The Life of Alcibiades
Page 13
cused person of good character pass unquestioned, owing to the rascality
of the informer” (6.53.2).
In order both to provide a sense of the atmosphere and to explain what
happened to Alcibiades, here are the charges of which we are aware. Two
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of them preceded the departure of the expedition; the others came after
it. Of the fi rst two, one came (it was said) from a slave, the other from a
metic. The fi rst concerned the mysteries and named Alcibiades; the second
concerned the two affairs and did not name him. But that was not the end
of it.
First there was a shocking charge about the herms. A man named Dio-
cleides said he had seen, by the light of the moon, some three hundred
people dividing into suspicious groups. He recognized forty-two of them.
Catastrophic! He named two members of the Council, members of aris-
tocratic families like Leogoras, a brother of Nicias, Critias . . . , people
belonging to the ruling class who gave the appearance of a vast oligarchic
conspiracy. A state of emergency was decreed, armed citizens gathered in
the night in different parts of the city. There was panic: it grew stronger
when the rumor, widely accepted, started to spread that troops of Boeo-
tians were moving toward Attica, in league with Sparta. 14 The plot had become an international crisis. Important men fl ed; others were arrested.
Diocleides had, in fact, lied: he spoke of the light of the moon, but the
sacrilege had occurred during the new moon. Questioned, he admitted
that he had been urged to make this false charge by two people—one of
whom was Alcibiades’s cousin. 15
However, the affair backfi red. Among the accused was one Leogoras
and his son Andocides. After his arrest, Andocides decided, with a prom-
ise of immunity, to confess, by way of a denunciation. He admitted that
his hetaereia was guilty. 16 He spared his father and other people accused by Diocleides, but gave names: these were the same people whom Teucrus had denounced (his second denunciation), and four other people who
were able to fl ee.
Andocides was supposed to enjoy immunity, but his guilt was never
really erased. He was exiled by a decree relating to impiety and spent the
rest of his life without ever returning to Athens; we know this from his
speeches. From the same source, we also have a vivid impression of his
dramatic experiences: his account remains one of the fi rst examples of
14 . 6.61.2. Andocides 1.45.
15 . There is no evidence that this person (Alcibiades of Phlegonte) acted in concert with his famous cousin, but he may have wanted to save him by this ugly initiative.
16 . He himself was innocent; his friend had taken advantage of the fact that he was injured (1.61–62).
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conscience evinced in Greek literature. It is worth the trouble to quote
passages, even though the account concerns Alcibiades only indirectly:
it gives us some idea of the circumstances at the time. It might even call
to mind certain situations that accused persons, from different countries,
have known in our time. Andocides, with his supporters, is in prison; they
weep, they lament. A cousin, or a friend 17 comes to fi nd him and says: “I beg of you: if you have heard anything concerning this affair, disclose it.
Save yourself; save your father, who must be dearer to you than anyone in
the world; save your brother-in-law.” And Andocides is overcome: “How
unhappy I am, fallen into the worst distress, must I suffer that my relatives
perish unjustly?” He describes his agonies, says how he imagines confess-
ing, and indicates that he would feel less responsible given that among the
guilty, some had already been executed and others had taken fl ight. He
counted them: there were still four, but in danger; and he ended his night
of anguish by deciding that it is his duty to save the innocent. 18
With this confession the affair of the herms appeared to be resolved (al-
though Thucydides remained doubtful); and the city itself, on the whole,
had found immediate and palpable relief. 19
Was that the end of it? Regarding the herms, yes, but not the mysteries.
What came next was surprising: we know about two more accusations,
both relating to the mysteries. The very last one did not concern Alcibi-
ades at all, but the preceding one was enough: it proved fatal for him.
It came from a woman named Agariste, who belonged to one of the
important families. Was it a simple concern for the truth that caused her,
after several weeks of delay, to come forward? In any case, she did. She
came to say that she knew about a parody of the mysteries held, not in
the home of Poulytion, but in that of Charmides. Charmides (not to be
confused with Plato’s Charmides) was a member of Alcibiades’s hetaereia .
And Alcibiades was supposed to have participated, as well as his uncle
Axiochus. What was worse, she said it involved the Mysteries of Eleusis,
and Alcibiades had a major part in the farce; he played the hierophant,
meaning the principal offi ciant responsible for the fi nal initiation.
17 . Andocides named his cousin Charmides (48), whom he also incriminated in the mys-
teries. Plutarch names one of his friends, Timaeus. There may be different pressures; and the advice of Timaeus, very realistic, would not have constituted a good defense for Andocides.
18 . This is taken from 1.48–55.
19. Thucydides 6.60.5.
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That was the last straw! Another indictment was brought charging Al-
cibiades. And on the belief that he should be judged immediately, an offi -
cial ship, the Salaminia , was sent to Sicily to fi nd him and bring him back.
As we can see, the whole business was not a credit to Athens. It was not
a credit to the demos or to the city, acting in response to a wave of panic
and hasty accusations. Nor was it a credit to the opposition, who appear
to have fallen into a number of suspected parties. The hetaereiai were
active. Pressures were felt on all sides. No one cared about the means, as
long as they could harm their enemies and help their friends. These fi ghts
were political, certainly; but they were above all personal. And they were
sordid.
We would not dare to compare this miasma with more modern times,
even recent ones. But we can say that this period of Athenian history of-
fers a refl ection, in a magnifying mirror, of the problems that can arise
in a democracy when the fi ghts between factions overtake regard for the
common good and the rules of simple morality.
Alcibiades had done no worse than others. He had been imprudent,
even bold and provocative. He must have joined in the sacrilege. But that
was all. His biggest mistake was to have made enemies. And at the mo-
ment, his enemies wanted his hide.
Would he return? How could he not return?
“Alcibiades, with his own ship and his fellow accused, accordingly
sailed off with the Salaminia from Sicily, as though to return to Athens,
and went with the ship as far as Thurii, and there they left it and disap-
peared, being afraid to go home for trial with such a prejudice existing
Alcibiades and his companions, and at length, as they were nowhere to be
found, set sail and departed. Alcibiades, now an outlaw, crossed in a boat
not long after from Thurii to the Peloponnesus; and the Athenians passed
sentence of death by default upon him and those in his company.” 20
It is poignant to consider that a stone 21 preserves for us testimony of the sale of his property that was held one year later. In the inscription, we
fi nd tables and beds from the dining room. We cannot help thinking of the
day when Alcibiades invited Socrates, planning to yield to the seduction
20 . Thucydides 6.62.6–7.
21 . IG I2 325–34, with supplements. See above, chapter 1.
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that never came. Plato’s text enabled us to enter a domain that seemed an
imaginary one, out of time: the text of the inscription brings us back to the
reality, and tragic fragility, of that scene. A bed, sold among confi scated
property, having belonged to a man once heaped with good fortune, today
an outlaw.
At once we realize that all the fabulous stories were true, just as true as
the disaster that now befell Alcibiades.
And the expedition? The grand plan?
We will never be able to gauge the consequences of Alcibiades’s exile, or
what might have been the outcome of the enterprise in which he believed.
Without a doubt, it was imprudent. As Nicias had said, Sicily was
far away, its cities were powerful and might unite. That possibility had
appeared at the time of the preceding expedition; and Hermocrates, the
Syracusan, knew how to play his hand. The risk grew more real at the
time of the great expedition because of Hermocrates. Thucydides leaves
a very clear picture of his acts, letting us in on the negotiations at Cama-
rina shortly after the departure of Alcibiades. Camarina was allied with
Athens, and the Athenians counted on its support. Hermocrates shows up
with a delegation from Syracuse at the same time as the Athenian Euphe-
mus with his compatriots. Both spoke. Hermocrates claimed again, as he
had at the congress of Gela, mentioned above, that they were in the midst
of an imperialist takeover, that the help and assistance Athens claimed to
be offering her allies was nothing more than a specious pretext. In brief,
he brought accusations, charges, and called for a united resistance. The
result: the people of Camarina, sharply divided and unsure about the fu-
ture, remained allied to both sides; but once Syracuse had guaranteed its
military support, Camarina sent troops to aid the city. And she was not
the only one. Thucydides’s entire account is fi lled with the troops that
rallied to Syracuse; and, when Camarina did, even Gela sent reinforce-
ments. Thucydides says: “Indeed, almost the whole of Sicily, except the
Agrigentines, who were neutral, now ceased merely to watch events as it
had previously been doing and actively joined Syracuse against the Athe-
nians” (7.33.2).
But this strength of Syracuse, around which the cities gathered, came
most of all from its maritime and naval initiatives. Nicias had warned the
Athenians that Selinunte and Syracuse were cities with strong navies. Their
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experience helped them. And we know that the Athenian fl eet, so large
and so proudly developed, would end up blocked, and then destroyed, in
the straits of Syracuse. Nicias was not wrong to warn of the danger.
He had seen the warnings confi rmed on many fronts. But he had stressed
the fact that they were leaving Greece itself with an unstable peace and
enemies ready to take up arms at the fi rst opportunity. What really made
Syracuse succeed was Sparta’s help. Shortly after the start of hostilities,
Sparta would help Syracuse in two ways: by sending a capable leader and
also by resuming the war in Greece, by moving to set up a base in Attica. 22
The expedition was not prudent, that much is clear. But we must not
forget that nothing had gone as Alcibiades wished: the “affairs” had
arisen against him, and the consequences of his exile changed everything.
The Sicilian cities did not rally to Athens, it was true. But who was
supposed to persuade them? Who had started working on that? Who was
capable of being understood? Alcibiades and no one else. That was the
policy he planned to lead; and he had had only a few weeks to work on
it. Moreover, it was he who had wanted the expedition and who believed
it would work. When Nicias was left at the head of Athenian forces, fi rst
with Lamachus and then alone, how could he have led with conviction
and zeal an expedition he considered futile and bound to fail? Not to
mention the fact that the prosecution of the top general as well as of other
members of the expeditionary force could only have had a devastating
effect on morale.
Thucydides understood perfectly this dual responsibility. He was not a
man of single causes and simplistic explanations. He separated the various
factors.
He said and repeated that the expedition was seriously imprudent and
that Athens failed to recognize the scope of its undertakings. He had de-
clared just that in the opening phrases of book 6: “Most of the Athenians
had no idea of the size of the island and of the number of its inhabitants,
Hellenic and barbarian, and they did not take into account that they were
undertaking a war not much inferior to that against the Peloponnesians”
(6.1.1). He also shows that Alcibiades had thrust the Athenians into this
enterprise partly to oppose his adversary Nicias, and, in the best case, to
22. See chapter 6.
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“gain in wealth and reputation by means of his successes” (6.15.2). The
imprudence was condemned, and his motives were denounced.
But the gravity of that mistake, for which Athens was going to pay
dearly, can only be seen in view of what Athens did once the decision
was made. And Thucydides has left us two lines on the subject, clear and
defi nitive. They deserve consideration.
One bears directly on Alcibiades. It analyzes the reasons that inspired
the behavior of his enemies and states how serious the consequences of
their conduct were: “And this later on had not a little to do with the ruin
of the Athenian state” (6.15.3). Is this about the lack of prudence of the
expedition? Not at all! It is about the exile of Alcibiades: “Although in his
public life his conduct of the war was as good as could be desired, in his
private life his habits gave offense to everyone, and caused them to com-
mit affairs to other hands, and thus before long to ruin the city” (6.15.4).
As we indicated in chapter 2, this text goes beyond the context of the
Sicilian expedition and, in a bold juxtaposition, refers to the fi nal disaster
of 404. What is of interest here is the rigorous distinction drawn between
Alcibiades’s early imprudence and the disservice to the city by his enemies,
who deprived Athens of the help he could have given her.
In his great ju
dgment of Pericles, written after the fi nal defeat of 404,
we fi nd exactly the same relationship, when Thucydides says: “This, as
might have been expected in a great and sovereign state, produced a host
of blunders, and among them the Sicilian expedition” (2.65.11). He uses
the word “blunders.” The condemnation is clear, as it is in book 6. But as
he does there, he follows that with a qualifi cation, and the text continues
and specifi es the expedition: “Though this failed not so much through a
miscalculation of the power of those against whom it was sent, as through
a fault in the senders in not taking the best measures afterward to assist
those who had gone out, but choosing rather to occupy themselves with
private cabals for the leadership of the commons, by which they not only
paralyzed operations in the fi eld, but also fi rst introduced civil discord
at home” (2.65.11). Once again this sentence can mislead us, because it
condenses so tightly all the facts grouped around the Sicilian expedition
and everything that followed, including the internal fi ghting, the start of
the civil war, Alcibiades’s fi nal exploits—the entire political life of Athens
from 416 to 404. But the relationship this sentence establishes regarding
the expedition to Sicily is, once more, perfectly clear. The expedition was
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a blunder, but not the worst one: it was “less . . . than” or, to translate
word for word, “not as bad as.” Thucydides knows: the failures of history
(or of life) rarely result from a single circumstance. He liked to distinguish
the various levels of causality: they were rarely as clear as they were in
this case.
He has still not specifi ed, in either of the two passages, what would
make the exile of Alcibiades so serious. It is time to state it: Alcibiades,
whom we left feigning cooperation on the Athenian ship that had come to
summon him to appear, may have hesitated about the direction he should
take. But where did he go? He went to Sparta and gave his support to the
Lacedaemonians. In other words, his exile was not simply a factor against
Athens, but a factor favoring her enemies. We shall see him, like a single
player playing against himself, taking the part of his opponent, sometimes