by Peter Green
Slowly all became still once more. With a swift revulsion of feeling, Hipparete picked herself up, hot and ashamed at her own weakness. Outside the sky was a brilliant blue; everything seemed bathed in the most profound peace.
But in the Assembly the pious Nicias had taken his chance. As the first tremors shook the rocky hill, and the people clasped one another in sudden fear, he declared that the Assembly should dissolve till the following day. Seldom, said Alcibiades to himself with impotent rage, could superstition have brought such timely aid to politics.
• • • • •
Paradoxically, it was Nicias who, in his desperate honesty, gave Alcibiades final victory. The old man had left the Assembly mentally stunned, unable to credit what he had heard. He had been able to postpone the final reckoning for another day; but the outcome seemed certain. He did not know whom he could trust. He suspected Alcibiades; but the comedy played out between Alcibiades and Endius had at least appeared genuine. For the same reason, though his instinct was to place his faith in Endius, he could not bring himself to visit the Spartan ambassador that night. If he had done so, he might have found out what was afoot. In ten minutes he had seen the liaison he had so painfully built up with Sparta in danger of total destruction, together with the peace he had bought at such a prohibitive price. The last few months had undermined his health; yet he had had the satisfaction of the praise of his countrymen; on all men’s lips the peace was spoken of as the Peace of Nicias. Now his reputation was gone as well.
All that night he wrestled with the problem, balancing his own position against the manifest needs of his country. When dawn broke he was sure of what he had to do. It was a forlorn hope; but it was his only chance. If it failed, it meant his total discredit.
Those who had seen his lonely lamp burning into the small hours, and knew something of the ordeal with which he was faced, were surprised to see the firm step, the determined air with which he mounted the platform to face the hostile Assembly. It was by sheer force of conviction, by his patently desperate sincerity, that he persuaded them to suspend judgment till he had gone himself to Sparta and stated his case once more. He pointed out that the prolongation of the peace, under whatever circumstances, would be to their advantage. At the end of an eloquent and moving speech, he asked them to appoint an embassy, himself among them, to test Spartan sincerity.
Alcibiades incredulously heard him enumerate the subjects he would raise: the restoration of Panactum and Amphipolis, the annulment of the treaty of alliance with Boeotia; all the weapons with which Alcibiades himself had destroyed Endius’ hopes. When it was over, and the Assembly had voted the embassy as Nicias had begged them to, Alcibiades found himself unexpectedly ashamed. Walking through the streets with Axiochus he tried to put into words what was in his mind.
‘I ought to be triumphant,’ he said, ‘but I’m not. I have no love for Nicias. But . . . there was something about him this morning it was impossible not to admire. Perhaps the very futility of what he’s going to do, the utter folly of his persistence, the belief that blinds him to the truth.’
Axiochus nodded. ‘There’s no doubt what the outcome will be. I can almost hear the Ephors dismissing him . . . If it had been you who were in his position—’
‘The problem would never have arisen.’ They walked along in moody silence for a while. Then Axiochus said:
‘You should be congratulating yourself Argos is certain now. And you will be General.’
‘Yes,’ said Alcibiades tonelessly, looking up towards the marble splendours of the Acropolis, ‘I shall be General.’ He turned to Axiochus and said: ‘He’s a broken man, uncle.’
Axiochus stroked his beard. ‘I shouldn’t be too sure of that. There’s something about Nicias that will always attract men of the old stamp. There are plenty of them left still. They don’t mind a fool as long as he’s honest, and knows his own mind, and wants the same things as they do. I feel a certain sympathy for him myself. No, I think you will still have to reckon with him for a good many years to come. Especially if war breaks out again.’
Uncle and nephew threaded their way together through the narrow lane that led to the gymnasium; and behind them their long shadows danced and fluttered over the cobbles under the midday sun.
• • • • •
The heat in the Ephors’ Council Chamber was stifling. Nicias wiped his forehead with his hand. He felt sick and giddy; but he rallied all his remaining strength to plead his case once more. Outside the cicadas chirruped ceaselessly. Somewhere an officer was drilling his men; the staccato words of command rasped Nicias’ nerves with their irregular explosive insistence. And in front of him five grim men sat with impassive faces, waiting to destroy each tentative bridge he put out to them.
It had gone on for two days now. There was no attempt to help him, no hint of recognition for the effort and sacrifices he had made. In a tired monotonous voice he went over the points of difference once more. At the end Xenares, the Chief Ephor, said briefly: ‘I repeat what I have said already. We can agree to none of these concessions.’
Nicias looked into the dark eyes of the man confronting him and read there nothing but contempt and indifference. In this moment he knew that further discussion was useless. Yet he said (and the threat sounded ridiculous): ‘If you persist in this attitude, Athens will have no option but to ally herself with Argos.’
Xenares shrugged his shoulders. ‘That is no concern of ours,’ he said.
Defeat. Utter, hopeless, ignominious defeat. His lips trembling, Nicias said: ‘Will you at least . . . renew your signatures to the peace treaty? The year has fully run since it was first agreed upon.’ There must be something to show for all this waste of endeavour. He could not go back to Athens entirely empty-handed.
‘Yes,’ said Xenares, in an ironical tone: ‘we have no objection to doing that. I don’t think any harm can come of it.’ He called sharply to an attendant for pen and ink. When it came to Nicias’ turn to sign the now useless document his hand was shaking so much that he could hardly write his name.
• • • • •
There were jeers from the bystanders when Nicias rode in at the Dipylon Gate; and all the, way through the City till he reached his own house he was aware of the black contemptuous glances of those who saw him. Near the King’s Colonnade someone threw a stone at him. How the news had reached Athens before him he did not know. At last he shut the door between him and the men he had toiled for, whose disfavour came as easily as their praise. He lay down on a couch, worn out in body and mind, the pain which was never far distant stabbing at his back. His slaves brought him water and clean clothes; as if in a dream he washed and dressed himself. Presently he fell into an uneasy sleep.
For a fortnight still, against all rational conviction, he tried to put off the inevitable. The Generalship, the mere fact and dignity of office, was all he had left. Time and again he had the elections postponed: the soothsayers gave ill omens, this day was unlucky, that commemorated some great defeat of the past. In the end, when the patience of the people was at an end, and from a discredited statesman who yet had some air of dignity he was transformed into a mere ridiculous butt, he gave way. He did not appear in the Assembly on the day when a triumphant populace bestowed on Alcibiades the high honour of which he himself was now deprived; nor when, a day or two later, on Alcibiades’ proposal, the alliance with Argos was ratified and signed. From the sick-bed to which an anxious physician had confined him he heard the shouting and singing, and guessed that Athens’ new General was celebrating his appointment in his own highly individual way. At first Nicias put his hands to his ears to shut out the noise; then, with a weary gesture, he stretched out his arms, and lay motionless, his eyes open, listening. It was long past midnight when all became still once more.
Chapter 22
During the months which followed the Argive alliance even Alcibiades’ worst enemies had to admit the success of his policy. True, they still had a resentful Boeotia on their no
rthern frontier, and in the Peloponnese Corinth was still fomenting trouble, her secret emissaries passing backwards and forwards to and from the Spartan capital; but Argos and her satellite allies lay across the neck of the Isthmus, a silent tribute to the man who had won them for Athens. The triremes were laid up in the Piraeus; the crops came to maturity and were harvested; after many years the olive-trees blew silver and grey again in the scorched plains of Attica.
If Alcibiades had rested content with what he had done all might have been well. But his restless genius, bred on years of conflict, would not be content with this enforced leisure. Public action for the time being was denied him; and as a result his private life became wilder and more irresponsible than ever. He gave extravagant drunken parties. He indulged his taste for effeminate dress until it became a distasteful scandal; he even had the deck of his trireme cut away and fitted with a slung bed of cord and soft quilts, to avoid sleeping on the bare deck. He was notoriously unfaithful to his wife. All the time he was spending his own and Hipparete’s money at an unheard-of rate.
His behaviour brought him into disrepute with the more respectable elements of the community; and Nicias, embittered and impotent, sedulously stirred up all the disaffection against him that he could. To counteract this Alcibiades’ public generosity became as great as his private expenditure. He gave enormous sums to public funds; he financed plays and choruses with unparalleled prodigality. Yet even in this he courted unpopularity. When a chorus of his was in danger of being beaten, he boxed his rival’s ears in front of the judges. The unlucky man withdrew, and Alcibiades gained the prize; but the resentment at his high-handed methods was increasing daily. As if to display his unconcern, or to show his contempt for the way in which common opinion might be swayed, he entered a pair of his chariot teams for the Nemean Games, and won a resounding victory for Athens with both of them.
• • • • •
All through the summer which followed her husband’s election Hipparete watched his excesses in silence. Better than anyone else she had come to know the self-dissatisfaction and thwarted idealism which drove him. She saw more than the world saw; not only the flamboyance, the exhibitionism, the unstable brilliance, but the dark fits of despair, the aching loneliness of the sensual visionary. More than once she felt on the very edge of abandoning what seemed must be a hopeless struggle, not only against his petulant and often strangely childish nature, but with the whole masculine world of Athens that had reached out and claimed him as its own. In the end it was to be a small thing, as Athens saw it, a joke ready-made for the comedians, that was to break her will.
• • • • •
In the cool of a late September afternoon the painter Agatharchus sat on a camp-stool on the north side of the Acropolis, a drawing-board on his knees and half a dozen sticks of charcoal in a box handy beside him. The sun was dropping towards the western horizon behind Salamis, and the blue shadows crawled slowly across column and frieze, slanting and lengthening as they went. This annoyed Agatharchus, who was experimenting with a new technique he had learnt from a Milesian during one of his visits to the East. As soon as each rough sketch was well begun, the composition of light and shade shifted imperceptibly, till the whole thing had to be given up and a fresh start made. At last he abandoned any pretence of working, and sat in peace, surveying the scene laid out before him.
His elevated position gave him a comfortable feeling of superiority. Agatharchus had learnt more than the technique of painting in Ionia; he had spent much of his time with strange philosophers, who had taught him that the earth was a cylinder, and the heavenly bodies holes through which the eternal fire peeped out. As for the Gods, leave them to the superstitious herd.
But as an artist he could not but be moved by what he saw. At the foot of the Acropolis Athens clustered, no larger than a collection of dolls’ houses, with here and there a temple or public building gleaming white among the brown walls and baked reddish tiles of shops and houses. Beyond the City he saw the brook Eridanus twisting its way among planes and alders, a thin ribbon of silver to offset the parched tawny stubble of the harvested fields. Away to his left the Sacred Way wound through olive-groves and vineyards towards Eleusis, five miles distant; and if he turned his head far enough he could see the placid waters of the Saronic Gulf, and the island of Aegina, low and blue on the south-west horizon.
The great sanctuary was almost deserted. A priest of Athena emerged from the Parthenon in his robes of office, carrying over his shoulder the bag which Agatharchus knew contained his share of the offerings made that day; a merchant and his boy-lover strolled hand-in-hand past the painter, vouchsafing only a casual glance at the lean young man with his short beard and worn tunic, liberally besmeared now with smudges of charcoal.
Presently another man came into sight through the great portals, still unfinished, on the west face of the rock, and walked slowly forward as if looking for somebody. Agatharchus at once recognised the tall springy figure, the golden hair glinting in the evening sun, the, long—too long—purple robe. Alcibiades saw him and made his way over, treading fastidiously among builders’ rubble and blocks of marble.
‘Good evening, General,’ said Agatharchus. He disliked soldiers and politicians on principle; partly (though he did not realise it) because of the withered foot which debarred him from military service. With Alcibiades, however, who was hardly typical of either category, he had struck up, a cautious friendship, based on admiration liberally spiced with envy. This envy did not extend to feminine conquest; Agatharchus was a talented performer in this field himself, with a genius for consoling the wives of warriors away at the wars.
Now he looked at Alcibiades’ dress, and the gold snake-ring on his hand, and prayed to the Gods to send him also a rich wife.
‘I was looking for you,’ said Alcibiades. But he did not immediately say why; instead he peered over the painter’s shoulder at the charcoal sketches, in some puzzlement.
‘I have never seen drawing like this before.’ He searched for adequate words. ‘It is as if it went deeper than the paper. As if it were sculpture.’
Agatharachus chuckled. ‘I take that as a compliment,’ he said. ‘This is how I meant it.’ He pointed at the Parthenon, growing dim now as the sun passed below the horizon. ‘Look there,’ he said. ‘Now: think of this as a picture painted on a flat board. The shadow will then appear thus’—he scribbled on a blank corner of the sheet—‘and the flutings of the columns thus.’
It was Alcibiades’ turn to laugh. ‘You have given me a very pretty demonstration,’ he said, still staring at the scribbled charcoal lines that had miraculously taken life. ‘I came to offer you a commission. What I have seen makes me tolerably certain I have come to the right man.’
Agatharchus began to gather his materials together. He strapped the box of charcoals to the drawing-board, and rolled up the sheet that had been pinned to it. Lastly he folded up the camp-stool. ‘What is it you want?’ he asked at length.
‘Two things. The first is a shield.’
‘I am no armourer.’ Agatharchus wrinkled his brow in puzzlement.
‘You misunderstand me. I wish you to design me a blazon, and to supervise the work of the goldsmith who will execute it.’
Agatharchus whistled. ‘Goldsmith, you say? This will be a notable, piece of work. The shield is to be of gold, then?’
‘Of course. Would you have it of leather?’
‘It depends what you want it for . . . And the blazon. Shall it be your ancestral crest?’
Alcibiades sighed. ‘Should I have come to one of the best artists in Athens merely for that?’ He said, with an almost deprecating laugh, ‘I want the image of a Cupid, armed with a thunderbolt.’
Agatharchus was silent for a moment. It occurred to him that authority could lead even the most estimable men into highly regrettable aberrations. But there was no doubt that the execution of this shield would bring him in a very respectable sum, so he smiled and said: ‘An excellent ide
a. And highly appropriate, if I may say so.’ They both laughed, with the air of men who are confederates in a slightly disreputable scheme. Then Agatharchus asked tentatively: ‘And what is your other project? You spoke of two.’
‘I want you to decorate my house with mural paintings. In this new style you have shown me.’
Agatharchus said doubtfully: ‘You must understand that I have other commissions, that have been outstanding for some time. It would be impossible for me to break them off in order to—’
‘I am a General,’ said Alcibiades, in quite a different tone. His face was flushed and angry. ‘This is an order. Your other commissions can wait. I shall see that you’re suitably compensated, if that’s what you’re worrying about.’
Agatharchus stared at him as if he had never seen him before. ‘Very well, General,’ he said at length, insolently. ‘When do you wish me to start work?’
‘Immediately. The shield must be your first task. The painting can come afterwards. The first picture is to be a commemorative one. You may have heard that I had a certain trifling success in the Games at Nemea?’
‘The rumour had reached me.’
Alcibiades either did not hear or decided to ignore the ironic tone. ‘I wish the picture to be a portrait of myself,’ he said, and added: ‘I shall be reclining in the arms of the Goddess of Nemea. She will be looking down on me with—with love and admiration.’
Agatharchus preserved an impassive countenance.
