He

reached in good time the paradeisos or park of the satrap. Tissaphernes

was not there, but was said to be at the castle of Magnesia, just about

to start. He hurried on. The castle was surrounded by a force of Persian

cavalry. The whole place was full of soldiers.

As Alkibiades and Mantitheos, followed by the sailors bearing the

presents, came near the citadel, they saw the guard was in marching

order. There was a busy look on every face, a feeling of movement and

bustle in the air, very different from the ordinary sleepy quiet of the

town. They made their way through the crowd of soldiers outside the gate

and the mounted guard within. Alkibiades congratulated himself that he

had come just in time to catch the satrap before he left, and so perhaps

would be able to stop his going, or, at least, might be able to ride

with him on his journey. Who could tell what the effect of his

persuasion might be now that he had such an opportunity?

They were received by the well-known Nubian chamberlain with his usual

deference. He did not seem astonished. He must have heard that they were

coming. The sailors remained in the outer hall; the strategos and his

lieutenant were ushered into the state room of the castle. This

reception was so unusual that Alkibiades began to wonder what it meant.

On former occasions Tissaphernes had always come out to meet him, and

with emotion and many fond caresses had hung about his neck in long, if

not to the Athenian very agreeable, embraces. Still they waited, and no

satrap came.

At length an official entered, followed by some young slaves bearing an

elegant repast, with flowers and fruit and the choicest shiraz cooled in

the snow, which was lying thick upon the mountains, but still no satrap.

Alkibiades asked the official when the viceroy of the King of Kings

would deign to receive his servants. The official answered him that the

viceroy of the King of Kings was busily engaged just then with orders

from the King of Kings, and could not yet have the pleasure of visiting

his illustrious guests, and then retired with a lowly reverence.

Just then a loud blast from a broad-mouthed Persian trumpet sounded, and

there was a clatter of horses’ feet. From the high windows a cavalcade

was seen passing through the courtyard, and out by the castle gate.

‘By the gods!’ cried Alkibiades, ‘there is that rascally Tissaphernes in

the middle of them. He shall not escape me yet. I will be after him and

astonish the Spartans, who think they have got him from me.’

He clapped his hands, but no one came.

He sent Mantitheos to call the slaves. The door was fastened.

Great drops stood on the pale face of Mantitheos. He was for rushing to

the windows and escaping by them.

Alkibiades laughed savagely.

‘With a troop of Persians to cut you to pieces when you fall down, with

broken bones, among them. Keep still. This is a conspiracy between

Mindaros and Pharnabazos. They have brought Tissaphernes round to their

side before I could get hold of him. Poor Tissaphernes! he is more

unhappy at this moment than I am. We can but die once, though I confess

I should have liked to live a little longer.’

They tried the inner rooms. Two were fitted up with couches, one

sumptuously. The hours went by. It grew dark. The trumpets sounded.

Guard relieved guard. The neighing of horses was heard. Lights began to

twinkle in the town and camp. Still no one came. All was silent.

‘Ye gods, we have been caught this time in a trap!’ So saying, with a

short laugh he threw himself down upon a sumptuous couch and slept. In

the morning he and Mantitheos were awakened by a polite chamberlain. He

was followed by a guard of finely-dressed and well-armed cavalry

officers. The chamberlain inclined with deep respect, and made many

apologies if any inconvenience had been suffered by the distinguished

strategos. ‘It grieved him to the heart to be obliged to inform the

distinguished strategos that his master Tissaphernes had been obliged to

set out only the day before for his capital of Sardis, there to receive

a special envoy from the King of Kings, and, as his master had been

unable to receive his noble guest in his castle at Magnesia, he prayed

that he would honour him by a visit at his castle at Sardis; and, as an

escort for the journey, a guard of horsemen were at his service, and

were now, in fact, awaiting his pleasure in the court below.’

Alkibiades bowed and smiled. Neither was taken in. The one knew the

whole meaning of the message, and its depth of treachery; the other was

perfectly aware that it was known. They descended into the courtyard.

Alkibiades was assisted to mount an Arab horse; another was provided for

Mantitheos. On asking for the sailors who had come with him, he was told

they had returned to Paniônion. The two travellers were preceded by

twenty horsemen armed with spears. On each side of them rode an officer

with drawn sword; in the rear came twenty other horsemen with spears. So

they started from Magnesia.

At mid-day they halted. An ample meal was served. They pursued their

way, along the banks of the Hermos, to the fertile plains where the old

town of Sardis stood beneath its lofty citadel. They passed the new

paradeisos that Tissaphernes had lately finished. Through its wooden

palings they could see its various wonders, its splendid trees, and its

pavilions, and the fountains and curious waterworks and lakes which the

satrap had formed from the gold-bearing Paktôlos, which ran through it.

On account of its grace and beauty, as well as with a view to the

pleasant hours he had hoped to spend there with his friend, Tissaphernes

had named this paradise ‘Alkibiades.’

The prisoners were received with every mark of courtesy and with real

kindness by the governor of the citadel. Alkibiades was cheerful. There

was still some chance of hearing news of Tissaphernes. After a week of

close confinement they were allowed to take as much exercise as they

liked in the governor’s garden, shut in only by the high outer wall, and

closed by the great gate near which the governor lodged. Alkibiades soon

won the affections of his keeper. He had noticed from the first the

kindness with which he treated him. As the time hung heavily upon him,

he was glad to talk to the old officer, who at last confided to him the

cause of his imprisonment.

Orders had come some time ago from the Great King to take Alkibiades,

alive or dead. The affair of the fleet had got Tissaphernes into

terrible trouble with the Spartans. By taking their fleet away from the

Ionian coast to the Hellespont they enabled Pharnabazos to collect the

tribute for the Persian king from the Greek cities in that part.

Tissaphernes knew that if Pharnabazos sent his tribute to Suza, the king

would hear no excuse why the rest of the Ionian tribute should not be

paid. If one satrap could collect and pay it, then the other must do so,

or make it up out of his own property. This question of the tribute had

been a long-standing trouble. While Athens was mistress of the sea there

was a good reason why the Lydian satrap could not enforce it; but when

Athens was weakened, and could no longer hold her own or protect her

colonies, this excuse must cease.

The Athenian victory at Abydos frightened Tissaphernes still more. It

now seemed that the balance of power between the two chief Greek states

would not be maintained. The Athenians would preponderate if many more

victories such as that were gained.

It was the Persian policy to keep them at war, weakening one another,

until they were reduced to such weakness that they might both be driven

from the sea. To take Alkibiades away, to keep him in confinement at

this time, would stop any more Athenian victories for the present. At

any rate, it would show to the Spartans, Tissaphernes thought, how

sincerely he was on their side, and to the king, his master, that he was

ready to sacrifice his personal affection for his friend to that

master’s service.

It was time to do something to pacify both. The Lakedaimonians were

threatening to end the war, and retire with the remnant of their force

to Sparta, while the king was growing something more than suspicious of

his satrap’s fidelity. These, then, were the reasons why he had ordered

the arrest of his dearest friend. And when the friend had so

unexpectedly run into the snare, he had left without seeing him, for

fear his resolution might be shaken, and he tried to soothe his own

regret at having to treat so badly one he sincerely loved by giving

commands that every attention should be paid the Athenian strategos

while he was in captivity.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER XXII

‘Liber captivus avis feræ consimilis est,

Semel fugiendi si data est occasio,

Satis est, nunquam post illam possis prendere.’

PLAUTUS: _Captivi_.

IT is not pleasant to be shut up in prison for a fortnight, expecting

every day that poison, or a dagger, will make that one your last. But

even to that the prisoner gets accustomed in time, and the danger of

assassination begins, at last, to lend some excitement to life, spent in

the horrible monotony of such a situation. Alkibiades was not afraid of

death. His determined resistance to it when it had been openly decreed

against him by the Athenians, and secretly by king Agis and the Ephors

at Sparta, was caused as much by the sense of the injustice of it as

from any fear of death itself. Now, though he enjoyed his life as much

as any man, he expected death with calmness, and thought of it each day

as just about to come with perfect equanimity.

Perhaps it could not have come at a time more opportune, if come it

must. He had just won a splendid victory for his repentant

fellow-countrymen. He had shown his devotion to them, and they had

called on him to return to them and forget the past. Their bygone

injustice he had forgiven; and if he died now, the victim of a

conspiracy among their enemies, it would be a fresh cause for them to

honour him.

But the constant thought that he was shut up at such a crisis, while the

Lakedaimonians and the Persians were planning fresh attacks and

strengthening their forces, while only inexperienced lieutenants were

left to protect his country, hung upon him insupportably all day long,

and maddened him through the long dark winter’s nights, with its

constant crushing weight. He determined to risk everything in his

endeavour to get back to join his comrades.

How to escape was now his constant thought. His prison at first was

strictly guarded, and if he could surmount the physical difficulty of

high walls, there were greater difficulties beyond.

When a man is shut up in prison with nothing but his own thoughts, those

thoughts are constantly turning on some means of escape. If he is a man

of great resources he will generally manage, in time, to circumvent his

keepers, who only think occasionally, and as a matter of routine, how

they may keep him in.

Another week passed, in dull monotony. His gaoler could tell him little

of the outside world. He only heard that Tissaphernes was with

Pharnabazos on the shores of the Hellespont. Then nearly another week

went by in the same dead silence, broken only by the singing of the

guard and the exchange of passwords as they relieved each other, while

he was consumed with rage, bursting with impatience to be out and doing.

And here, here he was shut up with nothing to look at but the fine

Grecian theatre and racecourse, lying at the foot of the high rock, or

the constant, endless view from his prison windows of the peaceful

valley of the Hermos, and of the country beyond, stretching into the dim

distance, a view which may still be seen by the traveller who ascends

to-day the crumbling remains of the rock on which stood the citadel of

Sardis, where Alkibiades and his companion were imprisoned.

It seemed to him, however, after a time, that the guards grew slacker in

their watch. Sometimes, especially in the evening, he noticed that if a

fresh guard did not come at the proper time, the others, tired of their

cold, dreary duty, went off before they were relieved. He knew from old

experience how much more the Easterns leave to chance than the better

disciplined Greek soldiers would dare to do. He could see through the

gateway the tired guard pacing up and down, and one or two beggars who

came for broken victuals. He sometimes amused himself by throwing small

coins to the half-starved mendicants to see them scramble for the money.

This unwonted good fortune was soon noised about among the beggars, and

brought others, till, whenever he took his evening exercise, a number,

drawn by news of this largess, clamoured at the gateway. Even the guards

were not above joining in the scramble sometimes when no one saw them,

and would push the ragged crowd away, to pick up the scattered coins

themselves. Alkibiades did not discourage this, and the good-natured

warder who was in charge pretended not to see it. Emboldened by their

liberty, some beggars would even thrust their hands through the bars,

piteously praying for his dole, and still the warder only laughed if he

caught them speaking to his prisoner.

So a whole month passed. It was on the last day of that first month of

his incarceration, when the crowd of beggars was greater, and they were

crying out more loudly than ever as they pushed their lean, dirty hands

through to him, that he noticed a hand which looked different, stronger

than the others, and which was unopened. Struck with the strange sight

of an unopened hand pushed through the gates, he gently touched it; it

opened slightly, and he saw a minute scroll rolled up inside. He took

it, unseen by the warder, and throwing some coins to the poor

mendicants, retired to his room. He opened the scroll. There was just

light enough to read the few words on the rolled-up papyrus leaf. On it

was written in well-known characters, ‘Hour after sunset courtyard

wall.’

In an hour’s time he and Mantitheos were in the courtyard. It was dark.

After waiting a short time they heard the guard go off singing a Persian

song. All was quiet. Presently a rope was thrown over the high wall from

outside. Mantitheos fastened the end securely to the trunk of a tree. To

an athlete like Alkibiades, to haul himself up a wall even of that

height was an easy matter. Mantitheos quickly followed, fear aiding him

in his ascent. First Alkibiades, then Mantitheos, went down the other

side hand over hand, and arrived at the bottom, with no greater injury

than bleeding hands and legs. They found a strong, ragged-looking man,

in an old Persian sailor’s dress, who, throwing the end of the rope over

the wall, walked rapidly in front. The fugitives followed silently.

A light shot for a moment from the warder’s gate across their path. The

voice of the warder was heard calling after them. No one heeded it. The

light disappeared. The three quickened their pace. The warder, suddenly

roused by the noise, had cried out on his first impulse, then, realizing

what had happened, held his peace. He had reason to believe that his

lord, having shown his good faith towards Sparta and the king, would not

be sorry for his prisoner’s escape.

In almost less time than it has taken to write down this speculation on

the warder’s thoughts, the fugitives had made their way down the narrow

track leading from the citadel, had passed by the side of the ruins of

the splendid temple of Kybele, built by the old Lydian kings, and burnt

by the Ionians before the town was taken by the Persians, had forded the

shallow Paktôlos, and were soon outside the unwalled town. There, in a

thick wood on the northern ascent of the hill, they found three small

mountain ponies tethered to a tree. The stranger—who of course was

Agrestides—loosed them, the three mounted, and away they went!

By a secluded path with which their guide had made himself well

acquainted, they got into the wild mountain country of the Tmolian

range, and on they rode through the dark, stormy night. It was the depth

of winter; the rain at first, and then, as they got higher up, the

blinding snow, blew hard in their faces. Progress was slow. They dare

not keep the level road along the valley of the Hermos. The only safe

path for them was on the ridge of the chain of mountains from Mount

Tmôlos, over Drakôn, Clympos, and Mastousia.

The ponies, native to the mountains, knew the path as well in the dark

as by day, but their pace was very slow, and morning was breaking over

Sardis before they had made much way. They reached at length a ruined

temple of Artemis; there they hid themselves. Mantitheos showed signs of

breaking down; all three were drenched and tired out.

As the day got on it grew finer, and they determined to venture out

again, in hopes of reaching a small village that Agrestides knew of,

where they might be able to obtain some food. The snow was thick upon

the ground; Mantitheos was getting weaker. Alkibiades gave him his

cloak, which they had managed to dry at a small fire which Agrestides

had made inside the ruined temple. Though the snow impeded their

progress, it stopped the dreaded pursuit. They heard the wolves howling

round them, and saw foxes skulking about, ravenous, like themselves, for

food. There was some difficulty in getting Mantitheos along. There was

no sign of human habitation till they reached a small, desolate village

at nightfall. Mantitheos was quite worn out.

In a poverty-stricken cottage they got shelter for the night, and some

coarse bread and goat’s flesh, and a little goat’s milk. Mantitheos

became worse. Agrestides would have left him there. ‘Will you risk your

own life for him?’ he said; but Alkibiades refused to go without him,

and amused them by tales of his adventures and stories about

Sokrates—how the philosopher kept his guard all night at Potidaia in the

snow without any other raiment on him but his summer dress, and how he

would stand sometimes, all day and night, in silent contemplation, thus

exemplifying his theory, external circumstances ought never to affect

the true philosopher.

There was much he wanted to know about: what had taken place since he

left the Hellespont with Thrasyboulos, after the battle of Abydos; what

the Spartans and Pharnabazos were doing; whether the Athenians were

making preparations to drive the Spartans from the Hellespont and

Bosporos. Agrestides could give him little reliable information about

these things, but he entertained them with an account of how he had

found them, and had managed to help them to escape. He told his story in

a few words, in his blunt way, taking little credit to himself. He could

not imagine how anyone would have done less for such a master.

For two days after the sailors had returned to the ship from Magnesia

without the strategos the _Eros_ waited, expecting his return. Then some

officers had gone to the castle at Magnesia for further orders, and were

told that Alkibiades had set out to visit Tissaphernes, and they learnt

that Tissaphernes had gone north to meet Pharnabazos. Only by degrees it

came out that Alkibiades was a prisoner, and had been sent, under a

strong escort, no one knew whither. The sailors were for marching upon

Magnesia straight off, though it was occupied by some hundreds of

Persian soldiers. It was difficult to make them understand the madness

of the attempt. At last Agrestides was allowed to go in search, with

orders to return if he found any clue to the prison of the captive

strategos.

He knew the country and the language of the barbarians, and, disguised

as a Persian sailor, it did not take him long to discover where his

master was confined. He bought the three mountain ponies on the way, and

brought them to Sardis, pretending he meant to sell them there. When he

reached the satrap’s capital, he made friends with the sailors who

formed the guard of the citadel, regaling them at the wine-shops on the

supposed proceeds of a prosperous voyage, and after waiting many days,

he at last found means of getting his message into his master’s hands.

Then he gave the guard, who ought to have gone on duty an hour after

sunset, so much of the strong wine that grows on the sides of Tmôlos,

that he felt sure they would not trouble themselves to be too early at

their post, and as soon as the tired guard went off, without waiting for

their relief, the sailor’s rope had done the rest.

So two days and nights passed in the rough cottage, till the rest and

warmth, and such food as they could get, restored the unfortunate

lieutenant sufficiently to let them journey on. In two days more they

reached a small fishing-village to the eastward of Klazomenai. At dark

they put off in a fishing-boat, and after cruising about all night, at

daybreak they sighted the _Eros_ standing off the coast, about a mile

north of Klazomenai. The sailors raised such loud cries of joy, when

their strategos came on board, that their shouts were heard in the port,

as with a head wind the _Eros_ made for the isle of Samos.

The men of Samos were vainly vowing vengeance on the Persians if their

chief was murdered. Just as the _Eros_ was seen sailing towards the

port, the women were thronging the temple of Heré, where the great

bronze statue of Alkibiades, the liberator of Ionia, was to be erected

next year, and were sending up prayers for his safety to the

all-powerful Queen of Olympos, who was born, they said, at Samos. When

they heard that the _Eros_ was arrived, they left the altar of the

goddess, in anxious hope that she had heard their prayers. There was the

_Eros_ coming onward, with the north-west wind, in festive trim, and lo!

standing on the deck, appeared the hero for whom such earnest, tearful

prayers had for so many days been offered up. He was soon in their

midst, as fair, as fresh, as beautiful, as though no trouble or danger

had ever come upon him.

He could not stay long at Samos. The tiresome necessities of glorious

war called him away upon its ordinary business. He had to visit those of

the islands which had not been true to Athens and which had now been

abandoned by Sparta, enforcing contributions for the fleet which, he

determined, should preserve them from both the Spartan and the Persian.

He was at Lesbos when he received a pressing summons from those who were

left in charge of the fleet in the north to come at once and take

command.

Mindaros had collected ships and men from the islands and from home. He

was again at the head of over sixty triremes, and was backed up from the

shore by the army of Pharnabazos, and by Pharnabazos himself. As fast as

wind and oars could carry him, Alkibiades made for Kardia, on the

western coast of the Thrakian Chersonesos. There he collected all the

Athenian strength. Thrasyboulos and Theramenes joined him. Thrasyllos

was still doing his utmost to collect reinforcements at Athens. When all

were told, the Athenian fleet was but little superior in numbers to the

Spartan, and they had no army on shore to cover them.

In April Mindaros sailed for the island of Kyzikos, on the Propontis.

Pharnabazos marched his troops along the coast of Mysia to the same

point. The joint force took Kyzikos, the chief town of the island, at

its southern extremity, where it was joined to the mainland by a bridge.

On hearing of this attack, Alkibiades set sail from Kardia, doubled the

Chersonesos, passed up the Hellespont, cleverly eluding the Spartan

look-out at Abydos, and, on a dark, rainy night anchored off the island

of Prokonnesos. Next day he assembled his men on shore, taking care that

the enemy should have no intelligence of his arrival, and animated them

by a stirring harangue.

Though inferior in strength, they must, he said, fight at once. Delay

would be ruin to them, as they could expect no more help from Athens,

while the Lakedaimonians were fed and paid by their rich allies. They

must fight, then, as they never fought before, against ships, against

men, against stone walls, and conquer this unholy alliance of Greek and

barbarian, or die like heroes.

He was not afraid to engage the whole Spartan force at sea. But his

difficulty was to get them out into the open, away from their Persian

protection ashore. With this view he concealed the strength of his

fleet. The night was dark; under cover of the darkness he sailed in

three separate divisions from Prokonnesos. Theramenes he stationed with

one division to the west, behind the small island of Alone; Thrasyboulos

he sent with another to the east, round the north point of the island of

Kyzikos; while he himself, with a picked squadron of twenty triremes,

took the centre or front line, and made straight for the fleet of

Mindaros at the capital of the island.

Mindaros, seeing the centre division only coming against him in the

early morning, advanced in line to meet it with his whole fleet of sixty

triremes. Alkibiades retreated, the Spartan admiral, with all his force,

following him into the straits between Kyzikos and Alone. Then

Alkibiades wheeled round upon them, the Athenian sailors managing their

long ships splendidly, and at that moment, on a given signal,

Thrasyboulos, with his division, came round the north point of Kyzikos,

and Theramenes from behind Alone, taking the Spartan fleet on either

flank.

The Spartans, attacked thus unexpectedly on each side, as well as on

their main line in front, were seized with panic. They turned and fled,

followed by the Athenians, who in their pursuit took or destroyed many

of the retreating ships. The rest made for the mainland, about a mile

from where Pharnabazos was stationed with his Persian troops. Those on

board, running their ships aground, clambered on to the shore, followed

by the centre line of the Athenian ships, led by Alkibiades.

Thrasyboulos landed his hoplites on the right of the Persians, and

Theramenes, turning his ships behind the main line, landed his men near

the Persian left flank. The Persians charged Thrasyboulos, and were

overwhelming him by their superior numbers, when Theramenes came,

unperceived by them, upon their rear. Taken thus in the rear while they

were resolutely opposed in front, they were thrown into disorder, and

fled with enormous loss. Thrasyboulos and his force were saved.

Meanwhile Alkibiades had landed with a small picked body in order, if

possible, to prevent the Spartans from protecting their stranded

vessels, while the rest of his men were seizing those they could get at.

Thus he found himself opposed to the whole Spartan force. For a long

time he held his own, fighting himself in the front of his men. This

small band of warriors was gradually falling by his side. He was hard

pressed, and that fight was near proving his last. He was surrounded by

the enemy, who cut off his retreat. There could have been no possible

escape had not his two colleagues, fresh from their triumph over the

Persians, come up just in time to save him. Victory was thus snatched

from Mindaros and the Lakedaimonians. The valiant Spartan admiral,

undismayed at this turn of affairs, so sudden and little expected by

him, fought on with his accustomed bravery till he fell, mortally

wounded, at the head of his followers, encouraging them to the last by

his words and his example. The Spartans, seeing their leader fall, broke

and fled, pursued by the conquerors, leaving the whole of their fleet

behind, and a multitude of slain and wounded.

Alkibiades was hailed by his army as ‘the invincible,’ and well they

might so call him. He had rid Ionia, the Hellespont, the Bosporos, of

Spartan interference, and undone the work of three years’ strenuous

labour of the enemy. Their fleet was destroyed, and their army was

reduced to a miserable number and condition, broken in spirit, and

without a leader. They knew not what to do.

At Sparta the news of the defeat was received with consternation. In her

necessity she thought at last of peace. Endios, the old friend and

relative of Alkibiades, was sent to sound the Athenian senate. Alas! the

Athenians were too elated. Unhappily for them, they spurned the

overtures, which, had they been accepted, might have changed the coming

pages of their history and the future life of Alkibiades. Peace was not

to be either for them or for him; he had to abide the course of destiny,

and live and die in constant toil and struggle.

Having put in order his fleet, which had been enormously increased by

all the triremes taken from the enemy, he proceeded to reduce the towns

upon the coast, which still held out against him, and to receive the

submission and tribute of the others. A whole year was spent in these

active and profitable operations. In June of the next year, 409,

Thrasyllos joined him at Lampsakos with a new squadron of fifty triremes

and a body of hoplites from Athens.

Pharnabazos had during this last year shown much more spirit than the

Lakedaimonian government. Persian gold was freely spent among the

Spartan soldiers, and a naval arsenal was provided for them by him at

Antandros, near Mount Ida, where wood for the building of new ships

could be obtained by them in abundance. An immense body of men were

there set to work to form a fresh navy, to replace the one they had lost

at Kyzikos. But Alkibiades did not leave him long in peace. He attacked

and routed him at Abydos, taking a prodigious amount of booty, including

the money that was on its way to pay the Spartan soldiers and sailors at

Antandros, and also making many prisoners. Among the captives were some

Persian priests. These he treated with respect and courtesy, and sent

them back to Pharnabazos unransomed and with presents.

There was a strong feeling of respect growing up mutually between these

two leaders. If Pharnabazos was invariably defeated by Alkibiades, he

could not but feel admiration for the bravery and skill with which his

opponent fought. Pharnabazos from this time began to grow colder in his

support of Sparta, or, at any rate, he began to feel the hopelessness of

continuing the struggle with one who seemed endowed with more than

ordinary force and genius.

Thus the winter passed. In the spring Alkibiades continued his

victorious career. The history of this year is a catalogue of the coast

towns and islands which he took from the control of Sparta, and brought

back to their old tributary dependence upon Athens. Then he made an

expedition into Thrace. Here the cultured Athenian, who had astonished

the frugal Lakedaimonians by the stern rigour of his life at Sparta, and

the soft Persians by his sumptuous magnificence at the court of the

gentle Lydian satrap, now caused no less astonishment to the strong and

hardy Thrakians. Bred from their infancy to tame and ride their famous

wild white horses, they looked with admiration on his splendid

horsemanship. From very love of him a large body followed him as

volunteers when he returned to carry on the war against his twofold

enemy.

At that time the siege of Chalkedôn was being carried on by Thrasyllos,

who had nearly succeeded in carrying a palisade round the city on its

land side. This wall was now nearly completed. Placed almost immediately

opposite Byzantion and thus forming a firm base of operations whenever

he should attack that most important city, Chalkedôn, which had lately

thrown off its dependency on Athens, was strenuously defended by the

Spartans. While Thrasyllos was pushing on his works the Spartan garrison

made a sortie from the town, and Pharnabazos, co-operating with them,

made a simultaneous dash upon the besieging force with all his army. At

that critical moment Alkibiades arrived in time to prevent the

destruction of the Athenians thus caught between the Spartans in front

of them and the Persians at their back. With his new Thrakian cavalry he

charged Pharnabazos with such effect that the gallant Persian fled

discomforted. He then led his troop round against the Spartans, who

retired behind the walls of Chalkedôn, leaving a large part of their

numbers behind them dead upon the field, including their commander,

Hippokrates.

Having finished the wall of palisades by which the town was completely

cut off from the land, he recrossed the Bosporos, with such troops as

could be spared from the siege of Chalkedôn, to raise contributions for

the war. At Selymbria, a Greek town on the Thrakian coast of the

Propontis, he was called upon once more to prove his fearless

intrepidity, his calmness and resource in the midst of danger, and his

gentleness in the hour of victory. He arrived before the town with a

body of his own hoplites and his Thrakian horsemen. Some of the citizens

were willing to ally themselves with Athens, or rather, perhaps, were

unwilling to struggle against one who seemed to be invincible. They

agreed to open the gates to him at midnight, and promised to display a

lighted torch upon the walls as a signal that they were ready to receive

him. One of them betrayed the design to the authorities of Selymbria.

The others, fearing the vengeance of the citizens, showed the signal

from the walls an hour before the appointed time, and opened the city

gates. Alkibiades, who had given orders for the main body of his men to

be ready to enter the town with him at midnight, on seeing the signal,

though his men were not yet ready, rushed to the open gate, followed by

only thirty of his guard. He was joined by twenty of those who were

friendly to him within the town. With this handful of followers he found

himself in the narrow streets and in the midst of an angry multitude.

Here again he was in imminent peril of his life. He refused to retreat,

although he could not hope that thirty men, however brave, assisted by

only twenty citizens, could hold their ground until his hoplites and his

Thrakians should come to his aid. He ordered a trumpet to be sounded,

and as calmly as if he was at the head of a victorious army, he made a

proclamation ‘that the Selymbrians would incur the anger of the state of

Athens if they dared to take up arms against the Athenians.’ His

extraordinary coolness so frightened the people, who supposed a

proclamation such as this would never have been made unless the whole

army was behind him and entering the city, that they asked for

conditions. While these were being arranged the rest of his army

entered.

Selymbria was now at his mercy. According to the rights or wrongs of

war, he might have robbed it of its riches and allowed the outrage of

its citizens. He forbade both, and risked the anger of his half-tamed

Thrakians, who could not understand how a hostile city could be taken

without the necessary consequence of rapine, by sending them out of

Selymbria baulked of their prey. Taking only a reasonable sum of money

by way of tribute, he left a garrison behind to protect Selymbria from

the Spartans.

The feeling of discontent with the policy of supporting Sparta against

such an opponent now reached its height in the mind of Pharnabazos. He

opened communications with Thrasyllos, who had been left to carry on the

siege of Chalkedôn while Alkibiades was away strengthening the power of

Athens on the Propontis, and collecting tribute for the support of her

defenders. He promised an immediate payment of twenty talents, proposed

a treaty of peace, and offered an escort and safe-conduct to an Athenian

embassy, which he suggested should be sent to the Great King to settle

the terms upon which a final peace might be made between Persia and

Athens.

In the meantime a truce was to be made between the satrap and

Alkibiades. The satrap’s terms were accepted and the embassy was sent.

It included one whose travels and troubles we have already spoken

about—the unfortunate Mantitheos, whose sufferings were now to be

continued for three years to come. But Pharnabazos was not content with

the word or oath of a subordinate before he withdrew his troops finally

from the support of the Spartans. He insisted that the general-in-chief

must himself attest his consent to all the terms of the treaty.

Alkibiades confirming them by his own solemn oath, the satrap made

mutual covenants of friendship, alliance, and hospitality with him,

treating him throughout more as an autocratic sovereign than as a

general-in-chief of a republic.

Having fortified Chrysopolis, the port of Chalkedôn, by building a

strong tower which looked across the narrow strait to Byzantion,

Alkibiades now set about his long-meditated siege of that important

place which was the bulwark of the Bosporus and the key to the Euxine

trade. But Byzantion was strongly guarded by stone walls without and by

an unrelenting warrior within, the iron-willed and iron-hearted

Klearchos, whom Sparta had sent as her best commander to hold a place of

such inestimable value. He was supported by a strong body of his trained

citizens and sturdy Boiotians. The Athenian fleet blockaded the port and

every entrance by sea; the Athenian army gradually drew round it on the

land side, and stopped all help from coming to the famine-stricken

people of that great city. Klearchos closely hoarded the food he had

stored up within. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is wanted by those who can bear arms

and fight; the rest, if needs be, can starve.’

There was no sign of surrender, and the summer passed away. Overtures

were at length made to the Athenian general by some of the principal

inhabitants. They told him they had no love for their defenders, that

they detested the Spartan general, who had left them in their dire want

to go to seek aid from Pharnabazos. They agreed to open the Thrakian

gate to the besiegers. Alkibiades knew how much blood must be wasted on

the assault of such a place. No commander was ever more careful of the

lives of men committed to his trust than he. In the whole of his career

there is no instance of any reckless sacrifice of life in order to gain

even the most important conquest, nor of any cruelty done, or permitted

to be done, on those whom the fortune of war delivered over to his

power.

If it was possible to get possession of the coveted city in any other

way, he determined to avoid the carnage on both sides, which must

inevitably happen if a place so strongly fortified was stormed. As

clever in stratagem as he was fearless in fight, he made a pretence of

retiring from the siege and carrying his troops away. He ordered the

triremes to row off into the Bosporos, as though he was abandoning a

hopeless task. Then, at midnight, some of the ships returned, and the

sailors, landing with great clamour, attacked the eastern gate. The

Spartan troops rushed to that spot and forced the few Athenian sailors

who had landed to retreat to their ships. At that moment the Thrakian

gate was opened by friends within, and Alkibiades, at the head of his

hoplites, who had silently returned in the darkness of the night,

entered Byzantion.

The Spartans and their allies discovered the trick that had been played

upon them, and hastily came back to meet the enemy, who were now in the

centre of the city. But, posted in strong positions in the main streets

and squares, the Athenians made havoc of both Boiotians and Spartans,

and the Byzantine soldiers turned upon those whom the people had good

reason to look upon rather as oppressors than protectors. The Spartans

fought with the courage of despair, but they were all slain at length,

except some five hundred, who surrendered. The inhabitants were well

treated, although they had revolted from Athens when she was in her

greatest need. They again accepted her mild sovereignty, and agreed to

pay the usual tribute.

Now, with Chalkedôn in his power, Chrysopolis in his hands, and

Byzantion garrisoned by Athens, Alkibiades placed the Euxine Sea in her

control once more. What that meant at such a time can only be understood

when one recollects the extensive trade of the great inland sea and the

low state to which Athens of late had been reduced. It drove her enemies

out of these waters, and it gave her whatever dues she chose to impose

on all the rich merchant ships passing to and fro with their cargoes of

slaves, of skins, of fish, and, what to Athens was more than all, their

loads of corn from the Euxine shores. For she had been deprived of the

produce of her own lands ever since King Agis and the Spartans had

Dekeleia in their possession, and since the defection of Euboia, her

other granary, she had to look to the Euxine to supply her with the bare

necessities of life. This was now thrown open to her.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER XXIII

‘Come, have a care for thine honour, since now this land calls

thee saviour for thy former zeal; and never let it be the memory

of thy government that we were set upon our feet and afterwards

cast down, but lift up this city so that it stand fast for

ever.’—SOPHOCLES: _Oid. Tyr._

UPON the Hellespont, the Propontis, and the Bosporos, the northern

Athenian dependencies were everywhere reduced to their old tributary

subjection to their ancient suzerain; the Spartans were driven from the

sea, and a truce was made with Pharnabazos, pending negotiations for

peace with the Persian king. In the beginning of the year 407

Alkibiades, leaving Thrasyboulos to complete the conquest of the Greek

cities on the Thrakian coast, assembled his mighty fleet at Samos.

It is unnecessary to describe the advent of the conqueror once more into

that port, where his faithful friends and supporters had been true to

him when every other Grecian city had turned against him, and where his

statue now stood gloriously in the temple of the special guardian of the

island, the witness of the people’s gratitude to the liberator of Ionia.

He had still work to do upon the Karian coast, the last remnant of the

late Spartan conquests, and had more tribute to collect from unfaithful

cities for impoverished Athens. After reducing these places to

subjection and strengthening the forts at Kos, and with a treasure of

one hundred talents which he had collected, he returned to Samos.

He now felt that the time was come when he might at last answer the

repeated call of Athens, and return to his beloved home. He sent

Thrasyllos with the main part of the fleet and a large portion of the

captured ships and other spoils before him to Peiræus, to prepare the

people for his coming.

The impatience with which they awaited him was indescribable. They were

as anxious to see the man whom they had driven from them, and who in

return, his justice satisfied, had raised them from despair and misery

to their old supremacy, as he was to come back to them. This had been

the fixed purpose of his life for eight long years. In spite of the

temptation to return at her earnest cry three years ago, he had gone on

enduring dangers, imprisonment, and hardships, and adding victory to

victory, till he felt his hands were full enough of blessings. Now they

were so full they scarcely could hold more, and he returned to her to

lay them at her feet.

Collecting his great ships from Samos and the other ports where he had

posted them, with all his prisoners and his prizes, he proudly sailed

towards Attika. No need now to avoid hostile places; he rather diverged

from his straight course, to show the world who was supreme mistress of

the seas, and on the twenty-fifth of May he sighted the Peiræus. When

the people heard that he was really coming, the city was deserted. All

the quays and walls were lined with human beings. The sailors of

Peiræus, Mounychia, and Phaleron, all who had ships or boats of any

sort, crowded out upon the sea to welcome him. The sea was black with

boats. Every mast swarmed with men and boys, and lucky was he thought

who should first get sight of him.

While the people waited on the shore in wildest expectation, there was

but one thought in all their minds, one and the same subject furnished

the topic of their talk with one another. Some old men were heard

conversing.

‘Ah! you remember the day he set out for Sicily—just such another day as

this. Would to the gods we had never let him go on that God-cursed

expedition!’

‘Rather, would to the gods we had let him stay and fight for us in

Sicily! He was just beginning the great siege when we recalled him. He

must surely have been victorious.’

‘Why, then, were we not more wise? Surely some blindness must have

fallen on us from the gods.’

‘How many of our sons who perished there would have been here to-day? Or

perhaps we might have been just about to welcome them, instead of ever

mourning for the deaths of brave men whose unburied bodies lie

underneath the sea.’

‘They would be coming with the conqueror of Sicily, of Greece, of the

barbarian, had we not been blinded for our sins.’

‘But, think you, he would have been victorious at Syrakuse, where two

armies of Athenians fell?’

‘Why not? Has he not been victorious everywhere, wherever he has fought?

Are not the Lakedaimonians better warriors than the men of Syrakuse? Has

he not beaten Spartans and Persians, too, whenever he has met them?’

‘Ay! and they say the fight at Kyzikos was greater than any could have

been in Sicily, or any that our men ever fought before.’

‘Indeed, it seems nothing can withstand his conquering arm.’

‘Then to accuse such a one of profanation of the sacred mysteries! I

know not what they are, but could such a wise man ever think of so great

a wickedness?’

‘So I said all along, but none would hearken to me.’

‘And the great ones said he wished to make himself a tyrant in Athens.’

‘What! he? Why, he could have made himself a tyrant here any time these

last three years.’

‘Or if he had come when the four hundred were murdering us, and ruining

all things in Athens, the people would have crowned him king. And, like

as not, he will be king, too, before long.’

‘And a good thing, say I for one, for then he would turn the Spartans

out of Dekeleia, and we should get bread cheap again.’

‘They say he will not land till they have reversed the sentence on him.

Some say his enemies will try even now to have it carried out. But see

where the boats make way,—he comes! he comes!’

The whole crowd pressed forward to catch a glimpse as ten great Spartan

triremes came slowly forward, their prows and sides covered with the

armour taken at the fight at Kyzikos, while standing in sullen groups on

the decks, were the Spartan hoplites who had been taken prisoners there,

wearing the red tunics that the Athenians knew and dreaded.

Then came ten more triremes with Spartan spoils and prisoners from

Abydos; ten others decorated in like manner from Chalkedôn and

Chrysopolis; then ten more with the five hundred Spartans who

surrendered at Byzantion. Then came ten other triremes with spoils of

Thrakian cities, and with Thrakian soldiers who had followed the chief

out of admiration for him, clad in skins of beasts, looking keenly round

about them, gesticulating, and wondering at all they saw. Then came

twenty other triremes, with Persian horsemen squatting on the decks,

dressed in long robes of every hue, perfectly indifferent to everything.

Then, gently at first, over the calm, sparkling sea, came the sound of

rhythmic song, growing gradually louder, and the stately Athenian

triremes came grandly forward, their oars splashing in the sun, and

keeping time to the measured music of the rowers’ voices as they pulled

with one accord to the beat of the keleustes, who led their singing.

Onward they came, majestic,—their sterns, prows, bulwarks, masts,

garlanded with flowers and boughs of the wild olive-tree. Then, last of

all, amid the shouts and cries of great delight, was seen the

well-remembered _Eros_, dressed more plainly than any of the others. And

there—yes, there—apparelled like the sun-god of the heavens, in his

armour of chased gold and ivory, that glittered in the bright May-day,

was Alkibiades.

The other triremes ranged themselves on either side as he came through

them. With an unassumed modesty and a smiling carelessness upon his

face, he could that day with difficulty conceal the emotion of his soul.

Not at Selymbria, when he found himself with a few followers in the

middle of a hostile town; not at the fight at Kyzikos, when the

engagement was at its hottest, and he was nearly overcome by

Mindaros;—never on any previous occasion—had the struggle been so hard

as that one now, which called forth all his power to keep back the flow

of tears. The first favoured ones who welcomed him were his cousin and

many more relations. As soon as he saw them, he came from off the _Eros_

to the wharf. Cries went up to Heaven, the crowd closed round him, each

one striving to take his hand, or only touch his garments. When a way

was made for him it became a path of flowers. Along this triumphal road,

made by the long walls from Peiræus to the city, he passed upward to the

Peiræian gate, past the colonnades with their well-remembered paintings,

and the heroes’ statues that he had been wont to gaze on with wonder

when a boy; past the house of his friend Polytion, where a lying slave

had been tortured to tell the people that he had profaned the mysteries;

and past the many well-known spots where his boyhood and his early

manhood had been spent—the scenes of his joys, his pleasures, and his

triumphs; and the thoughts that they brought back swelled up within him,

and made the struggle to restrain his tears grow ever greater. But when

he came to the turning which led up to the Pnyx, where the people in

their Ekklesia were now assembling to receive him, there was a pause in

the procession, and an opening in the deep lines of citizens, and out

from amongst them came Deinomache, his mother, grown almost blind, led

by his young son Alkibiades. As he folded his mother in his arms, the

tears he had so long kept down broke out. It was the first, the only,

time that he was ever seen to weep. Then he went upward with his son to

the Ekklesia.

In spite of the enthusiastic welcome with which the city, and the whole

state, received him, he had not forgotten the dread sentence which had

been passed on him, and which still weighed upon him, and by the laws of

Athens must be carried out, unless reversed by the same tribunal which

had pronounced it. That was why the meeting of the great Assembly was

held immediately on his return. That was why he made his way straight to

the Pnyx.

As he passed through the assembled people sitting there in silence, and

ascended the stone tribune, how could he but think of the first time he

had stood there and swayed their wayward mood, saving them from alliance

with that oligarchic Lakedaimôn which he was afterwards to stir up

against them, and then beat back in its full career of conquest?

He spoke to them simply of what he had suffered since they had thought

fit to cast him out, and his hearers were moved to tears. Then he spoke

modestly of some of the services he had been able to render to the state

while absent from them. He deigned not to defend himself against the

charges on which he had been condemned, for long ago they had been given

up as baseless calumnies. But he did not spare his hearers as he touched

upon the fickleness and injustice often shown by popular assemblies.

Then skilfully he turned the fault from them, attributing all the wrongs

to his own bad fortune, from which he had so long suffered, and to the

influence of some evil genius. Then, as though brushing aside, and

forgetting all his own grievances and troubles, and coming before them

only as strategos, to give an account of his conduct since they had

conferred that post upon him, with all his peculiar grace and terseness,

he went through the actions of the late campaign. He explained

graphically the present position of the enemy, and closed his speech by

an appeal to them to keep up their courage, to be ever true to

themselves and their traditions; true, too, to those to whom they

confided the command of their forces; to hope on still, to quit

themselves like men; and he, for his part, promised them a great and

glorious ending to their struggle.

Then, and not till then, they broke out into a burst of loud applause.

Their ringing voices could be heard in the most distant corner of the

Agora and in the high Akropolis, and all men knew that he had spoken.

They vowed vengeance against the authors of his banishment, as though it

had been some others and not they who had brought it about. In their joy

at seeing him again they dried their tears. With one voice they recalled

the sentence of death which had been passed upon him, and restored to

him all his wealth and patrimonial estates, which they had confiscated.

They ordered the pillar on which the awful sentence was inscribed to be

demolished. They made the Eumolpidai, the sacred Eleusinian priests,

revoke the sacerdotal curses which they had pronounced upon him. They

conferred on him the office of Autokrator, or generalissimo of all the

forces, both by land and sea, which only on three other, and most

perilous, occasions in the whole history of Athens was ever entrusted to

anyone. It made him absolute over the other generals, and gave him

complete and autocratic power in all matters which concerned the war.

When the Assembly of the Ekklesia was over his friends made him go forth

again, that all might see him. He descended from the Pnyx, passed

through the western gate of the Agora, where stood the great Hermes,

guardian of the market-place, and, hard by, a bronze chariot drawn by

four horses, where one stood life-like in the chariot who had won the

prize for Athens more than three Olympiads ago. Ah, those four dear

horses, he had come back to gaze upon them, as in the bronze they seemed

to bound and leap for joy of the encounter. He was there,—not quite so

full of life, perhaps, as he had been at the time of the race,—but where

were they?

Then, passing the Eumenia portico and the theatre of Dionysos, where his

chorus had sung before the whole of Athens in the Trachiniai of

Sophokles, his friends led him on by the Odeion which Perikles built,

with its peaked roof made of the masts of captured Persian ships,

resembling the tent of Xerxes. He remembered being taken there when he

was six years old to hear the contest of musicians when Perikles opened

it. Then he proceeded up the street of Tripods. Upon the temple he had

himself erected stood the tripod he had gained when his chorus won the

prize. Not far off, a little higher up, on a smaller temple, was still

the tripod once proudly placed there by poor Nikias. Then by the north

side of the steep rock of the Akropolis he passed the ancient Agraulian

sanctuary, where, as a young man, he put on his first armour, and swore

to defend his country to the last. So past the Anakeion, the ancient

temple of the Dioskoroi, they brought him, by Apollo’s grotto, to the

Agora again, to the Stoa Basileios, the Court of the King Archon, near

which was the Prytaneion, where the sacred fire ever burnt, and where

the Prytanes and other privileged guests dined at the state’s expense.

Their dinner was preparing, as he, followed by the people who had

brought him in triumph round the rock of the Akropolis, came to the

Prytaneion. As a victor in the Olympic games he was entitled to his

share of the meal the state provided daily for its public officers and

honoured guests. Never before had he taken advantage of his privilege.

He now claimed it. And the people were astonished and delighted when

they saw the saviour of their country, their unconquered general, of

whose luxury and indulgence so many famous tales were told, sitting

amongst the citizens, enjoying the homely fare as much as any of them.

His public duties finished, he was escorted to his mother’s house by all

who claimed relationship with him, and they were many now. There, in the

quiet of that sacred place, we, like his Athenian supporters, may leave

him for awhile. Nor shall we attempt to follow all his thoughts when he

left at nightfall the solitary parent who had watched and waited for him

while he had fought his country’s enemies, and while he had struggled

with his great temptation to return too soon to counsel and to rule his

native land.

Afterwards on his way to his own house, so long deserted, he was

accosted by a well-known voice that sounded older and much sadder than

when he heard it last.

‘Oh son of Kleinias, you have longed for glory, and you have it. Does it

seem as sweet as you imagined?’

‘Indeed, Sokrates, I think it is sweet to gain glory in fighting for

one’s country.’

‘And dost thou think thy country will render glory to thee long?’

‘Indeed, I hope so, if I continue to deserve it.’

‘Hast thou lived, then, all the years since I first met thee on the

banks of the Ilissos, and yet hast not learnt the evil nature of this

beast called Demos?’

‘I think I ought by this time to know something of its nature,

Sokrates.’

‘Then is it better, think you, to save a people from its enemies, or to

save it from itself and teach it wisdom?’

‘Why, I should say it is better to free it from its enemies first, and

teach it wisdom afterwards, as I now hope to do.’

‘Tell me, then, oh much-wandering, much-enduring man, where in thy

travels thou hast learnt this wisdom, that I, too, may go to seek it.’

‘Alas! Sokrates, in all my wanderings I have found mankind alike in need

of it, alike in want of it; and I would come to you, the wisest of the

Greeks, to learn it.’

‘Then tell me, great strategos Autokrator, when all thy possessions were

taken from thee by this demos, and thou hadst scarce wherewithal to pay

for thy black broth in Lakedaimon, couldst thou bestow much money on thy

hosts?’

‘No, by the gods! And I still sometimes laugh to think how poor I was.

How could I give what I had not myself?’

‘Which, then, is easier to obtain, money or wisdom?’

‘I should say it is easier to get money, for we often see men who have

acquired heaps of money who do not seem able to get much wisdom.’

‘And yet you hope to teach these people wisdom, which you say you have

not got, and which is harder to obtain than riches.’

‘Ah, Sokrates, it is still just as of old. Somehow when I talk with you

I seem to be ignorant of everything; though when I am with others I

fancy I am cleverer than most of them.’

‘And do you not know why?’

‘Not I, unless it be that the oracle said truly that Sokrates, the son

of Sophroniskos, was the wisest of the Greeks.’

‘And you know not why it said so?’

‘I have heard you say in the old days, but now I quite forget.’

‘Well, I will tell thee. Perhaps it meant that I, in truth, was the most

foolish of mankind.’

‘How mean you, Sokrates?’

‘Because that all my life I have tried to show the people their own

ignorance, and they will turn and rend me soon, for all my pains, as

they will rend you, ere many months are passed, for fighting for them,

oh beauteous son of Kleinias.’

So they parted, and Alkibiades entered his father’s house by the large

heavy doorway, and went into the courtyard, where the fountain was

splashing still as though he had never been away, just as it splashed

when he used to sit and watch it in his dreamy boyhood, yearning for

knowledge, or in more ardent mood when he looked upon it from his room

at night, longing for adventures and glory, and eager to leave that

quiet place where his mother lived; as it splashed when he had gazed up

at the mysterious Akropolis, with the moonlight over it making dark

shadows on the walls of its silent temples; as it splashed when he

brought his young wife joyfully to her new home, and when he returned

there, on that guilty morning, and found her gone; and as it splashed

when he came back from Ephesos and saw her lying still and silent on her

couch.

This was the day he had lived for, and fought for, and schemed for; now

it was here. He had come home to Athens in greater triumph than he had

ever dreamed of Glory, that he had followed after all his life, had come

to meet him, as she had seldom come to meet anyone, and more splendidly

than he, even in his highest hopes, had been able to imagine. He had got

more than glory; he had got justice. As he passed through the Agora, or

market-place, that day, he had seen men with hammers breaking down and

beating into dust, so that they might take and scatter it into the sea,

the record of the false and cruel sentence which had been passed upon

him. He had broken down injustice. He was going with his strong will,

and with all his might, to deserve more than ever his country’s

gratitude, so that when he died, fighting for her some day perhaps, the

abhorred sentence which had been graven on the shattered stone might be

forgotten, and it might be writ of him upon the eternal brass that he,

more fully than any other of her children, had loved, and lived for

Athens.

And yet, even at the ending of that day—a day the like of which few men

have ever known—even at the end of that glorious day he heard the words

of Sokrates above the echo of the cheers and cries of joy that were

still ringing in his ears, and he was somewhat sad.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER XXIV

‘You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse: was that ambition?’

_Julius Cæsar._

THE friends who had known the strategos in old days thought that he

would, for some time at least, enjoy his hard-earned rest, and spend his

time in such pursuits as they knew he loved, and take his fill of the

intellectual and sensuous delights of Athens.