by Peter Green
Yet it was they who had the last word. When winter was well advanced, and campaigning finished for the year, they slipped three hundred men into Epidaurus to reinforce the garrison. Argos protested to Athens that if the Athenian fleet had patrolled its territorial waters better, the Spartans could never have got through: an angry exchange of notes. followed. Alcibiades, making the best of a bad job, retaliated by refortifying Pylos.
But despite all his efforts, he had lost his initiative; and Nicias was not slow to recognise the fact. Throughout the winter months the old man redoubled his efforts, playing on the fears of farmers and landowners alike, warning them of the consequences of another war. The alliance with Argos was hanging in the balance.
Only Alcibiades could have saved it; and when the spring elections came round again, he was deposed from his command. The people, still hesitant, elected Demosthenes and Laches along with Nicias: but it was Nicias alone on whom the fate of the City now hung.
• • • • •
Two days later the news of Alcibiades’ fall from power reached Sparta, brought by a messenger whom Agis had specially commissioned to go to Athens to observe the elections. When he heard the result of the Assembly’s deliberations, the King was observed to smile to himself. That evening he held conference with the Ephors; and the next day the whole Spartan army, under his command, marched northwards against Argos.
• • • • •
Alcibiades to Axiochus: written from Argos:
‘You will know before this letter reaches you of the disaster we have suffered. Nicias sent me a highly equivocal note before we left Athens for Argos appointing me a “political adviser”—whatever that may be. I knew very well what he was at. Laches and Nicostratus, who were in command, obviously had orders from him to take their time: it was the most infuriating position I have ever found myself in. I could do nothing. I had no official standing. The one thing that was desperately needed was a string force to join Argos as soon as possible: we arrived when everything was over with a bare thousand men. Nicias again, of course. He couldn’t have created worse blood between us and the Argives if he’d taken a knife in person to their chief magistrate. Especially when there’s still such a strong pro-Spartan party there.
‘When we reached Argos I could almost have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so serious. The one thing Nicias didn’t bargain for was that there wouldn’t be a battle at all.
‘Agis caught the Argives well and truly: one column between them and their city, another to the north. Or so it appeared. And then, when it looked to his troops as if they were going to have an unanswerable victory, the impossible happened. One of the Argive Generals, and a man called Alciphron, who is the Spartan consul in Argos (this is significant, I think), called a parley with Agis before the battle began, said the Argives were ready to settle the whole matter by arbitration, and offered him a peace-treaty into the bargain. Agis didn’t consult his troops or allies at all; he had a word with one of the Ephors, and agreed on the spot. Then he withdrew his entire force.
‘Everybody was furious—or at least, both the armies were. The Spartans thought they were in an unbeatable position; so, by an odd coincidence, did the Argives. The Argive commander responsible for the truce was nearly stoned to death; and when Agis got back to Sparta he narrowly escaped with his life, I’m told, at the hands of the Ephors. What do you make of that?
‘There are two facts that go a long way to explain it. Agis knew what very few other people did, that the Boeotians who formed his third column of attack never arrived. If the Argives had learnt that, it might have given them some reason to complain about their missed opportunity; and it certainly explains why Agis was so ready to accept a truce when it was offered him. But I think the whole business goes deeper. If Agis saw the possibility of getting Argos back as an ally—and I don’t see why else an oligarchic Argive should be so ready to play into his hands—there was no point in wasting his and their men in a perfectly futile battle. If that is the truth I admire his courage. It must have taken some nerve to go back to the Ephors in Sparta and announce that he’d deliberately let the Argives get away. But it was to turn out worse for us than it did for him.
‘When we got there we could do nothing but march into Argos and hope we’d have a reasonable reception. Here was where I met my first difficulty. Laches and Nicostratus flatly refused to let me take part in any military operation, or even leave Argos without their permission. There was nothing I could do about it: I had no personal support; our thousand men were all picked by Nicias, and you know what that means. I had to sit helpless in Argos watching the oligarchs plotting a revolution behind our backs—they were all for going over to Sparta again—while our two commanders, instead of marching south at once against Agis, went off and wasted valuable time besieging Orchomenus, of all places. They said there were some valuable Spartan hostages there. But I knew, and they knew, and they knew that I knew they were simply doing what Nicias had told them to before they left—waiting to see which way the wind blew.
‘Can you imagine how I felt? To see the chance of a lifetime, the vindication of my whole policy, being brought to nothing—nothing—by these fools! But worse, as you know, was to come. Agis had patched up his differences with the Ephors by this time—though they appointed ten councillors to watch every move he made in battle—and got his army together again. He marched north by the same route, making for Argos and Tegea. That brought the Argives out. Nothing else could have done. It even brought our miserable thousand down from Orchomenus.
‘You know the result. The defeat at Mantinea was, I suppose, the worst we have suffered in the whole of this war. When I think what ten thousand—even five thousand—of our seasoned troops could have done to change the course of it, under Demosthenes or any of our good generals, I can scarcely bear to think of it. And where were they? On garrison duty in Thrace. Nicias had seen to that. Two years ago I thought I had broken him—I even sympathised with him—do you remember? By the Gods, it would have been better for me, for Athens and all of us, if he’d died before he ever came to power again. The incompetent fool. He sent another thousand men when the battle was lost. They might as well have stayed at home for all the good they did. My only consolation was the fact that both Laches and Nicostratus were killed. And what has been the result of it all? Nicias has hardly succeeded in making a friend of Sparta—in fact he has a war on his hands again—and he’s destroyed his one chance, through Argos, of bringing it to a successful conclusion.
‘In the last few days the one thing above all which I fought to prevent has happened. The Spartans sent an embassy here to Argos and offered them the choice of peace or war. The answer was never in much doubt. I did what I could to argue against the Spartan ambassador; but I could have saved my breath. You might as well know now what all Athens will know in a day or two. Argos has signed a treaty of alliance with Sparta, and the oligarchs are in power here. So much for all my hopes.
‘I shall be back in Athens within the week. It will be a different homecoming to my last one. Everything I have tried to do has failed. Failed, not through any fault of my own, but because of the stupidity, and fear, and short-sightedness of one man.
‘I would be grateful if you would warn my wife of my impending arrival. You can tell her, if you like, that whatever rumour says of me will probably be true; but that notwithstanding she has little to worry about on my account. Nicias’ failure has, at least temporarily, rescued me from personal danger.’
• • • • •
If the chapter of accidents in the Peloponnese had lowered Alcibiades’ reputation, they had hardly done credit to Nicias. With both Athens’ leading statesmen under something of a cloud, Hyperbolus saw his chance. The popular leader had good cause to dislike both of them, though for somewhat different reasons. Against Nicias he carried on the political feud bequeathed him by Cleon; this was inevitable. But Alcibiades had blatantly borrowed Cleon’s ideas after the tanner’s death, gathering round hi
mself in support of them a political club wholly distinct from Cleon’s own party, and by his personal prestige usurping the position that Hyperbolus felt should belong to him. He had watched with impotent fury while Alcibiades reaped the rewards of Cleon’s Argive policy; and none knew better than he the nature of that other, more far-reaching dream of conquest in the west.
With all this in mind, Hyperbolus decided to get either Nicias or Alcibiades exiled; and forthwith plunged into his first major political campaign. But his schemes went awry in a highly unexpected way, and the result was the best joke Athens had had for years; the fiasco remembered for generations as the Last Ostracism. What Alcibiades and Nicias arranged between themselves no one ever knew; but when the citizens gathered in the Assembly, and with time-honoured traditional ritual inscribed on potsherds the name of the man whose temporary exile would, in their opinion, most benefit the state, the name the magistrate read out after the counting was neither Alcibiades nor Nicias, but Hyperbolus himself.
At the party Axiochus gave that evening to celebrate the event, Alcibiades said: ‘Poor Hyperbolus.’
His uncle smiled. ‘Unfortunately,’ he observed, ‘that’s a trick that can only be used once. Simply because it was so funny. You’ve given Athens something to laugh at for weeks, agreed. But when they stop laughing, they’ll get angry. We’re serious-minded folk in this city, in a curious kind of way, and we don’t like seeing our institutions made ridiculous. I venture to prophesy there’ll never be another ostracism in Athens.’
Alcibiades thought this over for a minute, frowning. Then he said, lightly, ‘And where is our illustrious lamp-maker going to spend his meritorious exile?’
‘I can tell you that,’ said Adeimantus, from farther down the table: ‘Samos. And that reminds me. I’ve got a message for you from a man serving in the fleet there.’
‘Who’s that?’ asked Alcibiades, only half attending.
‘Thrasyllus.’
‘Thrasyllus? I don’t know anyone of that name.’
‘I thought you might have forgotten,’ said Adeimantus, an odd expression on his face. ‘So did he. Do you remember a party Anytus gave, years ago, when we went in and stole half his gold plate for a joke? And the poor fellow you brought along, with hardly a rag to his back, and gave it all to?’
Several faces turned in Alcibiades’ direction. Embarrassed, he said: ‘I seem to remember something of the sort. What was the message?’
‘He’s a hoplite now. He wanted you to know that he had enough money not to stand under an obligation to anyone.’
‘Was that all?’
Adeimantus nodded, then said: ‘Oh, I forgot. He said that when you and he met again, it would be on a different footing.’
Chapter 24
There was no war, and there was no peace. Two hundred Athenian dead lay on the field of Mantinea, spies and revolutionaries plotted in Argos, the unstable Macedonian King was stirring up trouble again in Thrace. Everywhere uneasy dread showed in men’s faces.; rumour and speculation stole in like unwanted ghosts on discussions of philosophy, in. the armouries spears and shields stood ready and polished; day and night the hammers sounded in the dockyards of the Piraeus. Yet officially Sparta and Athens were still allies, and Nicias clung to this with the obstinate optimism of a weak and frightened man. It was as if he longed for another Periclean age of peace, in which he should play the part of his great predecessor. Despite Athens’ poverty, the long-abandoned building programme was called into being again, and the mason’s chisel became as busy as the shipwright’s adze. The great temple of Erechtheus, with its porches and maidens, was only a beginning.
Yet for those who had eyes to see it, the world of Pericles had passed away irrevocably, destroyed by years of privation and heartbreak, its ideals undermined with the ruthless necessities of war. This renaissance was bursting out with strange and unknown fruits. New gods invaded Athens from the east to supply a deep unspoken need, driving out the cold immeasurably distant Olympians: secret gods in whose honour strange mysteries were celebrated, offering to a despairing population the hope of new and eternal life. Such was the Orphic creed.; and with it came others: Asclepius, the god of healing, who gave miraculous cures to those who slept in his temples: queer orgiastic goddesses from Thrace or Phrygia, Bendis and Cotytto, manifestations of that Great Mother of fertility whose roots lay deep in the past of the Greek people. Sailors and merchants brought them from the ports of the Orient, and their worship spread like wildfire among the slaves and workers of the Piraeus.
Soon the popularity of such cults spread from the Port to the City, and fashionable young men deserted the gods of their fathers for the new attractions of these forbidden rites. It was Pulytion who, one day in the spring of that year, had Alcibiades initiated into the worship of the Great Mother of Phrygia. He had gone, as he thought, for amusement, for a new experience. He was already an initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the City’s one official mystery cult; and he imagined that this would be a pale reflection of the same time-worn ceremony. But he found himself stirred as he had never believed possible. It was not only the hypnotic rhythm of the drums, the passionate and completely un-Greek abandon of the secret ritual: the enthusiasm, the utter belief of the participants was something that struck into the very depths of his being. His head swimming, his eyes fixed on the image of the Goddess, he felt for the first time a hitherto unknown emotion, intoxicating and all-compelling, to which a later generation, better versed in its dangerous powers, was to give the name of ecstasy.
• • • • •
Everyone in Argos, men women and children, had turned out to help in the building of the long walls southward to the sea, some three miles distant. Alcibiades had had a busy morning with the engineers, riding over the low ground, marking out the best line for the builders to take. Now he sat his horse in the August sunlight and watched them go to work. He had brought a corps of trained craftsmen with him from, Athens—masons, carpenters and others—to direct operations; but the Argives provided the labour. His eye followed the long line of men digging the foundations, stripped to the waist, their brown backs rising and falling as they plied their shovels; then wandered to the women, wheeling blocks of dressed stone in barrows, carrying sacks of lime or baulks of timber on their shoulders, their bare feet splaying in the dust with the weight of their burden. At this rate they should have the walls finished in less than a month.
He reflected on the completely unexpected train of events that had brought him back. To be elected General again was curious enough, even if it had meant once more having Nicias for a colleague. The year before would have been more use; but there was nothing to be gained from complaining about that. The will of the people is sovereign, he said to himself; but the Gods alone determine what leads them to formulate it.
And now this business of Argos . . . It was not long after he had been elected that news had come of the democratic revolution. The pro-Athenian party had waited until the Spartans were occupied with one of their many religious festivals, and had then staged a small civil war, overthrowing the oligarchic government, and going through the streets slaughtering any of their adherents they could find. If the Spartans had taken quick action, this uprising would have come to nothing. But they seemed to be suffering from chronic indecision—a not infrequent complaint of theirs.
While all this was going on, the Argive democrats had made fresh approaches to Athens; and Alcibiades, scarcely believing the fresh chance he had been given, and acting rapidly on his own initiative, had collected his workmen and ridden post-haste to Argos, seeing it already in his mind’s eye as a new fortress from which to launch raids into the Peloponnese.
Now he surveyed the scene with some satisfaction. Things could hardly have gone better. But by now he had learnt to distrust even the most certain of the opportunities which Fate presented to him.
Dusk began to fall. Beyond the low hills to the south-east lay the gaunt abandoned ruins of Tiryns, mute witness to a forgotten
people whose trade had been war, and who had built their great keeps as if to defy the very Gods themselves.. Thinking of them, and naming them for good luck as he went, Alcibiades wheeled his horse round and rode back into the city.
• • • • •
But with the coming of spring the Spartan Council finally took action. If Agis expected Argos to be betrayed to him, as was rumoured, he mistook his men; all he could do was to destroy the walls that Alcibiades had built. This was hardly calculated to satisfy him. His temper at the obstruction of his plans was not improved by the knowledge that the Ephors were spying on all his movements; and his fear and anger vented themselves on the tiny town of Hysiae in the south-west of the Argolid, which he had to pass on his inglorious retreat to Sparta. He marched in unopposed, and his troops massacred the entire population. With this proof of his energy and loyalty safely provided, he once more crossed the border; and on the third day his troops dispersed on the outskirts of Sparta.
Three months later Alcibiades, Nicias, and the democratic party of Argos formally ratified a defensive alliance; and Alcibiades personally deported the Argive oligarchs into exile on a remote Aegean island. There were a few raised eyebrows at this. Alcibiades, caught off his guard, remarked angrily that the fellows were damned rebels and deserved all they got; then, feeling faintly ridiculous, put it about that he had arranged the whole thing to annoy Nicias.
