Tides of War, a Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War

by Steven Pressfield

  It was Alcibiades himself who repudiated this. “I would not take Athens as a mistress,” he asserted, “but a bride.”

  Many have derided this quip as facile and disingenuous, contending that Alcibiades only acceded to the summoners' decree because he believed he had in place at Athens sufficient cohorts to carry his case; or that his agents had already suborned ample in authority to effect his exoneration. I don't believe this. I think he meant exactly what he said. I allege this not in defense of the man, to characterize him as chivalrous or honor-compassed (though he was both), for consider: such a statement bespeaks an arrogance both supreme and breathtaking.

  That was how he felt, I believe. Athens was in his view not nation to be served, but consort to be won; to gain her by means other than her own freely offered affection would be to dishonor her and himself. He craved not love nor power but both, each fed by and founded upon the other.

  I had conjured none of this then, as the deputies served their summons beside the beached Artemisia. All, I account, however, comprised Alcibiades' reflection. I regarded him. His expression was informed neither by rage nor vindictiveness, though he came subsequently to act with both in abundance. What I perceived was sorrow. I believe he stood in that instant apart from himself and his fate, as a man at the peak of peril will be lifted and granted vision of the full field. Like a master gamesman, Alcibiades perceived move and countermove four and five turns ahead, all boding evil, yet could discern no masterstroke by which he or his city could escape this end.

  “What will you do?” Euryptolemus asked his cousin.

  Alcibiades stared gravely, straight ahead.

  “Not sail home to be murdered, that much is certain.”

  XIX

  A CHRONICLER OF STRIFE

  Alcibiades fled at Thurii. To Argos first, men said, then Elis when that became too hot, one jump ahead of the state agents and fee hunters. My brother was among the military posse, led by the crew of the Salaminia, that chased him around Italy's boot.

  … these vaunted elite of the state galley are a pretty confection, brother. Though of the cult of Ajax and thus kinsmen of their prey, they hunt him as he were a rabid dog. At Padras he was rumored to be fled to an inn; our search party torched the site in darkness, nearly incinerating a dozen innocents, nor tarried to proffer reparation, but another rumor of our quarry's whereabouts drove us on a further wild-goose chase. These buggers play for keeps, Pommo. They put one poor lad to the cheese grater, though the boy was no older than twelve. Next up was a sprat fisher. These heirs of Eurysaces took him two miles out and, heaving first one of his sons, then the other into the drink to drown, at last chucked the skipper himself. Such stunts these agents of the state perform with a dry eye and a wisecrack.

  Clearly they fear the consequences of returning home without their charge; yet it is more than this, Pommo. Why do they hate him so? His own kinsmen! They own a zealotry more void of pity than the partisans we used to see in the islands. This very note must be smuggled out. If these birds cadge a peek at it, they will stretch my hide, and yours, upon the nearest door.

  Alcibiades was not the only commander ordered home for trial.

  Mantitheus, too, was indicted, trierarch of the Penelope, as was Antiochus, the ablest pilot in Greece, Adeimantus, and Alcibiades' cousin also named Alcibiades. Six other officers were summoned as well.

  From my cousin Simon at Athens:

  …Salaminia returned. No Alcibiades. He legged it in Italy, on hearing the Assembly had condemned him to death in absentia, though you probably have this news already. “I will let Athens know,” he is said to have pronounced, “that I am very much alive.”

  Winter came. With Alcibiades and his companions gone, the fleet had lost not only its boldest and most enterprising officers but those most passionately devoted to the expedition. Nicias and Lamachus now shared command. At once all initiative fled. Instead of advancing with vigor against the cities of Sicily, cutting Syracuse off from her natural allies, Nicias made one halfhearted pass at cowing her directly, then ordered the fleet to retire for winter to Catana. I languished there two months before Pandora was dispatched, mercifully, to Iapygia, seeking horses for the cavalry. Lion was there too, with Medusa.

  Iapygia, as you know, is the heel of Italy's boot. It blows like hell up there, wild gales the non-Greek natives call nocapelli, bald heads. You get all the news, though; every vessel puts in at Caras, and the crews, flush with gossip, are glad of a toasty hearth to spill it in. Lion and I learned of our absconded commander from the master of a Tyrrhenian coaster who had it from a boatswain of Corinth who had run Conon's blockade of the gulf. This Corinthian had accompanied his captain to Sparta; he had passed two evenings in the Hyacinthieum and even been permitted upon the porticoes of the apella, the Assembly, where foreigners are occasionally licensed to attend upon the debate within.

  Alcibiades had fled neither to Italy nor to the moon, imparted our informant. He was at Sparta. “And not on the gibbet either. But free and in his glory, the cynosure of all Lacedaemon!”

  This intelligence was greeted with hooting disbelief by the mariners who packed the public room.

  “This same perfumed coxcomb,” our captain continued, unperturbed, “who in the Assembly of Athens swathed himself in purple and trailed his robe astern in the dust, this same profligate and libertine, I say, in short this consummate Athenian, now in Sparta has recast himself and hatched a new Alcibiades, unrecognizable to all who knew him hitherto.

  “This new Alcibiades garments himself in plain Spartan scarlet, tramps about with soles unshod, curls cascading to his shoulders in the Lacedaemonian style. He takes his meals in the common mess, bathes in the frigid Eurotas, and lays himself down each night upon a bed of reeds. He dines on black broth and takes wine only in moderation. Of speech he is as parsimonious as if words were gold and he a miser. At break of day one may discover him afield and asweat, training upon the running course. Forenoon finds him in the gymnasium or upon the athletic grounds, into whose games he plunges with a passion exceeding even that of his most ardent and accomplished hosts. In short the man has become more spartan than the Spartans, and they idolize him for it. Boys trail him about, Peers compete to call him comrade, and women…well, the laws of Lycurgus promote polyandry, as you know, so that even men's wives may dote openly upon this paragon of whom all declare,

  … here is not a second Achilles, but the man, the very man himself.”

  The seamen responded with an anthem of knuckle raps on the benchtops. Later Lion and I interrogated the Tyrrhenian aside in a more sober vein. What had his friend reported of Alcibiades' intentions? Clearly our erstwhile commander had not decamped to Sparta to play at ball or train on the track.

  “That square of sail I trimmed from my fable, mates. I doubted it would prompt a smile.”

  “Spill it now, friend.”

  “He works against you, brothers, and with all his bowels. That avidity with which he in past paid court to Athens, with matching gall he now plots her ruin. You know what stay-at-homes the Lacedaemonians are and how tardy to act. Well, Alcibiades gave them an earful of Athenian fire, enough to rouse even those boneheads from their slumber.

  “The Spartans had held the fate of Sicily as not affecting their interests. Alcibiades apprised them otherwise. Who, he inquired, would know better the expedition's object than himself, its author? This he declared to be neither Sicily, Italy, nor Carthage, but these, conquered, to serve as stepping-stones to an assault upon the Peloponnese, whose ultimate aim was the conquest of Sparta herself. In terms most passionate he exhorted his hosts to dispatch at once to Syracuse all aid they could spare and proffered diverse other counsels to bring evil upon his countrymen.”

  We returned to Catana with the spring. The place was gloomier, even, than I remembered. Curfew had been instituted. Wages came late, and in chits not coin; there were brawls every payday.

  Simon reports Alcibiades' odor at home:

  … the Assembly h
as gone so far as to enact a motion of imprecation; the Eumolpid priests have placed a curse upon him.

  How Homeric! So many turned out, it sparked a riot. This is no joke, Pommo. Alcibiades will doubtless seek to bring the Spartan army against you, or at least have them dispatch a crack general.

  Win fast, cousin. Or better, get home.

  On the second of Munychion the army moved out for Syracuse.

  Lion brought his new woman Berenice. We held all in common, including correspondence. When I finished reading aloud cousin Simon's letter, Berenice asked if she might have it. “For Lion's historia.”

  My brother was compiling a chronicle of the war.

  “Why the hell shouldn't I? I know my alphas and betas as well as the next moron. Besides, here is a tale worth telling, one whose publication cannot fail to produce fortune and renown and relieve its author ever after of squandering his hours with such as yourself.”

  I declared this a noble ambition.

  “Attend my logic, Pommo. These verses of Homer:

  …into the manslaughter advanced Peleus' peerless son, god-born Achilles, and in their ranks he broke the enemy before him..

  “Or this:

  … these he left in numbers upon the field, a feast for dogs and crows..

  “Now I put this to you, brother. Who would you and I be, upon that thousand-years-gone field? Not Achilles, that's certain! We'd be the luckless bastards mowed down beneath his blade. And our

  obituary? One louse-ridden line, lumped with fifty other nameless ciphers. Yet these are the men, don't you see, whose story cries out most to be told. Our story! By the gods, we are heroes too.

  And is not the paying public comprised precisely of such as we?

  Other gentlemen of the armored infantry. They will eat up my narrative, which I will recite to unceasing citation within the salons and auditoria of our nation. I may even set it to music and accompany myself on the lyre.”

  A number of mates had clustered with their women. And who, our comrade Chowder inquired, will play Achilles to your Homer?

  Why, Alcibiades of course!

  “The Iliad,” Lion reedified his adherents, “narrates the tale of the wrath of Achilles and the destruction in its train which wreaked havoc upon the Achaeans, hurling in their hosts to hell stout souls of heroes…

  “Consider, friends. Wronged by his king and commander, Achilles sheathes his blade and retires to his tent. This prayer he makes: that his countrymen discover, by the sufferings they must now endure, how far the best of them he is, and bemoan bitterly that they have let him be so ignobly used.

  “Is not Alcibiades' equation identical, my friends, excepting only this: our modern Achilles has gone his counterpart one better. Not only had he retired from contending at our side, depriving us of his skills and counsel, but now he yokes himself to the cause of our enemy, applying his full rage and resourcefulness in their interest, against us.”

  Lion's listeners began to squirm.

  “It gets worse, brothers. For this enemy, Sparta, has never wanted in valor or skill in warfare. All she lacks is that which our contemporary Achilles may provide her: vision and audacity.

  Alcibiades will rouse this enemy to initiatives she would never have undertaken absent his urgings and provide her with masterstrokes of strategy she could never have advanced upon her own.”

  “Enough, Lion!” Chowder elevated his palms.

  “Ah, friends, you fail yet to perceive the genius of my construct.

  For my epic, unlike Homer's, discovers its significance not among divinely spawned champions and their destinies, but here in the dirt with us sons of mortals who must endure them. Upon us, the grimy heroes of my tale, falls the necessity to gift it with significance. Alcibiades will serve our story, not we his. This is how modern war differs from mythic.”

  To my cousin, that summer:

  … we are in action at last, if you can call building a wall action.

  The army took the heights, called Epipolae, overlooking the city.

  A few hundred killed, mostly theirs. This is what it is like. We start our wall. The Syracusans commence a counterwall at right angles to cut ours off. They march out in mass and erect a stockade. Behind this they bring the counterwall out, then build another stockade and continue. They are scared piss less and work feverishly.

  Several days later:

  … the picked companies attacked their wall at noon, when the sun's heat renders all insensate. Tore it down. They built a second, across the marsh called Feverside adjacent the harbor. Our marines were called up in support of about two thousand heavy infantry. We marched into the swamp carrying doors and boards to layover the muck. At one point our lads were planting their own bodies, upon which we trod and fought from. At the height of this nastiness, the fleet, which had been held back up north, sailed into the harbor. That did it. The Syracusans ran for cover.

  Lamachus was killed, however. Now Nicias holds sale command.

  The Syracusans are beaten, though. It is only a matter of raising our wall, harbor to sea, and completing the investment of the city. That done, Syracuse is cooked.

  The architect in charge was Callimachus son of Callicrates, who had built the third Long Wall for Pericles. He had six plants producing bricks and twenty forges fabricating fittings. Nicias had taken the point called Plemmyrium, renamed the Rock for its want of water, across the harbor mouth from the city. Syracuse was now blockaded by sea. The enemy no longer ventured out to fight.

  … the broken ground east of the city had been, before we arrived, a pleasant suburb of temples and promenades. There was a boys' school, residential blocks, a ball field. Now it's all rubble. Every house, wall, and road has been demolished. The stones are now part of the wall. All trees have been felled for timber for forms, inclines, and stockades; not a blade of grass remains for miles. The only edifice spared is a mill for the bakers' ovens. The army and its followers are a hundred thousand. The tent city is big as Syracuse; it has not lanes but boulevards. Latrines are numbered; otherwise one loses his way taking a crap.

  Across the plain, piles of stone are set along the line where the wall will advance. Before these are spiked ditches, with palisades atop. At night the two and a half miles from harbor to sea are lit solid with bonfires and torches. It is spectacular. This of course does not account the fleet, at anchor in the harbor or visible running drills at sea. It is literally one city besieging another.

  Lion and I trekked down to visit Telamon, whose Arcadians were stationed at the southern end of the wall, a pretty park area called the Olympieum. The mercenary commended his comrade's literary undertakings but with a wry amusement that exasperated the aspiring historian. Lion wanted Telamon's views. Our mentor regarded him as if he had gone balmy.

  Lion offered pay. This turned the trick. The topic was heroism.

  Was the valor of men in mass as worthy of note as that of the solitary champion?

  “We have a proverb in my country,” Telamon declared: Heroism makes good song but poor soup.

  This means steer wide of champions. Passion is their coin. Lion has chosen his hero well in Alcibiades, for this creature breathes passion and arouses it. He will end badly.”

  Lion pressed our mate to elaborate.

  “In Arcadia we build no cities; this is how we like it. The city is the spawning ground of passion and the hero. Who is more consummately a man of the city than Alcibiades?”

  “Are you saying, Telamon, that heroism has no place for you, a professional soldier?”

  “Heroes are recognized by their tombs.”

  At this I protested. Telamon himself was a hero!

  “You confound prudence with valor, Pommo. If I fight up front, it's because I find it safer. And if I fight to win, well… the dead line up before no paymaster.”

  Telamon had said all he wished; he stood to depart. Lion pressed. “What about pay, my friend? Surely you feel passion for this.”

  “I use money but never permit money to use
me. To serve for pay sets one at a remove from the object of his or his commander's desire. This is money's proper use; it renders service in its name a virtue. Love of country or glory, on the other hand, unites one to the object of his desire. This makes it a vice. The patriot and the fool serve without pay.”

  “The patriot because he loves his country,” proposed Lion.

  “Because he loves himself. For what is a man's country but the multiplied reflection of himself, and what is this but vanity? Again your choice of champion is surpassing, my friend, for who of all men loves himself more than Alcibiades? And who more personifies love of country?”

  “And is love of country a vice?”

  “Less a vice than a folly. But then all love is folly, if by love one means that which one clasps to his heart, rendering no distinction between it and himself.”

  “Then Alcibiades by your measure is a slave to Athens?”

  “None surpasses him in abjection.”

  “Even as he works with might and main against her?”

  “Same coin, obverse side.”

  “Then we ourselves,” Lion suggested, indicating the soldiers and marines attending within the tent, “are fools and slaves?” “You serve that which you value.”

  “And what do you serve, Telamon? Other than money.”

  Indignation informed Lion's tone. He was offended. Telamon smiled.

  “I serve the gods,” he declared.

  “Wail…”

  “The gods, I said. Them I serve.”

  And he exited.

  Construction continued on the wall. The expedition had ceased to be war, if it ever had been. It had become public works. There was a defect to this. Men ceasing to act as warriors cease to be warriors.

  By midsummer it began to show. Soldiers now paid others to stand their watches and bought their way out of labor on the wall.

  They hired Sicels, the non-Greek natives, or employed camp followers, setting themselves at idleness. Even sailors began enlisting surrogates. When their officers sought to check this, the men voted them out and replaced them with commanders who knew, like the kit of the marble fox, from which tit flowed milk and which water.