On the day after the joyous one we have just witnessed he began his work

as sole absolute general of the state. There was plenty of work to do.

Athenian citizens had grown disheartened, and become lax in military

discipline. He began by making all those who could bear arms, from boys

of fifteen to men of sixty, meet every day for warlike exercise. He

instituted a series of alarms, on hearing which, at any hour of the day

or night, everyone seized his arms, and ran to his appointed post.

Besides superintending these exercises himself, and providing that the

ordinary soldiers of all classes were duly furnished with all things

necessary for their duties, he raised the knights, to which order he

belonged, to the highest point of excellence, making them complete in

their own peculiar drill, and teaching them other exercises which he had

learnt in Thrace and Persia.

He obtained one hundred new triremes from the state, provided chiefly by

the spoils and tribute that he had brought with him from the Asiatic

cities. While half the day was taken up with the land forces and the

land defences, the other half he spent on the water, attending to the

drilling of the sailors and the rowers at their work. No one was ever

more severe or strict in details, especially as regarded the

watchfulness that he required from the sentinels, and if some of the

lazier or more stubborn of his soldiers did sometimes complain among

themselves, no general was ever more implicitly obeyed. Not a murmur was

heard openly against his exacting, self-denying, necessary discipline

through all the three months spent in this laborious business. The heart

of the people seemed changed; or, rather, the old heart which had beat

so firmly when Miltiades led them, was renewed within them. Their

pleasures were postponed. They recognised that this was not a time to

indulge themselves in their usual favourite amusements. Even the comic

playwright, who made fun of everything and everyone on all occasions,

grew almost serious at this time.

At the end of three months Athens possessed a compact array of troops

such as it had never had before. The huge fleet, with its complement of

sailors, perfectly equipped, lay in the port, ready at the given signal

to raise anchor and set sail. But the celebration of the Eleusinian

mysteries was near, and the general put off the departure of his forces

till after they, with all the other citizens, had taken part in this

great festival. Messengers, for the first time for years, were sent

through the neighbouring states, to announce the approach of the

festival, so that all might attend who wished to be present at, or take

part in, the games which followed.

It is impossible for us to realize the full importance of these sacred

rites. Founded originally on the universal sense of helplessness in man,

his dependence on the mysterious powers of Nature which, unmoved by him,

yield him his sustenance in life, and on his belief in a Divine

sustaining power when the strength of life is failing him—and thus based

upon his dependence on food in life and on God in death, the Eleusinian

mysteries grew out of the poetic mysticism of the earliest religious

reverence.

The corn seed buried in the earth is represented by Persephone, who,

while gathering flowers in a vale, ‘herself of gloomy Dis was gathered.’

Carried by him beneath the earth, she became wife of the King of Hades,

and queen of the region of the dead. But Demeter, her mother, in frantic

grief, after wandering through the world, came to Eleusis, and dwelt

there, while the earth, in sympathy with her, withheld its fruits. The

race of man was about to perish for want of food, when Zeus, in pity of

its helpless misery, allowed Persephone to return to the earth and spend

six months of every year with her fond mother;—a legend symbolic of the

happy springing up of the new corn and of the joyful harvest.

Thus, the religious instinct of man to pay worship and devotion to the

giver of his earthly sustenance became mingled with the devotion, no

less natural to him, by which he sought to be sustained and strengthened

after death by the powerful goddess of the regions of the dead. Much of

the religion of the Athenian Greeks centred round this myth, and the

later additions to it. The greater mysteries, which only the initiated

knew, or could assist in celebrating, took the place with them of the

religious exercises and devotions and dogmas of a later age.

On the first day the initiated gathered together at Eleusis. On the

second they made long symbolical ablutions, as if to free themselves

from every taint of sin. On the third day they offered sacrifices, as

some small return to the divine mother and her child, who gives to

helpless men the necessary fruits of earth, and a recognition of their

dependence upon her bounty. On the fourth and fifth days other rites

were celebrated, which were not to be divulged; and on the sixth, the

greatest day of all, the citizens set out from Athens to accompany the

wondrous little statue of Iakchos, a son of Demeter, in pompous march

from Athens to Eleusis.

This was an addition to the earlier, simpler mysteries, and had been

imported from the East, or perhaps from Krete. Iakchos was really the

infant Bakchos, representing the generative power of nature, as well as

the stimulating force of wine, and was an introduction of a later time,

when men were not content with the purer celebration of the innocent

harvest of the corn-fields, with the bread and honey of their fathers,

but must have wine from the grape-juice too.

During the seven years that the Lakedaimonian garrison occupied the fort

of Dekeleia, and ravaged the lands of Attika, it had not been safe to go

beyond the city gates. Even the initiated dared not approach the sacred

spot by the customary road. Some, indeed, had gone by sea, but for the

most part the maimed rites, for these years, were but scantily attended.

The sixth day’s solemn procession, the great event of the whole

festival, had been abandoned altogether.

Alkibiades determined to restore the festival to its wonted grandeur. So

the ‘spodophoroi,’ the sacred heralds, were sent out to announce the

coming celebration, as of old, defying the Spartans to interfere or stop

them. When the time arrived, he posted his hoplites all along the sacred

way, and through the mystic defile, and the valley of Eleusis. Thus, the

initiated could repair this year, as of old, to the first five days’

performance of the holy rites.

On the sixth day, at the head of his cavalry, the Strategos Autokrator

marched from the foot of the Akropolis through the Agora, and, passing

on his right the new temple of Theseus, took up his station at the outer

Keramik gate, at the entrance of the sacred road, there to await the

coming of the priests and people. Presently the procession, headed by

the priests bearing the holy image, was seen slowly wending its way

towards them. Then all along the sacred route, lined and defended by his

soldiers, the general, on his white Thrakian charger, and in resplendent

armour, led the way. The people of all ranks, following the priests,

made the air resound with their ecstatic cries of ‘Iakchos! Iakchos!’

The long road was flanked by tombs and altars of the great departed,

carrying men’s thoughts back to the immemorial past, the heroic mythic

times; and here many of his renowned ancestors lay, objects still of

reverence and veneration.

At three points on the road the river Kephisos was crossed by bridges.

At each of these the bearers of the hierarchic image stopped to do the

customary rites. Thence they entered the mysterious defile which, by

degrees, opened into the pleasant valley of Eleusis. The hills on either

side echoed to the constantly repeated cries, ‘Iakchos! Iakchos!’ till

the Eleusinian plain spread out before them, rich and lovely, bathed by

the blue sea on the left, the Eleusinian mountains skirting it upon the

right; and straight ahead of them, its white marble walls glittering

against the setting sun, shone the Akropolis of Eleusis and the temples

of the goddesses.

Imposing as the procession was at all times from its numbers and from

the wild devotion of those who formed it, it was trebly so on this

occasion from the added spectacle of the strong, silent soldiers who

lined the way, and the splendid cavalcade of knights who went before and

followed in the rear of it, and from the recollection of the seven past

melancholy years, when the multitude had kept mournfully at home,

fearing to go to offer their observances to the great goddesses until

the saviour of the city had returned to make that possible. It seemed as

if he on this day was the high-priest of Demeter, as well as their chief

general. The dreaded Spartan king, while he was there, kept prudently

behind his walls, nor dared, for all his power, to show himself, or seek

to interrupt them.

Though they had started at mid-day, so much time was taken up in the

various observances along the way that the September sun had sunk behind

the Akropolis long before they reached Eleusis. As the night grew dark,

torches were lit one by one. The light handed on from one torch to

another gave a weird look to the great throng, until the whole mass was

lighted up; and thus, with wild waving of the torches, amid a blaze of

light, and with cries and chants to Iakchos, ever growing louder and

more wild, they reached the holy temple. So passed the festival beneath

the ægis of Alkibiades; and on the last day of the proceedings, when the

games were held, the gathering was attended, as of old, by the famous

athletes of Greece, who came to strive for prizes and to behold the

invincible Athenian. He had a twofold object in waiting for the

festival. If the Spartans had come out of Dekeleia, which was not more

than fifteen miles from the sacred way, he would have found an

opportunity of meeting his old opponent Agis; if, as the event proved,

the Spartan feared to meet him, the power which compelled such enemies

to keep themselves shut up within their fortress would be made manifest.

His popularity with the mass of the Athenians had reached what might

have seemed its highest point even before this; afterwards it became

something like idolatry. This free people forgot even their love of

liberty in their fanatic zeal to show fresh proofs of their blind

confidence in him. Only religious fervour, warmed by the recent worship

of the goddess, and worked up by ceremonial observances and strange,

half-maddening rites within the temple, can explain the step which a

large number of them were prepared to take.

To gain a faint conception of what these religious feelings were we

must, as far as possible, put ourselves in the place of the initiated,

and of those who were about to go through the process of

initiation—almost the sole religious teaching of the age, the guide

which taught them how to obtain the blessings of well-being here, and of

an eternity of peace and happiness in the Elysian regions after death.

Added to this religious zeal, felt more especially among the less

cultured classes, there was the patriotic gratitude of nearly all. Most

of the more educated had felt for some time that a change must be made

in the institutions of the state, if she was to combat successfully

against the oligarchic and despotic enemies gathering around her, who

had not the disadvantage of the unstable and variable policy incident to

government by the voices of the masses.

Certain it is that, seizing the opportunity offered by the present

feeling of the population, the numberless clubs which honeycombed

Athenian politics, and represented the majority of those citizens who

took the chief part in the affairs of state, came forward, and urged

Alkibiades to suppress the constitution, to banish the demagogues and

the orators, who, they declared, had been the constant cause of all

their troubles, and suggested that he who was already autocrat in war,

master of the forces by land and sea, both in and out of Athens, and

feared by the whole of Greece, should accept from them a kingly crown.

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

CHAPTER XXV

‘Tu proverai sì come sa di sale

Lo pane altrui, e com’ è duro calle

Lo scendere e il salir per l’altrui scale.’

DANTE: _Par._, xvii.

‘Thou shalt find how salt doth taste another’s bread,

How hard the way is up and down another’s stairs.’

IN the course of this story we have had to watch the hero of it assailed

by many temptations. We have seen him give way to some which many of us

think we should have overcome, and overcome others to which most of us

would certainly have given way. This that stood before him now,

beckoning him, as it were, with wizard hand, was the greatest of them

all, and came in most specious shape. All his life he had desired to

excel. As a boy, and as a young man, his greater gifts had enabled him

to excel and rule his compeers. The desire for pre-eminence and command

had not grown less as, in his maturer years, he had found that his

proper place was at their head, and that the others ceded that position

to him as of right. Yet in his most ambitious moods there had not come

to him the thought that he should ever rule alone, supreme, in Athens.

He had supposed that he might one day fill the place of Perikles, but to

a democratic Greek the thought of usurping the sole power was almost an

impossibility. And yet the urgency with which the offer came, the power

and the numbers of those who made it, assured him he had only to

consent, and he would be proclaimed ruler, not merely without any

dangerous protest, but with the enthusiastic joy of nearly all the

people. He believed, too, and not without good grounds, that this would

be for the immediate good of Athens. He saw the clouds that were

gathering round the state, the incapacity of the present form of

government to contend against the combined power of Persia and Sparta.

He knew that his own strong personal influence with one important satrap

was unbounded, whenever he chose to exercise it. He believed that he had

made some progress in the confidence and respect of another. The embassy

now on its way to Susa might bring back to him, if he still held the

reins of power, the pledged alliance of the Persian king. He knew that

one strong arm, and one strong will, at the head of all, and wielding

despotic power, alone could grapple with the situation, and stave off

the threatening danger. His belief was justified by the event. Here was

a great temptation.

He put aside the offer laughingly. He hesitated, and communed with

himself, but only for one day.

‘Tell me, Agrestides,’ he said that night, ‘shall I be king of Athens,

like Theseus?’

‘No,’ said Agrestides, ‘be a man, like Alkibiades.’

‘Agrestides, thrice hast thou saved me—first from the Spartans, then

from the Persians, now from my greatest enemy, myself.’

In the morning he gave orders that the fleet must be ready to depart

next day.

At the head of a hundred triremes he set sail at the dawn of a

mid-September day. Shading his eyes from the rising sun, he looked

onward, as if trying to wrest its secret from the future. Then he turned

towards Athens. He saw the uplifted hands of thousands praying for

blessings on him as he went. He knew he might have been their king,

perhaps the founder of a kingly race, and the saviour of the people from

themselves. But the splendour of his Athens, the largeness of her arts

and literature, her greatness, which was to live for ever in the wonder

of the ages and the races yet to come—these things had been grown and

nurtured, they had flourished, in her free soil; they would be cramped

and would perish under a fat and lazy despotism. His hand should never

be the hand that killed them. He stamped his foot upon the deck to

check—his anger, disappointment? No, only his emotion. He was never

prouder of himself than at that moment; he was proud of what he had done

for Athens; proud of what he was going to strive to do for her; prouder,

much prouder, of what he had refused to do. Thousands were waving hands

to him, and bidding him gratefully adieu. How many knew what he had

renounced for them? How many knew that they would never look upon his

face again? He saw the _Eros_ lying in the harbour, grown too old for

the hard service on which he is bound. He gazed at the citadel, and at

the helmed Athene. Did any sad foreboding cross his mind that he should

never more behold that much-loved place? He passed by Aigina, where his

ancestor was once king—there might be kings in those days—his royal body

lying in its sanctuary, surrounded by white marble walls. Strange the

thought that for a moment glanced across his mind, that he might soon

see that ancient king now a judge in Hades, but might never see his land

again.

He made first for the isle of Andros, where the inhabitants had revolted

and received a Spartan garrison. He dispersed the native troops and the

Spartan soldiers, who attempted to resist his landing, chased them

through the island, posted an Athenian garrison at Gaurion, and left

Konon, one of his best officers, with twenty triremes to reduce the

capital; and then set sail for Samos, which became again his base of

operations.

Almost immediately after he left Athens a signal tribute was paid to his

military genius and strength. Agis had been watching him from Dekeleia,

fuming at the insult of the procession that dared to pass almost beneath

his eyes to Eleusis, and challenged him, as it were, to come out and try

to stop it. He had remained safely shut up behind his walls as long as

the conqueror was there. No sooner was he gone than he made an attack

upon the city with 28,000 foot and 12,000 horse. On a dark night he

surprised the outposts near the Keramik gate, massacred the guard, and

had it not been for the system of vigilance which had lately been

established, as far as we can see, the city must have fallen to the

Spartan. The alarm was given. Torches beckoned from the Akropolis, and

were answered by torches on the other heights. Athens was up in arms.

Every citizen ran to the post which had been assigned to him. And thus,

though Alkibiades was far away, it was his care and watchfulness which

saved the town.

In the morning the people discovered Agis and his Lakedaimonians lying

close to the walls. The cavalry rode right up to them, calling to the

Athenians to come out and fight them. The Keramik gate suddenly opened,

and as if still instinct with the life that Alkibiades had breathed into

their souls, his horsemen charged the enemy, and drove them off. Next

day the Athenian hoplites marched out, and took their stand before the

walls. Agis attacked them in vain, and, covered by the archers and

peltasts from the walls, the hoplites did some execution on the invading

army. The Spartan Agis thought it wiser for the present to return to his

fortress at Dekeleia.

By the time Alkibiades arrived at Samos events had happened that utterly

ruined the hopes and plans which he had formed, and changed the course

of Grecian history. Two fresh characters appeared upon the scene. The

Spartans, when their informal overtures for peace had been rejected, set

themselves vigorously to work to repair the damage done them by the

crushing defeat at Kyzikos, and the subsequent loss of the support of

Pharnabazos. They appointed Lysandros, the ablest of their rising men,

to the command of the fleet, for they had need of an able commander at

this crisis, and they saw not the depth of his designs.

Lysandros, who was the son of a poor descendant of an ancient family,

and whose mother was a slave, cherished an ambition to rise above the

hereditary kings of Sparta and all the other high-born Lakedaimonians,

who scorned him for his poverty and his want of thorough breed. His one

idea was to gain his ends by success in war, untouched by pity, and

unmoved by any sense of honour, or by any of the nobler feelings of

humanity. The fox, he said, can often gain his object where the lion

fails. Oaths, he once declared, were made to deceive mankind. He had

studied the career of Alkibiades, and tried to learn the secret of his

success. Without the genius or generosity of the latter, and a stranger

to his higher qualities, he was also without his weaknesses, or, if he

had any of them, he carefully concealed them, that he might the better

gain the ends to which he devoted all his life, and to which he

sacrificed everything worth living for. While the one man renounced

despotic power that he might the better serve his country, the other

formed designs by which he might gain such power, even at the cost of

his country’s ruin. The Fates ordained that at the time when Lysandros

came to take up his command, the instrument by which he was endeavouring

to work out his plan was coming from far off to meet him.

Kyros, the younger son of Dareios, King of Persia, a prince of high

ambition, careless as to the means by which he might obtain his objects,

and moved by an inveterate hatred of everything Athenian, had been

appointed by his father to the supreme military command of Lydia, over

the head of Tissaphernes. On the way to take up his command he met

Mantitheos, and the other Athenian legates, who were travelling with

Pharnabazos to his father’s court to negociate the terms of peace. If

they once got there they might, with the help of Pharnabazos, who now

inclined towards Alkibiades and an Athenian alliance, persuade the king

to alter his policy, and to recall the powers with which Kyros had been

invested, and so destroy the hopes and schemes which filled his head.

The prince ordered the ambassadors to be given up to him. Pharnabazos

protested in vain that they were sacred envoys. Kyros cared nothing for

all that, and ordered them to be imprisoned, so that they should neither

proceed to Susa nor return to Athens to report the failure of their

mission.

Kyros and Lysandros were necessary to one another. The new Spartan

admiral, feeling the hopelessness of pursuing the war in the Hellespont

without the assistance of the representative of Persia, turned his

attention to the Ionian coast. From Sparta and her allies he collected a

fleet of seventy ships, and sailed with them to Ephesos, where Athenian

influence was weakest, and where he would be at the nearest point to

Sardis, which Kyros had made his capital. He soon appeared at the young

prince’s court. These two men became close allies; they suited and

resembled one another. Lysandros laid before the Persian the needs of

his country, and persuaded him to double the pay of the sailors of the

Spartan fleet. Kyros showed the wondering Lakedaimonian the stores of

gold he had brought with him for that purpose. By this means the Spartan

fleet was restored to its old strength, and manned by the best sailors,

who were drawn to it by the larger pay with which the admiral was now

able to reward them. This fleet was lying ready for action at Ephesos,

within a short distance of the port of Samos, when Alkibiades arrived in

the island.

The new condition of affairs might well have discouraged one of less

resources. The ground upon which he had been building crumbled beneath

him. The very largeness of his fleet became a weakness to him; and his

reputation, his almost unparalleled success, a cause of discontent. The

object of his opponent in moving his station to the Ionian coast was

twofold. It hindered the Athenians from getting their tribute and

supplies from their tributary towns; and it enabled him to receive more

readily the payment of the Persian subsidy. Alkibiades had reckoned upon

the influence of Pharnabazos at any rate to stop any further payment to

the Spartans. Without that payment he knew they would not long keep

their fleet at sea. He now found the subsidy not only continued, but

increased, while he could get scarcely anything with which to pay his

sailors even the smaller wages he had promised them.

Instead, then, of attacking the enemy at once, he was obliged to lose

time by employing his fleet in petty freebooting expeditions on the

Karian coast. And when he had collected something in this way, he could

not get the crafty foe to meet him in fair fight. In vain he brought out

his ships, paraded them before Lysandros at Ephesos, and challenged him

to come out and fight on equal terms. The fox was too wary to be caught.

He knew that each day the enemy’s difficulties would increase, while he

could tempt that enemy’s best sailors from him by the bribe of higher

pay with Persian gold. Delay was what he wanted, not a hazardous

engagement with the first commander in the world.

Not being able to entice the Spartan fleet to fight, Alkibiades

determined to conquer, one by one, the Ionian towns which were in

revolt. Leaving a portion of his fleet to blockade Lysandros in the port

of Ephesos, under the command of a skilful sailor named Antiochos, who

had been pilot of the _Eros_ in the celebrated race in pursuit of

Tissaphernes, with strict orders on no account to risk an engagement

while he was away, but to keep the enemy shut up inside the harbour, he

sailed for Phokaia. Thrasyboulos was already there, and they thought

together to make a successful beginning of the final reduction of these

rebellious dependencies.

Antiochos, whom he thus left behind, was an excellent sailor, and his

chief, who had known him from boyhood, had no reason to suppose that he

would disobey his orders. Unfortunately, he was one of those who mistake

ambition for ability, and thought himself brave when he was only

foolhardy. No sooner was his general-in-chief departed than, finding

himself in unexpected power, he resolved to distinguish himself by

fighting the Spartans. With only two triremes, he entered the port of

Ephesos, rowed past the bows of the hostile fleet as it lay at anchor,

and having by words and acts insulted Sparta and the Spartans, returned

towards the rest of his ships, lying hard by in the Bay of Notion,

imagining that he had done some valorous thing.

Lysandros, not believing that Alkibiades was really gone away, and

thinking that this attack was but a ruse to draw him out, sent only a

few swift ships to overtake and punish the lieutenant. The rest of the

Athenian fleet came out to protect their temporary leader, and sailed in

disorder towards Ephesos, not in close line, but one by one and anyhow.

Then Lysandros knew the master was indeed gone, and hastened to take

advantage of his absence. He met the Athenians in line, killed many of

their men, amongst them the rash and disobedient Antiochos, took fifteen

of their ships, and chased the others back to Samos. This victory at

Notion was of itself of no very great importance to either side. But in

its result it proved the most serious and fatal blow that had ever

fallen upon Athens. To it we can trace, with certainty, her overthrow,

the overthrow and final ruin of the most fascinating, and in some

respects the greatest, people who have yet appeared upon the stage of

the world’s theatre.

As soon as Alkibiades heard of this misfortune, he set out for Samos,

but the old difficulty, the want of money, made it necessary for him to

tarry on his way. He visited Kyme, not far from Phokaia, to receive the

tribute that was due. The inhabitants refused to pay. He landed some

troops. The native soldiers came against him. He was obliged to chastise

them, and collect the tribute they had failed to pay and some booty by

way of penalty. Then he returned to Samos.

There he found his fleet with its prestige injured, its numbers

lessened, the friend to whom he had entrusted it killed in the miserable

engagement at Notion, and all his men disheartened and murmuring. He

alone was not disheartened at this second blow. He landed, learnt the

whole truth of the bad tidings, and embarked again, confident that, if

he could only get the enemy to fight, he would soon wipe off the

temporary disgrace which in his absence had come upon his men. With the

remainder of the ships he sailed straightway to Ephesos, and dared

Lysandros to come out and try which was the better fleet, the abler

admiral. Lysandros, notwithstanding the superiority of his forces,

thought it wiser not to meet the conqueror of Kyzikos, and remained in

port and in safety.

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

CHAPTER XXVI

‘Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms,

Quite vanquished him.’

_Julius Cæsar._

WE must now return to Athens for awhile, and with amazement behold the

people there when news of the affair of Notion reached them, and see a

piteous spectacle,—one of the most piteous that is recorded in the pages

of history,—an exhibition of the inconstancy, the childish instability,

of this great people, for the sake of whom their greatest citizen had

refused a crown.

Amid the shouting crowd that we lately saw welcoming back the man who

had rescued and protected them, among the grateful mass who were ready

to throw themselves and their cherished freedom at his feet, it must not

be supposed he had no enemies. Quiet they were obliged to be while he

was present, as the open enemies at Dekeleia had been constrained to be;

but they were there, and the more the people shouted and adored, the

more their jealousy and anger burned.

At the head of them was Theramenes. He was one who had taken a foremost

part among the odious four hundred. He was the first to desert them and

turn against them when he saw their end approaching. He was the

subordinate colleague of Alkibiades in the Hellespont. Under him he had

fought, and commanded a division of the fleet with ability, and bravely

attacked, and helped to repulse, the Persians on shore at Kyzikos. He

returned with Alkibiades to Athens. But so great was the enthusiasm of

the people for the greater hero that they had overlooked the smaller

one, and he had been allowed to land unnoticed.

Besides the oligarchic enemies of the absent strategos there were other

enemies of greater influence among the people, the fanatic demagogues

and wily orators. These men either sincerely feared, or professed to

dread, the power of such a favourite. They were not ignorant of the

offer that had been made to him. They had good cause to think that, if

he should accept the proffered dignity while he was still the idol of

Athens, not all their arguments, nor all their eloquence, would be able

to prevent or modify the despotism which they feared. These persons now

made common cause with those of their usual opponents who hated

Alkibiades. Both sets of foes together instilled their doubts into the

people’s ears. The secret work was made more easy from the very power

and reputation of the object of their hate and dread. One who had proved

himself invincible and had beaten every foe on previous occasions must,

they said, if he ever failed to win, have failed on purpose. If he

delayed too long before he fought, he did so, they argued, from some

hidden motive. Doubtless, they said, he who at Abydos and Kyzikos, with

smaller numbers, had vanquished the combined power of Persia and Sparta,

could, if he wished, with the larger fleet which they had given him,

have long ago humbled the smaller force of Spartans alone and by

themselves at Ephesos. The fact that he had not attempted to do this

showed that he had some cause for letting the enemy escape. And why did

he leave the fleet in the face of the Spartan admiral, and go off to

Phokaia, where he was not wanted? Why had he left the main force of

Athens, nearly all she had now to depend upon for protection, in charge

of an inexperienced, unknown, ordinary pilot like Antiochos? Why did he

let him engage the enemy, and lose so large a number of the ships which

it had cost them so much expense and labour to fit out, and so many of

their stalwart sons whom they could ill afford to lose? Were not these

things proofs, they asked, of some ulterior motive, some secret dealing

with the enemy, or some sinister design upon Athens?

To add to these covert suspicions artfully set afloat, a deserter at

this time came from Samos,—one who had a private grudge against his

general,—and made absurd and lying charges against him, which were

listened to with eagerness by a crowd of politicians, ever on the watch

for some new thing. And last of all came citizens from Kyme, complaining

that, without cause, Alkibiades had attacked them while they were at

peace with Athens, had slain their soldiers, and carried off, for his

own profit, an enormous treasure.

It seems scarcely credible that these unproved, unfounded accusations

could have been listened to and believed by a people like the Athenians,

who had often shown clearness of vision in the management of their own

affairs. In answer to the charge of delay it must have been pointed out

that, as they had not provided pay for their large armament, the general

was obliged to seek money where he could, and, while seeking it, could

not blockade the enemy with all his force at Ephesos. The second charge

refuted the first. He went to Phokaia, to begin with the subjugation of

that important city the reduction of the faithless Ionian towns. He

could not do more than leave as many ships as he could spare to keep up

the blockade of the enemy at Ephesos. He could not do more than appoint

one on whose obedience and discretion he had good reason to suppose he

could rely to keep that fleet quietly on the watch while he was absent,

and it was not his fault that his orders to that effect were not obeyed.

And if a general was to be judged in his absence, without an opportunity

of being heard, on the unsupported tale of a private soldier in his

army, who had some fancied grievance, some dislike, occasioned by the

necessary discipline of war, it might be asked, what general could long

remain at his post or carry out his duties? We hear only of these

complaints, nothing of the answers which must have been made by the

friends of Alkibiades.

His enemies even dared to rake up the old stupid stories about the

mutilation of the images and the profanation of the mysteries of Eleusis

by him who had a few months before done such great service to both

deities, and permitted the people to renew their solemn observances in

their honour. As an instance of the kind of charges that were brought

against him, we may notice it was seriously said that he was guilty of

impiety in having dared to return in pomp to Athens on the day that the

statues of Athene were being washed. Such were the kind of accusations

the enemy could find to bring, such the charges to which the fickle

people listened. They decreed the deposition of the warrior and

statesman whom they had lately made absolute strategos of their forces;

they elected ten others in his place, and ordered them straightway to

Samos to assume their functions.

The new generals, with Konon at their head, found Alkibiades in the

midst of busy preparations, determined, as soon as possible, and in

spite of every obstacle, to wipe off the slight disgrace which, in his

absence, the Athenian fleet had suffered.

On showing their credentials, he at once handed over his command to

Konon, and immediately left Samos, and with him departed the fortune,

the glory, and the liberty of Athens, as though she had become unworthy

of these blessings. They did not deign to visit her again.

We who have followed the story of his life till now, and have

endeavoured, as far as may be possible, after more than two thousand

years have passed away, to gain some insight into the working of his

soul; we who have seen him suffering under similar injustice, and know

how these wrongs, and only these, could greatly stir his spirit, and

change for a time a loyal and kindly nature into the fierce, relentless

hatred of the wounded lion, may well expect the threats of vengeance,

the cry of rage, the determination to undo the wrong, and punish the

authors of his injuries. But whether it was that he was growing weary of

this constant strife, or that years had softened his resentment and

relaxed his care to battle longer with his secret foes; whether he began

to think that the power and the glory which throughout his life had been

hitherto his aim was, after all, not worth the fighting for; or whether

his love for his country had grown so deep that he would do nothing that

might injure it, we cannot tell. Certain it is he went upon his way,

and, during the time which remained to him to live, showed no sign

whatever of anger or resentment.

While he was in the Chersonesos two years before he had marked the

beauty and commanding position of a high rock looking out over the

Hellespont towards Lampsakos, where the straits are not much more than a

mile across. Washed by the waves of the sea in front, the hillsides form

a natural fortress on the north and west; the only approach lay over the

stream called Aigos Potamoi, or Goat’s Rivers, which winds below the

cliffs on the south, and empties itself hard by into the Hellespont. He

saw what an impregnable stronghold might be erected there, and of what

value it would be to Athens against an enemy who might attack the towns

which he was rapidly receiving back to their allegiance. With his own

private resources he planned and built a fortress on this almost

inaccessible spot, and to this lonely tower he now retired with a few

constant friends, some of whom we have seen before clinging to him in

his exile. There, like Achilles, he stayed watching the turns of

fortune, waiting to see how soon his countrymen, recovering from their

blindness, would repent of their ingratitude.

The word ‘ingratitude’ is hardly strong enough to convey a complete idea

of what their conduct had been to him; for, from the moment when he had

gained the object of his fixed endeavour, and had been recalled to

Athens, his ardent desire was to undo the injury he had done her in the

past. He would never admit that he had acted wrongly to her in anything

that he had done. If his vengeance was terrible, it had been deserved.

She had brought her own chastisement upon herself. When she repented of

her sin, and made atonement, his generosity had been aroused,—he

pardoned her. He determined to take off the penalty he had inflicted on

her, and which she was still paying. As far as one can pronounce as to

what would have happened if this second crime had not been committed

against him, he would have been able, if Athens had permitted it, to

restore her to the position which she held before the war.

He had already begun his task. In spite of the unforeseen difficulties

which the junction of Persian wealth with an unscrupulous Spartan’s

skill had brought forth, one by one the Ionian towns would have fallen

before him, as the towns upon the Hellespont had done. Each one

recovered would have brought back a tribute-paying subject city, and

given Athens that of which she stood in utmost need—the power to support

her navy. The Spartans were shut up at Ephesos, and could be of no

assistance to those whom she had tempted to revolt. When the other towns

had been brought back to their duty to Athens, he intended to bring all

his force to bear on Ephesos. Lysandros could not remain penned up there

for ever. He must either come out and fight or surrender, and he had

shown that he was afraid to leave the harbour while Alkibiades and the

Athenian fleet were in those waters. The Persian would, before long,

grow tired of paying for a fleet which was too timid or too weak to

fight. Even the treasure brought by Kyros from his father must soon have

been exhausted. And Dareios would send no more gold to be wasted on an

ally who did nothing for it in return.

The Lakedaimonians were growing tired of the war. They had already

attempted overtures for peace. The difficulty the Athenians felt in

accepting the terms they proposed was that those terms included the

condition that the Ionian cities should remain, as they then were for

the most part, in the power of Sparta. As soon as they were recovered by

Athens, the difficulty would have been removed; and the only other term

which Athens must have insisted on had already been conceded by

Sparta,—the evacuation of Dekeleia by king Agis. All would then have

been in the same state as when Alkibiades had gone to Sparta, and told

the Spartans what to do to humble Athens, and the great war would have

ended without much damage done to either side.

These things which might have been,—and which he knew would have been,

if he had been left alone to do them,—these things, and man’s

ingratitude, he could now only muse upon in his high fortress on the

Hellespont.

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

CHAPTER XXVII

‘The grete kyng of Trace;

Blak was his berd, and manly was his face.

The cercles of his eyen in his heed

They gloweden bytwixe yolw and reed,

And lyk a griffoun loked he aboute,

With kempe herés on his browés stoute,

His limés grete, his braunes harde and stronge,

His shuldres brode, his armés rounde and longe.

* * * *

His lange heer was kembd byhynde his bak

As eny ravenes fether it schon for-blak.

* * * *

An hundred lordes hadde he in his route

Armed ful wel, with hertes sterne and stoute.’

CHAUCER: _Knight’s Tale_.

TO a man of active mind and determined courage it ever seems an unworthy

thing to give way for long to sad musings and melancholy retrospections.

Wherever Alkibiades was he must be doing something. If Athens would not

let him do all he wished to do for her, he would still do what he could

in spite of her.

He had before made friends with many of the Thrakian chiefs, who were

always fighting among themselves. He now organized and trained a band of

hardy savage warriors, some of whom had served under him in his last

campaign against the Spartans; and before the spring came, while the

deep snow was still upon the mountains, he was entreated by the

Selymbrians to come to help them against the Kaini, who were menacing

their territory. He felt bound to the Selymbrians; they had given way to

him when he was in their midst, and had acknowledged the supremacy of

Athens. They had, indeed, no particular claim upon him, but they were

Greeks. An enterprise of this sort had some charms for him in his

present humour; it might bring booty and many things of which he and his

wild followers stood in need. He crossed the Holy Mountain, where the

cold was so intense that the few Greeks in his band suffered severely

and envied the Thrakians with their long fur coats and caps of foxes’

skins covering their heads and ears; and he drove the Kaini back to

their savage mountain villages and away from the sea-coast, and

protected Selymbria and the other Greek towns along the western shores

of the Chersonesos.

Thence he was called back to the south. The Apsinthii, a tribe on the

left bank of the Hebros, had crossed the river in their boats of

wicker-work and skins, and were threatening the Odrysian king and the

Grecian colonies in the south. Passing through Apri, he came to Kypaela,

on the Hebros, in the territory of the Paeti, where he thought he might

find a ford across the river. There was, however, no ford there, nor any

bridge, and he had no boats. So he went up the bank of the river

northward, and, crossing the Agrianes, a tributary of the Hebros, he

reached, by the beginning of April, the main river again, nearly

opposite the village where Plotinopolis was afterwards built. While he

was engaged in searching for a ford two Thrakian horsemen, in fine

costume, rode up, and made signs that they wished a parley with him.

Amongst his wild band there were but few who knew much Greek, and the

language of the new comers was different to the Thrakian speech to which

he was accustomed; but he found at length one who was able, not without

some difficulty, to act as an interpreter. The horsemen declared they

were sent by Amadokos, king of the Odrysai, who was at his royal village

on the other side of the river, a little higher up; they said the king,

their master, desired to meet the Athenian general, and begged to invite

him to a state banquet that day. They informed him that Amadokos claimed

to be of the same race as the Athenians, and would make alliance with

him, and give whatever pledges he demanded. They offered to show

Alkibiades a ford higher up, where his horses might easily cross, and

where he would find the king’s royal barge awaiting him.

The offer was accepted, and Alkibiades promised to meet the king at the

ford that afternoon. One of the messengers returned with the answer to

his master, the other stayed to act as guide. Great preparations were

made in the camp of Alkibiades. The most presentable of his followers

were arrayed in all their savage splendour. Their leader himself did not

disdain to adorn himself in a dress suitable for the kingly presence,

and appeared in his finest armour. Nor did he forget the gifts it was

the custom for a guest to bring when dining with so great a personage.

Early in the afternoon they reached the ford. On the other side was the

royal cavalcade, with trumpets and drums; and there, amid barbaric

splendour, sat the king upon a white stallion with a lion’s skin upon

its back. Two Thrakians swam the stream, guiding the horse of

Alkibiades. The royal barge, a sort of flat-bottomed punt, was brought

across for the leader, and when, not without some dread of submersion,

he had taken his place in it, was pulled and pushed by naked servants of

the king across the stream.

Alkibiades mounted his wet horse, and rode to greet Amadokos. Loud

blasts from the trumpets sounded as they met. The king was serious and

polite, with a high-bred, stately courtesy, mingled with an easy

cordiality,—a natural politeness which more civilized people have

somewhat managed to forget. He was evidently struck with the commanding

appearance of his guest. As the one took the right hand of the other,

something told each of them that he could trust the other.

For a king who boasted Athenian descent, or, at least, Athenian

relationship, the Odrysian’s Greek was peculiar—certainly not Attik or

Sophoklean. There was a strange jumble of Thrakian words mixed up with

it; what few Greek verbs were used by him were sometimes declined in a

way unheard before by the Athenian. Alkibiades could, however, from what

of the Thrakian speech he knew, understand his host, as they rode off

together talking of many things.

If the music at the meeting of the two distinguished men was loud, it

was nothing compared with that which welcomed them as they were assisted

to dismount from their horses, and entered the royal tent, where the

banquet was awaiting them. And a strange banquet it was. At the end of

the pavilion, on a raised platform, were set two small three-legged

tables, as the place of honour for the king and his chief guest. All

down the tent on either side were other smaller tripod tables. There

were no couches to recline upon during the feast, but seats in which

each guest sat upright at his table, in a manner altogether strange to

one accustomed to the Grecian banquets. On every table were piles of

baked meats of various kinds—venison, kid, and mutton—and large flat

loaves of unleavened bread. When the blowing of trumpets was over,

Amadokos, sitting down, invited his guest to be seated. Then, taking a

large hunch of bread, and the choicest bits of meat from his table, he

handed them to Alkibiades, who, seeing the other Thrakians do the same

to their neighbours, handed some bread and the best pieces of meat to

the king. The Thrakians then set to work vigorously, and ate their food

voraciously, the monarch sending to his more honourable guests pieces

from his own table so frequently that he had nothing for himself, except

what Alkibiades presented to him.

As soon as they began to eat, young slaves brought in horns full of

wine, and presented one to each guest, beginning with the king and

Alkibiades. After the king had eaten and drunk a little, he rose, and,

with a horn full of wine in his hand, turned towards Alkibiades, who,

having learnt something of the customs of his entertainers, also rose

with his wine-horn in his hands. They both drank of the fine strong

Thrakian wine, but what was left in the king’s horn he poured over the

dress of Alkibiades, who, though astonished at this unusual attention,

saw it was intended to do him honour, and did the same to his host,

pouring the remains of his wine over the garments of Amadokos. This mark

of reciprocal goodwill so pleased the Thrakians that they leapt to their

feet, and deafened the Greeks with their shouts of delight, but soon sat

down again to many other horns of wine, which the slaves continued to

supply unstintingly.

Agrestides now entered the tent followed by two Greek servants bearing a

splendid Persian carpet which the Selymbrians had given to Alkibiades,

and a golden amphora from Chios, chased with figures of Dionysos

reclining and boys and girls gathering in the vintage and pressing the

grapes. Alkibiades presented these gifts to the king, who received them

graciously, while the Thrakians jumped up again, and shouted louder than

before.

Musicians then came in, playing on curious shrill pipes and rude harps

of seven strings, making amongst them a most strange, pathetic, wailing

melody. To the cultured, musical ear of the Athenian the noise of the

drums and trumpets of ox-hides had been painful. When a boy, he had

utterly refused to learn the flute or flageolet, thinking it unmanly;

but his love and knowledge of music were shown when he presented his

liturgy at Athens, by the way in which his chorus had been trained under

his care, and by the choric songs he had himself arranged. Now this

savage music, in the minor mode, of the pipes and harps seemed sadly to

recall something of old times long past, and to inspire a tender

yearning as for something else unknown, indefinite, indefinable, and

brought back thoughts of his own days that were gone by for ever, and

sad memories of his wife, and of the friends whom he had lost.

These reflections were stopped by the sudden entrance of a troop of

buffoons, whose antics, coarse and not too delicate, roused the loud

laugh and noisy acclamation of the revellers, who by this time were

getting not a little intoxicated with their wine. Then came a pantomimic

show and dance. A warrior, laying aside his arms, represented a poor

despised field-labourer, imitating his ploughing and his sowing, ever

looking back while he laboured, as if in fear. A band of robbers rushed

in, the peasant fought bravely for his plough and oxen, but in the end,

amidst the braying of the ox-hide trumpets, he was bound and carried off

in triumph. All this was played in time to the music of the pipes, and

was meant to show the superiority of the caste of robbers and soldiers

to the poor miserable tillers of the earth.

When the feast was over, Amadokos and Alkibiades, almost the only sober

ones of the party, retired to the royal private chamber. The king told

his guest that he had heard of his valour and invincible arms, and of

his having overcome both Spartans and Persians combined at Kyzikos; and

informed him that he himself was descended from Tereus, the ancient king

of Thrace, who married Prokne, daughter of Pandion, the old king of

Athens, and sister of Erechtheus, so that he, by ancestry, was of the

same race as his guest. But now, he said, he was hard pressed by several

of the neighbouring tribes, who were constantly invading his dominions

and carrying off his people and their cattle. He promised Alkibiades

that, if he would help him against some of these enemies, he would pay

his men whatever was customary, and any booty they might take should

belong absolutely to the victor.

Alkibiades agreed to do whatever he could against the Apsinthii, one of

the most hostile and dangerous tribes. He promised to return next day

and set off at once in pursuit of the dreaded enemy, who were reported

to be at this time not far off on the western side of the river. Then,

with many expressions of goodwill from the king, he went back to his

camp, taking as many of his followers with him as were in a fit state to

cross the river—a process which had a salutary effect upon some of them.

Next day Amadokos bade farewell to Alkibiades, who, with a force of

nearly five hundred fighting men, two hundred of whom were mounted,

again crossed the Hebros, and set out in search of the Apsinthii. After

two days’ march he came up with that wild tribe as they were returning

towards the river, encumbered with the flocks and herds and other

treasure they had taken. He routed them without much difficulty, took

their booty from them and some hostages, and drove them back across the

Hebros. Some of the treasure and all the hostages he sent to his new

ally, king Amadokos. When he was about to return to his fastness in the

Chersonesos, an embassy arrived from the Greek colony of Abdera, further

west, upon the southern coast, praying him to come to the help of that

town against an unknown tribe from the north, supposed to be the dreaded

Treballi. Abdera was not an Athenian colony, but it had submitted to

Thrasyboulos two years before, and Alkibiades could not refuse the

summons. With his strange followers, whose love of pillage could be with

difficulty restrained, he marched westward through the hill country of

the Bistones and the Chorpilli. The marauding tribe from the far north,

more ferocious and stronger than any he had yet encountered, were laying

waste the territory round Abdera, and threatening the town itself and

other Grecian cities along the coast. They withdrew to the neighbouring

hills as he approached. It was only after a long and difficult search

that he discovered their stronghold, and succeeded in coming to close

quarters with them.

He heard that they had made a fortified encampment on the summit of a

densely-wooded hill nearly twenty miles to the north of Abdera, which

they made use of as a sort of rude basis for their freebooting

expeditions. Coming up to the foot of the rising ground, under cover of

a dark night, he divided his cavalry into two divisions, posting one on

the level plain to the north, the other to the south of the barbarians’

camp. His heavy-armed foot he placed in ambush on the western side where

the wood was thickest.

Before daylight, while the savage horde were sleeping off the effects of

the last night’s carouse, he, with his light-armed peltasts, or

sharp-shooters, stole up the hill on its steepest side, towards the

east, and, reaching the rough palisades which the rude warriors had

thrown round their camp, suddenly broke in upon them. The barbarians,

roused from their sleep by this unexpected assault, finding their fort

broken at a point where, from the steepness of the hill, they thought

themselves secure, and exaggerating in their fear the number of their

assailants, who raised the most fearful shouts and yells as they rushed

in, retreated from their high camp, after a faint resistance, and

rushed, wherever they could find a way of escape, pell-mell down the

hill. Those, the majority, who took the north side, as well as those who

in their hurry chose the south, were despatched by the horsemen waiting

for them on the plain below. Others, as the day broke, seeing the

slaughter of their friends, made for the wood on the west, and were

either taken prisoners or slain by the heavy-armed foot, who were there

in ambush expecting them.

Alkibiades found a camp deserted by all except the women, who were

chiefly those whom they had carried off from the villages round about;

though the chiefs had brought a few with them from their own country. He

gave the camp up to pillage, and, gathering the women together, he and

Agrestides stood guard over them. His rude soldiers could not understand

this. Satiated with the plunder they found, they hoped for a further

reward. It was only by the voice and sword of the leader and his

faithful friend that the otherwise defenceless prisoners were protected.

The women who were natives of the country he sent to their homes with

gifts; the women of the chiefs of the invading ruffians he kept as

hostages. The prisoners taken were found to be men of gigantic size, and

so hardy that no fatigue seemed to affect them. He confessed they would

have been indeed formidable foes if they had been well armed and

disciplined.

Thus he rescued Abdera from her terrible enemy. He also gave the people

of that town some wise advice as to preparations for defending

themselves, if others of that ferocious tribe, as was not improbable,

should come at some future time upon them when he was not there to help

them. This advice the citizens of Abdera remembered when it was too

late. A few years afterwards the Treballi poured down again from their

mountains in the north, and destroyed the effeminate inhabitants.

In return for what he had done for them, the citizens provided him with

pay for his followers, and ships to transport them to the Chersonesos.

He arrived at his fortress at the end of the summer, with the spoils of

his barbaric enemies and considerable gifts and treasure, the marks of

the gratitude of Grecian cities. He now paid off his men, and sent most

of them as valuable auxiliaries to his friend Amadokos, who was still at

war with his northern enemies, bargaining only that they should return

to him whenever he might need their services.

Amadokos entreated him to come himself to lead his forces, but

Alkibiades had other objects in view, and higher hopes than perpetual

tribal warfare amongst the Thrakians. The king received this important

assistance with expressions of eternal gratitude, and promised to come

to fight with him against the enemies of Athens, if at any time the

Athenians, his relations, might require his aid.

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

CHAPTER XXVIII

‘The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.’

TENNYSON.

The loss of Alkibiades was soon felt at Athens. Konon, in the spring of

406, through mismanagement, lost thirty ships in an action against the

Lakedaimonians near Lesbos. He retreated into the port of Mytilene with

the rest of his fleet, and there found himself caught in a trap by the

Spartans, and completely shut up both by land and sea. Two ships alone

escaped to carry the news of the disaster and perilous position of the

general and his fleet to Athens. The Assembly decreed that a new fleet

must by all practicable means be raised and sent to rescue the blockaded

general at Mytilene. Every old hulk was furbished up, every craft that

could possibly be made use of was pressed into the service of the state.

In a month one hundred ships were ready, manned by old and young. The

lowest classes, as well as the highest, were enlisted. Knights, and even

slaves, were made to go on that final and most fatal expedition. The

cloud of fate hung over it, the great gods hated it from the beginning.

Facing Lesbos, and close to it, are three small islands, then called the

Arginousai. Thither in July the new fleet came. Kallikratidas, who

commanded the Lakedaimonians, leaving fifty ships to keep up the

blockade of Konon and his armament at Mytilene, foolishly engaged the

new Athenian fleet with inferior numbers. During the action the Spartan

admiral was drowned. The Spartans fled, the Athenians followed them, and

took or destroyed more than sixty of their vessels. But all was of no

avail. That last victory was the final blow by which the overthrow of

the Athenian state was consummated; the prowess of its sons was as the

lurid ray of an angry setting sun before a night of utter gloom.

The generals were charged with having, in the ardour of the pursuit,

neglected their sacred duty to the wounded and drowning sailors, whose

hands, the accusers said, were in vain uplifted to them, praying to be

rescued from the waves. The people of Athens had been brought, through

their misfortunes and their exhausting struggle, to a condition of

delirious tension. Their feelings were strung to such a pitch that they

could be worked upon with ease by designing enemies. The oligarchic

faction took advantage of the opportunity. To them, anything which might

weaken the existing order of things was a gain, even if it involved the

slavery of Athens. The victory at Arginousai was unwelcome news to these

men. The alleged inhuman and impious conduct of the generals after the

fight was eagerly laid hold of by them. It gave them the means of

nullifying the effect of the success, and of getting rid of the only

able officers left to Athens. With these intriguing politicians were

now, for this same purpose, combined the demagogues, who were not

displeased at finding an excuse for attacking men in the high position

of the generals.

The people heard with dismay and indignation a highly-coloured tale of

dying and dead seamen and soldiers abandoned to their fate. On the same

day, and at the same sitting of the Ekklesia, they thanked the generals

for the victory they had gained, and dismissed them from their offices

at this time of peril, ordering them to return at once to Athens.

Two of them fled, one died, the rest came back. Then, worked upon by

many an artifice, by which the designing and unscrupulous knew how to

mislead the people, the Assembly, without proper trial, and without even

jurisdiction to try the cause, sentenced them to death. As far as we can

judge from the evidence on either side, it seems that the accused men

had done everything in their power, consistent with their duty to the

state, to save the shipwrecked and the dying. Theramenes, who, if

anyone, was guilty of neglect of this duty, which had been specially

imposed on him—Theramenes, the evil genius of the time, who always comes

upon the scene when there is anything particularly evil to be done,

became, to save himself, the principal accuser. All of those in whose

breasts the old Athenian love of justice and fair trial burned felt the

degrading iniquity of the proceedings and the sentence. But, so low had

Athens fallen from her old estate, they dared not raise their voices in

protest against the deed, lest perchance they might be involved in the

like fate. There was one left who cared not for the consequence of doing

right, for the peril of refusing to take part in the wrong. Sokrates

alone, as if prophetic of his own doom too soon to come, denounced the

violation of the law.

Six of the generals, including Thrasyllos, to whom the people owed so

much, and the son of Perikles and Aspasia, were poisoned. Thus the

transient success at Arginousai robbed the Athenians of those who might

still have done something towards saving them.

We have seen how at this time Alkibiades was helping his

fellow-countrymen in Thrace. Nor was Lysandros idle. With the assistance

of his friend Kyros, in a year’s time he was able to raise the Spartan

fleet to more than its wonted strength. In September, 405, he appeared

at the head of one hundred and twenty triremes before Lampsakos, which

was still held by an Athenian garrison. He was soon followed by Konon

and five other generals with one hundred and eighty ships, the last

fleet which Athens had sent out having been increased by the vessels of

the enemy she had captured off the Arginousan islands the year before.

But they came too late for the relief of Lampsakos. It had already

fallen. So they crossed the Hellespont, and anchored at the mouth of the

Aigos Potamoi.

It is difficult to understand how anyone with any knowledge of naval

tactics could have chosen to anchor in that unsheltered place, with an

enemy so near at hand. Ships of war at that time were constructed to

carry men rather than provisions, so that, except on short cruises, the

crews were obliged to land day by day to obtain their daily food. There

was no town near the station the generals had chosen where they could

procure anything. They had to leave their ships and go some way inland,

or along the coast, to buy such things as they were constantly in need

of.

From his fortress Alkibiades saw the arrival of the Lakedaimonians,

followed later by the Athenians. He watched the siege of Lampsakos,

which he had taken from the enemy; he saw it fall again into the hands

of that same enemy. He saw his countrymen approach the base of his high

rock, and take up a position where, if they should be attacked, they

must inevitably be destroyed. To him, with his quick perception, and

with the experienced eye of a strategist, it appeared a token of mere

madness in the commanders to have selected such a spot. His first

impulse was to leave them there to take the consequence of their

stupidity. But there were serving under them many whom he had himself

commanded in past years, who had fought bravely under him, and with whom

he had shared dangers, men whom he loved and had often led to victory.

He was acquainted with the skill and cunning of Lysandros, and the

cat-like cruelty of his nature. He saw him preparing for a final blow.

He could stand by no longer, nor restrain his compassion for his country

and his old comrades-in-arms, whose lives were every moment in such

jeopardy, and who, if he did not interfere, must soon be slaughtered

through the incapacity of those who led them.

With a great effort, which cost him very much, for it laid his proud

soul open to rebuff, he mounted his Thrakian mare, and, tearing down the

narrow road which led from his tower to the plain, as fast as she could

carry him, lest his pride might make him change his resolution, he rode

through the camp, and up to the tent of the six generals. He showed them

the various objections to the station they had selected—how Lysandros

must destroy them if he came upon them in that perilous position, as

assuredly an admiral of his experience would endeavour to do. He offered

to lead them himself against the enemy. They would not listen to him.

Then he prayed them by all that they held dear—the great interests of

Athens concentrated on that final armament—at least to seek shelter in

the neighbouring port of Sestos. ‘There,’ he said, ‘you will find secure

anchorage, and markets where your crews can obtain all they want near at

hand, and you can await the enemy’s attack in safety, or, when you see

your opportunity, strike a blow at them.’

‘We are in command now, not you,’ was the reply of one of them. They

bade him go about his business, nor dare to approach the Athenian lines

again.

He went back slowly through the camp, an outcast, treated as an enemy.

Some of his old friends and comrades recognised him, and sorrowfully

followed him as far as they might go. Stopping to look back as he

ascended his rugged hill, he saw the vast collection of war vessels

lying quietly at anchor in ignorant security. He could see many an old

friend among them. He knew some of them by name. Amongst them he

discovered his old ship, his own _Eros_, patched up to do battle for the

state once more. How many reminiscences came over him! He thought of the

gladsome voyage he had once taken on her to Ephesos, in the heyday of

his youth and splendour, when the god of love was emblazoned on her

purple sails, and of the sorrowful tidings which met him as he came back

home again, and made him pause and meditate a little upon life in the

midst of its enjoyments. How many another expedition in her had turned

out sorrowfully! He recalled how, decked with the red roses of a hot

July, she had borne him off to Sicily, amid the cheering of the fickle

people; how she had been taken away from him at Thurii, and how he had

found his old companion again at Samos. How many pleasant places they

had journeyed to together, and how many fights and triumphs they had

shared! How well and steadfastly that good old ship had served him,

always true and constant; and there it lay, a thing grown old! Would to

the gods men were as true as masts and timber! Then he rode sadly up the

steep hill, and reached his solitary fortress.

At least he had done what in him lay to save his country. And, as Athens

had dealt with him before, so her degenerate servants had dealt with him

that day, treating him with contumely and insult. It seemed worse to

them that he should gain the meed of glory by their acting on his

counsel than that the state should come to ruin by their rejecting it.

Five days afterwards, on the last day of September, at noon, the

Athenian fleet lay unsuspectingly in the same position. The crews had

gone to Sestos to buy food; the soldiers were dispersed foraging about

the country. From his watch-tower Alkibiades beheld a single

Lakedaimonian vessel leave the harbour of Lampsakos and cross the

straits, followed at some distance by another ship. Then on a shield

raised high upon her mast he saw the sunlight glisten. A similar flash

was passed on, reflected in like way, by the second ship to those in

port. He comprehended all its meaning. A sign had been sent that the

Athenian fleet was left unguarded. He saw the Spartan ships come out

silently and swiftly, and he saw Lysandros pounce upon his prey. Some of

the deserted ships had one man on board, some two, some none at all. He

saw the Spartans leap into them, cut their hawsers and their rigging,

and move them away without resistance. Konon raised an alarm, and

escaped with nine triremes. The sacred state ship, the _Paralos_, which

was under better discipline and better guarded than the others, also

escaped. That was all that was left out of a fleet of near two hundred

vessels.

The Spartan hoplites, in their red tunics, landed in the bay, took

possession of the camp, and as the Athenian soldiers, hearing the

trumpet-call, returned, they were taken, one by one, as in a trap. The

Lakedaimonians lost not a single man.

Thus an army of over three thousand soldiers fell into the hands of a

remorseless enemy. The whole of those three thousand fighting men, taken

as prisoners of war, were, by the orders of Lysandros, murdered

deliberately in cold blood. From the scene of carnage we would fain turn

away our eyes, as did the Athenian in his lofty tower, his heart

bursting with helpless rage.

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

CHAPTER XXIX

‘Negli occhi era ciascuna oscura e cava,

Pallida nella faccia, e tanto scema

Che dall’ ossa la pelle s’informava.

‘Non credo che così a buccia strema

Eresitone fosse fatto secco,

Per digiunar, quando pin n’ebbe tema.’

DANTE: _Purg._, xxiii.

‘In eyes was each one hollow and obscure,

Pallid in face, and oh! so meagre grown,

That from their bones the skin took form.

‘I don’t believe that to such utter rind

Erisichthon by famine was dried up,

When he had greatest dread of it.’

SO ended the great Athenian war. It had been a duel between the two

great states, not a war of the Peloponnesos. The Peloponnesos, with the

exception of Laconia and one or two allies, had little to do with it.

The Argives had been for Athens rather than against her,—or, at least,

they had been for Alkibiades, except for a short time at Miletos, when

he beat them, and they soon resumed their allegiance to him. This is a

strange instance of individual character attracting, not another person

or party merely, but a whole state.

With the ending of the war we could wish to end this tale, but it must

follow its hero for a little space. With the war ended the Athenian

Republic. The people were not what they had been. Their light had flared

up too brightly, and was going out. Aischylos had gone some time before;

Euripides, despairing of his country, had abandoned it, and died a year

before the closing scene; Sophokles died in this year of calamities.

Only the comic genius survived for a time, to laugh at the follies of

the dying grandeur. The greater artists of Athens were gone, her

statesmen were departed. When the _Paralos_ brought the news of the loss

at Aigos Potamoi, the groans of those who first heard of it at the

Peiræus were echoed by the guards all up the road which led to Athens,

along which we lately saw a procession pass in triumph. Byzantion soon

fell. Lesbos, Chalkedon, Sestos submitted. The rest of the dependencies

of Athens turned away from her. All the Athenians whom Lysandros found

in any of them he ordered back to Athens, with what object we shall soon

behold. Having quickly undone the long and painful work of Alkibiades,

he arrived by the end of October with his fleet before the port of

Athens, and blockaded it. Agis and Pausanias, the kings of Sparta, with

their allies, besieged it by land. Boiotians, Megarians, all her old

enemies, were let loose upon her.

Month after month the siege went on. All supplies of food by land and

water were cut off. The people from the numerous towns connected with

Athens had been driven into the city, to add to the number of the

starving. The citizens, with all this added host, were reduced to the

last pinch before they would show any sign of yielding. At length they

consented to send deputies; but the conditions proposed on either side

were such that neither party would consider them.

The famine came on with steady steps. The people said they would die of

hunger rather than accept humiliating terms. The Assembly passed a law,

with heavy penalties, that none should speak of peace. This was at the

closing of that fatal year.

The famine was drawing closer. Hitherto it had been only the poor who

had been caught by it, but now the rich suffered also. Theramenes was

the first to break the new-made law. He was allowed to approach

Lysandros—not to mention peace, of course, only to endeavour to find out

what it was the Spartans wanted. He stayed away two months.

The famine was now king of Athens, dealing death out right and left on

all classes, quite promiscuously, making little distinction between rich

and poor, caring, it seemed, nothing at all for democrats or oligarchs.

When Theramenes at length came back, he brought small consolation. He

could not, for the life of him, make out what it was the Spartans

wanted. He was sent back to make peace on any terms.

Then, at length, he found out what it was she and her allies did really

want. He found them in session deliberating on the doom of Athens. A

Theban deputy, speaking for the Boiotians, demanded that the Athenians

should be slaughtered man by man, or sold as slaves; that the walls of

Athens and all her splendid temples and public buildings should be

destroyed, and that grass should be sown where she had stood. The

Korinthians concurred in this demand. The pride of Athens in her days of

glory made them forget what she had done for them in times of trouble.

Sparta alone remembered it, and she could recollect it because it served

her purpose to remember it. She declared that a city which had once

deserved so well of Greece must not be utterly destroyed. She wanted to

reduce it to dependency upon herself, not to crush it. She wished to

make a subject-city of Athens, with a Spartan garrison and a military

governor ruling as her Viceroy. The other states did not want that. It

would have made Lakedaimon as strong, and perhaps much more offensive

than Athens had ever been.

So they agreed upon a compromise, and settled the terms upon which peace

might be given her. The fortifications of the Peiræus must be

dismantled, the arsenals destroyed, the long walls, which she had built

and cherished as her great security, must be pulled down. She must

renounce all her possessions, own nothing out of Attika, give up her

fleet, except such few ships as Lysandros might permit her to retain,

and make alliance with Lakedaimon.

When Theramenes brought these terrible, heart-rending terms and read

them out before the Assembly in the Pnyx, first an awful silence fell

upon the multitude, then sobs were heard, then someone rose on tottering

legs to utter a weak protest. A few others tried to speak against them,

muttering that a people such as they were should hold out still, and

should die within the walls, rather than yield on such terms. But hunger

had done its work. Theramenes was sent once more to Lysandros to tell

him that the gates of Athens stood open to his forces.

On an April day in 404, at the head of the allied armies, Lysandros made

his entry into Athens. The last insults were inflicted on the miserable,

vanquished citizens. Rude Spartan soldiers, dancing clumsily to the

music which their women played upon their pipes, looked on and jested

while free-born Athenians were made to toil with pick and spade at the

destruction, stone by stone, of the strong defending walls.

The proud people had not yet reached the end of all their punishment and

degradation. There was a secret clause in the terms of the capitulation

which Theramenes had not thought it necessary to mention publicly, but

which had been agreed upon between him and Lysandros,—one to which

Theramenes, at least, did not object. As soon as the Spartans had made

themselves masters of the city and the Akropolis, a meeting of the

people was held, as usual, in the Pnyx, as though they were still a

self-governing democracy. An agent of Theramenes, following the private

convention made with the conqueror, contended before the Ekklesia that

the people had shown itself unapt to manage the great affairs of state,

and that its inconstancy had brought them to their present lamentable

plight; and he suggested that it would be better, for the present, to

make over the direction of its affairs to a chosen body of thirty of the

wisest citizens.

The Athenians had lost their walls, their dependencies, their fleet,—all

that could make them great and glorious; but they had not yet lost the

semblance of their freedom: they had their Assembly. They declared they

would never part with that. Who could tell but that some day fortune

might return again, and bring back something of what they had thrown

away? As long as they had their constitution, they might at least

imagine that they were free; and when the dark time passed away, they

would still have the Ekklesia in which to make their own laws and choose

their own rulers, as in the past. They remembered the condition of the

city when the four hundred were in power. It might be even worse if the

whole government were in the hands of but thirty untried, possibly

ambitious, men,—friends of such well-known and distrusted oligarchs as

Theramenes. They rejected the proposal with indignation.

Lysandros was watching them. His sanguinary will was law in what had

been free and stately Athens. He solemnly counselled the people to

accept the proposed new constitution. He let them know that his counsel,

if it was not accepted, would become something more urgent. A fresh

session of the Ekklesia was called; the late decision was reversed. The

people, under compulsion, voted themselves and their power away.

Theramenes and twenty-nine other persons named by him were elected and

had authority given them to reform the constitution.

The reforms made by the Thirty consisted chiefly in the murder of those

who ventured to differ from them. They excelled the Four Hundred in

their crimes. When Lysandros went off with his fleet for a short time to

carry on the siege of Samos the people threatened to rise against their

tyrants. Kritias, who now took the most active part amongst the

thirty—Theramenes being too timid—sent in haste to the Spartan admiral

for help against his outraged countrymen. Spartan soldiers were sent to

prop up the usurpers and to disarm the people. Kritias was kept in power

for a time by Spartan hoplites quartered in the Akropolis, who menaced

the unarmed citizens from the sacred Parthenon.

The reign of terror that ensued, when lists were opened on which all

friends of the governing Thirty might write the name of him whom, for

any reason, they might wish put out of the way, has had its counterpart

once or twice since in the history of the world. The details are always

much the same. Those who perished were the most worthy, the men who had

done most for the state, and deserved most from it, or else those whose

wealth made their death a thing to be desired by those who would share

the plundering of it. The number of the slain in a short time exceeded

fifteen hundred. The estates and all the belongings of the victims were

taken by those who were their accusers, judges, and executioners.

As is usual in such cases, the tyrants before long began to be

suspicious of each other. Theramenes was the first to go. He got

frightened. He ventured to point out to his colleagues that their

excesses might, in the end, shorten their reign. That was enough. His

conduct when a member of the old Four Hundred was not forgotten. Kritias

accused him of treachery. He charged him, amongst other things, with

having deserted the drowning men at the battle of Arginousai, and of

having falsely thrown the odium of that desertion on the other generals,

and of thus causing them to be unjustly sentenced. Theramenes made a

spirited defence. Kritias, taking credit to himself for extraordinary

patriotism and self-abnegation in sacrificing to his country this great

friend of his, cut him short, called in the eleven Prison Commissioners,

and ordered him off to death. He was dragged from the altar where he

sought refuge, and carried through the town protesting against his fate,

which few thought undeserved.

This Kritias was the Kritias we know so well in the Platonic dialogues.

There seems to have been a strange medley in his nature, and it is an

instance of the fidelity of the portraits drawn in those dialogues that,

when Sokrates, himself an ardent oligarch by conviction all his life,

raised his voice against the iniquities of the thirty oligarchs, Kritias

spared his master’s life.

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

CHAPTER XXX

‘Why should we toil alone,

* * * *

Still from one sorrow to another thrown,

Nor ever fold our wings,

And cease from wanderings.’

TENNYSON.

THE people soon repented of their conduct to Alkibiades. Not long after

they drove him away, when Konon was beaten near Mytilene, we begin to

hear the murmur growing more distinct—‘Had he been there, this would not

have happened.’ Some at first believed the old fables that were told

about him. Some thought he would try to make himself despotic. But these

suspicions gradually died away. The desire for his wise counsel, and his

strong generalship, growing as disaster followed on disaster, came to

its fulness during the terrible siege. And as death and famine stalked

about among the people, and their dear ones died in cruel agony before

their eyes, while they awaited their own turn in consuming, gnawing

hunger, and it at last was plain to those who were still left alive what

must be the conditions by which alone death could be avoided, we can

still, in imagination, hear the cry of impotent remorse sounding loud

amongst all the other vain regrets of men throughout the ages—sorrow,

contrition, repentance, anger with those who had misled them, and regret

come too late.

Then in the reign of terror, in the year of anarchy, as the greatest

fell, not now by famine nobly suffered, but by the sword and poison of

their countrymen, who, encouraged by an enemy encamped within the

citadel and holy places, in Athens trampled on Athenians, all within the

city, except the Thirty and their creatures and the enemy, were ever

casting longing, but forlorn and hopeless, eyes towards that fortress on

the Hellespont where they believed their former saviour dwelt.

The Thirty were not ignorant of this desire among their indignant

subjects. They trembled at the thought of what Alkibiades even yet might

do. Neither were the Spartans certain of the fruits of their victory

while their old opponent was alive.

One of the first acts of the thirty tyrants after coming into power was

to decree his banishment. They proceeded to confiscate all his estates

in Attika. They had some cause for their apprehension. In the early

winter, during the siege of Athens, unable to hold himself aloof from

what was going on, and knowing that he would be the next object of the

hatred of the Spartans, Alkibiades had left his stronghold in Thrace,

crossed over into Phrygia, and sought out Pharnabazos at Daskylion. They

had exchanged oaths of mutual friendship and hospitality. Alkibiades

believed that he could trust the Persian satrap, and, indeed, he was in

want of faithful supporters at that time. His soul was set in tumult at

the thought of his native city being about to fall into the hands of

Spartans and Boiotians. He could not rest while it was in his power to

help her. The satrap had been a noble foe; it might be that he would

become a generous friend. At least, he was not a partisan of Sparta or

of the young Kyros.

Alkibiades was courteously received at Daskylion by Pharnabazos, who had

long admired him for his prowess and extraordinary skill in war. In a

short time the peculiar attraction which had drawn all the hearts which

he had ever tried to win was felt by his new friend.

Just as he had been before the intimate associate of Tissaphernes, so

now he soon became the constant companion and counsellor of the satrap

of the Propontis. To compensate him somewhat for the loss of his

patrimonial estates in Attika, Pharnabazos, with Eastern magnificence,

gave him the annual revenue of Grunion, a town in Mysia, on which he

might have lived in ease and Asiatic luxury, as Themistokles had done

before him. To most people, indeed, to everybody else, the state of

Athens looked as if it was beyond all cure. Nothing could well appear

more utterly forlorn than her then condition; nothing more hopeless than

the prospect of recovering her freedom.

While he was at the court of Pharnabazos he heard of the death of king

Dareios Nothos, and the succession of his eldest son Artaxerxes. He knew

the character and ambition of Kyros, the late king’s younger son, and

suspected that he was plotting deeply with Lysandros against his

brother. He found that Kyros was collecting an army from among the

Greeks of the Ionian towns, enlisting especially the Spartans. This

could not be without some hidden object; and no doubt the object was to

levy war against, and attempt to overthrow, the king, his elder brother.

To Alkibiades this opened a fresh opportunity. There was no salvation

for his country to be found in Greece. The thought came suddenly upon

him one night, when he was pondering on these things, to seek help from

the Persian king. Lysandros and the Spartans were bound to stand by

their ally, the crafty Kyros, to whom they owed so much, and from whom

they might require more. With Persian gold he might recruit an army of

experienced Athenian hoplites and Argive peltasts, meet at last on equal

terms the cunning Spartan leader, avenge the slaughter of three thousand

fellow-countrymen slain at Aigos Potamoi, and punish the destroyer of

his country’s liberty.

Then why not set out at once and at all hazards for the Persian capital,

see the new king himself, be the first to disclose to him the danger

that was threatening him from his own family, show him the number and

the strength of the army of the Grecian colonists that was being drawn

together by Kyros, offer to lead against them the royal forces and the

picked Greek band which with Persian aid might easily be raised, and rid

the king of this unworthy and treacherous brother? His fame had

penetrated into Asia; his name was well known at Susa and Babylon, the

Persian capitals. What might he not become at the court of the Great

King—he who had never lost a battle, or failed to gain the love and

admiration of anyone whose affection he was anxious to obtain? Then,

having roused up the wrath of Artaxerxes against the Lakedaimonian

allies of the unnatural Kyros, and gained his confidence and gratitude,

what might he not accomplish at the head of a well-trained army?

Already he could fancy himself, victorious over Lysandros, Spartans, and

Boiotians, over all his country’s enemies, entering once more triumphant

into Athens, to end his days in peace and happiness, dealing out just

laws to his emancipated countrymen.

Such was his dream. By degrees he unfolded his hopes and fears to

Pharnabazos, and persuaded him to give his help in this great and

difficult adventure. The satrap, too, could see visions rising up before

him of even greater splendour than that which he had so long enjoyed. To

be associated with one like this Grecian warrior in saving the king, his

master, from treachery and treason must surely be rewarded by the

highest honours that the king could possibly bestow. There was a

possibility of even greater things, if anything unforeseen should happen

to the king, and Kyros should be discomfited by this invincible Greek

general; while if the contemplated mission failed, Kyros and his Spartan

allies need never know the part that he had taken in it.

With a sufficiency, then, of Persian gold, and the safe-conduct of the

satrap, Alkibiades set out late in the autumn, accompanied by Timandra

and by the faithful Agrestides. The route to Babylon, the capital, where

the king generally lived, was long and mountainous. At least three

months, they expected, would be taken on the way.

They started from Daskylion with many expressions of eternal friendship

on the part of their host, and making first for Azani and Synnada, they

passed along the base of the range of Olympos, the northern boundary of

Phrygia.

Pharnabazos had insisted on their taking an escort with them—at least,

on the first part of the way; for he had to admit that the mountainous

portions of his viceregal dominions were infested with robber tribes.

The escort was almost as fierce, and to some of the party as terrible,

as the robbers they came to scare away; and, when the open plain was

reached by the banks of the Rhyndakos, the country looked so peaceable

that Alkibiades sent the escort back with a large reward and a warm

message of thanks to his generous friend.

The small party were not sorry to be relieved of their noisy and warlike

protectors, who were too fond of displaying their extraordinary

horsemanship and their deftness with their swords to the detriment of

one another. In the still autumn weather everything on that fertile

plain breathed of calm and peace, as though the hard work of the year

was finished. So they journeyed on quietly, and with as little fuss as

possible, for Alkibiades was anxious, as they got further south, and

approached the territories of Kyros, to avoid the larger towns and the

notice of the inhabitants. He had no wish for another sojourn in the

castle of Sardis.

They reached Azani a week after they left Daskylion. Timandra would fain

have rested there a little, being somewhat tired by the journey, but the

leader said they must push on to a more secluded place and rest

themselves there, before they set out upon the long and unknown road to

Babylon. They started again almost immediately for Synnada, the next

town of any importance which they must make for. Three days’ good

travelling, with the lofty Dindymon upon their left, brought them at

last to Synnada.

He had been thus far on the road from the Ionian coast before, and when

staying at Magnesia with Tissaphernes, he had become the owner of a

little villa, or Persian country house, near the village of Melissa,

some five miles from the marble quarries of Synnada. For, some time

previously, when tired of the life he was leading at the satrap’s court,

and not knowing how long it might be before he was recalled to Athens,

he had explored some distance into the interior of the land which we

call Asia Minor, and coming suddenly upon this villa, he was struck with

the beauty of the woods and hills around it, and had fixed upon the

small country place as a spot to which he might retire with a friend, if

need be, far from the bustle of the world, and where he might end his

days in peace. Like many other energetic and ambitious men, he longed at

times to be rid of his constant anxieties, and to enjoy a period of

rest. The house he had chosen stood some way from the high-road which

leads from Synnada to Metropolis. He had enlarged and improved his small

domain, and had there been honoured by the presence of Tissaphernes, who

came to visit him on one occasion when he, too, was tired of excess of

luxury, and wanted to exchange the pleasures of his court for the

undisturbed companionship of his bosom friend. At the end of that visit

the satrap presented the small domain to his friend, made him come back

with him to Magnesia, and Alkibiades, having been called away soon

afterwards to Samos, had not seen since then his rural, calm retreat.

The travellers reached this place at the end of September. Timandra was

enraptured with the charms of the lovely spot, and was for making

Alkibiades stay there altogether and give up his great enterprise,

letting kings and republics go their way, and resting there in peace for

ever, without troubling himself more about the rights and wrongs of

struggling men and women.

There was much indeed to make him loath to leave the pleasant scene, for

it was very beautiful, and the journey before him was full of dangers

and fatigues in unknown lands. He would first have to get as best he

could to Ikonion by Mount Paroreios, more than a hundred miles away.

Thence he would be obliged to journey south to cross the great Tauros

chain by the high and dangerous pass to Tarsos on the sea-coast; then,

after skirting the Mediterranean, to strike across Syria and North

Arabia to the wide Euphrates; and then, perhaps, if the king was not at

Babylon, to cross that river and the Tigris, and proceed to Susa.

All this was an unknown world to him. He and Agrestides must go

alone,—perhaps never to return, and he might possibly end his life in a

Persian dungeon, or leave his body on some mountain pass. However, he

must not give way to foolish fears; he had gone through greater perils

many times before, and a vista of fresh adventures, larger successes,

opened up before him, ending ever with the attainment of the one fixed

object of his thoughts and his desire—the liberation and the final

triumph of his country.

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

CHAPTER XXXI

‘Usque adeone mori miserum est? * * *

* * * *

Descendam, magnorum haud unquam indignus avorum.’

VIRGIL: _Æneid_.

‘Is it, then, so very sad a thing to die?

I will descend, and ne’er unworthy prove

Of you, my mighty ancestors.’

THREE months before the departure of Alkibiades from the court of

Pharnabazos, Kritias had sent secret messages to Lysandros warning him

of the growing feeling of regret among the Athenian people for the loss

of their late strategos. He reminded the Spartan admiral that it was the

part of a wise man never to despise the aspirations even of the

abject—for Kritias still prided himself on his philosophy—and hinted

that as long as the dreaded opponent of both of them was alive, the

foolish people would continue to aspire. And who could tell, he added,

what such a one as that might do?

Even Lysandros, the assassin of three thousand valiant soldiers,

prisoners of war, shrank from the suggestion when he understood the full

meaning of the missive of the philosophic Kritias. Even he would rather

not, if he could help it, stain his hands deeper, and in the blood of

such a one as Alkibiades. Lysandros was himself, on his father’s side,

sprung of heroic ancestry. He too was of the Herakleidai. He might

massacre three thousand common soldiers, but he hesitated, and almost

refused, to take a part in an act such as that which was suggested to

him. He sent back an ambiguous answer.

Then Kritias wrote straight to the Ephors at Sparta. The influence of

one whose power they knew so well was as much dreaded by them as by any

of the Thirty; while to King Agis, the thought of revenge on his old

enemy, his hated rival, was indeed sweet. The Ephors sent a peremptory

order to Lysandros to compass, by all means, and speedily, the death or

capture of the object of their fears. Lysandros dared not dally any

longer with their command. He knew that Alkibiades was living at the

court of Pharnabazos. He heard of the influence he was exercising over

the satrap, an abler man than Tissaphernes, and of the splendid

provision that the satrap had already made for him. He was in some doubt

as to how Pharnabazos would act, but he sent a copy of the Ephors’ order

to Daskylion, with a strong request to take immediate steps to carry out

the Ephors’ wishes, adding a warning that any disregard of this request

would be held to be conduct hostile to Sparta, as well as to Prince

Kyros.

Pharnabazos thus found himself in a pitiable plight. He was not without

a sense of honour—of Eastern honour. That sense of honour had lately

been greatly outraged when the Athenian ambassadors to the late king

were forcibly taken from him by the young Prince, and imprisoned against

the honourable understanding of all civilized nations. He had

endeavoured to make up for this, as far as he could, by his cordial

reception of Alkibiades, the late Athenian strategos, at whose

suggestion the embassy to Persia had been sent. Besides this, there was

the oath of mutual friendship and hospitality between them. His former

opponent was now his guest; as such his life was inviolable. He could

not defile that sacred relationship with blood.

Moreover, he had conceived a more than common attachment for the Grecian

warrior, who had sought his aid and friendship when driven off and

hunted down by men of his own race. The old spell had been cast over

him. He had always admired the man; to that admiration was added now a

feeling of affection. Besides all this, the mission on which, with his

concurrence, his guest was gone might very possibly succeed.

He determined that, come what might, he would not harm him. And yet the

mandate was very plain; there was no mistaking it: he must either comply

with it or forfeit the friendship, and incur the enmity, of the

all-conquering Spartans. If Kyros was successful in his intrigues, and

the threatened revolt should break upon them, what would become of his

power, and of what value would his life be then? He hesitated. Then he

bethought him of a compromise.

Alkibiades had been gone some days, the escort had returned, when the

sanguinary mandate of the Ephors came to Pharnabazos. He argued with

himself that if he merely suggested the wishes of the Spartan government

to someone else, and left the rest to chance, he would not be

responsible for the result, whatever it might be. And even if others, in

consequence of the whispered suggestion, sought to do an act of

violence, perhaps they might not overtake the brave Athenian; or if they

did,—well, he bore a charmed life, so all men said, and might escape or

overcome assailants. In any case he, Pharnabazos, would not be

implicated in the deed. He would save himself, and perhaps his honour.

Pharnabazos had two relatives, a brother and an uncle, who lived near

him at Daskylion. To them, in strictest confidence, he told his trouble,

and the dilemma in which he found himself. He would not have even a

suspicion cast upon his fame, and could not allow any injury to be done

to his friend and former guest, but, he said, the burden that was laid

upon him overwhelmed him; he asked them their advice how he could get

rid of it. He confided to them how he wished that something, almost

anything, would happen to take it from him.

Without another word, the two relatives set out upon the track of the

travellers, taking some retainers with them.

By rapid marches they arrived at Synnada, a few miles from Melissa,

where we left Alkibiades resting with his friends, after their long and

tiring journey, seeking to gain fresh strength before they started on

the more hazardous and less known way which lay between them and the

Persian capital. Agrestides had noticed that his master, for the first

time since he had known him, began to show signs of weariness while they

were on the road, and, soon after they had reached Melissa, he told them

of a foolish dream which had troubled him the night before, the meaning

of which he could not understand. In his dream he fancied that a woman

was supporting his head and looking sorrowfully at him, while she combed

his hair.

The next night, sadly, as if from some presentiment that could not be

overcome, he went early to rest. Timandra and Agrestides, having

attended to his wants, retired to their own rooms, at a little distance

from his, which was in the front part of the solitary house.

Like sleuth-hounds the sneaking emissaries stole on; they reached the

village at nightfall. They heard their victim was living there almost

alone. There were six of the pursuers altogether, yet they feared to

strike the blow. One of them, more daring than the rest of the band of

cowards, undertook to do it. He crept stealthily into the room, snatched

with shaking hand the sword that lay by the couch side, saw the hero

lying restlessly in sleep, and, seized by a sudden panic at the sight,

slunk tremblingly away.

A hurried conference was held. None of them would venture to approach

him, though they had possession of his sword. ‘Let us set fire to the

house,’ someone proposed. ‘If he is not burnt alive, we can slay him as

he escapes.’

This was agreed on. The cowardly assailants collected a quantity of

fallen leaves and dry wood, and, piling these combustibles noiselessly

before the house, set fire to them, and retired some distance into the

darkness. The noise of the crackling fire awoke Agrestides, who shouted

to his master to escape, and was attempting to put out the kindling

fire, when he was stricken through the heart by a Persian arrow.

The cry of Agrestides awoke his lord. Half choked by the smoke from

burning leaves and wood, he rose, and sought his sword in vain.

Then at one bound he cleared the smoke and flames. Unclothed, he stood

before the assassins like a deity in wrath. At the sight of the dead

body of his faithful follower he uttered a cry as of a god in pain. His

figure stood out against the flames behind him. He rushed upon an unseen

enemy. The murderers fled at sight of him, but one of them, hiding

behind a stunted bush, aimed a dart which struck him fatally.

He fell. The place where he was lying faded from his view. He was a boy

again wandering by the Ilissos. He heard the festal music, as, crowned

with violets, he led a joyous crew along the streets of Athens. He

fancied he was bringing home his bride, as he had done on the happy

marriage day. He was standing in the tribune on the Pnyx, ten thousand

faces turned to him, with voices hushed. He saw his swift steeds at

Olympia bear his chariot on to victory. He saw the _Eros_ garlanded with

roses moving slowly to the stroke of oars as the crowd called out their

farewell to him from the shore. He was fighting once more at Kyzikos;

Spartans and Persians fled before him. He heard the loud pæans of his

victorious soldiers. He stood again upon the deck of the Eros as she

entered the Peiræus; the people thronged about him shouting their

welcome in his ears, and strewed their flowers at his feet. He saw his

mother and his son—then all grew dark.

And there he lay, far, far from home, his proud thoughts, his high

hopes, his great ambition, like his friends, all gone! Gone, too, was

his anger. The furrows which in the last two years had begun to mark his

brow were gone. The old exceeding loveliness, the air of high-bred

dignity remained, and was as splendidly conspicuous as ever. A smile of

peace and triumph was upon his face, as though, beyond these shadows, he

had already met old Aiakos, his ancestor, and was rejoiced to behold

him. There he lay, watched over by Timandra.

THE END

J. BAKER AND SON, PRINTERS, CLIFTON

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

● Transcriber’s Notes:

○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.

○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.

○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only

when a predominant form was found in this book.

○ Text that:

was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_);

was in bold by is enclosed by “equal” signs (=bold=).