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

by Steven Pressfield

  Charicles rose, the would-be torture master. “Why go to such extravagant lengths to ruin us, Alcibiades? Why not simply employ murder? We would.”

  Alcibiades laughed. “That would not be as much fun!” Then with an expression sober as stone repeated that he stood in absolute earnest about the plan.

  “Balls!” rejoined his foe. “I'll stand with you in hell before Persepolis.” And he stalked from the stage.

  Debate protracted far into the night, with much propounded by Critias, Cleophon, and Anytus, arguing their separate points of view, Critias as expected favoring alliance with Sparta but apprehensive about the people's response and Anytus attacking the plan as “un-Athenian” and in fact treasonous, meaning he believed Alcibiades trod the city as a stone to grander ends, and in fact cared nothing for Athens save as “a bauble with which to encrust your tiara.” To Anytus' credit he spoke this straight out to his foe, nor censored candor in any form.

  Past midnight I retired with the younger Pericles to the cubby we shared. For some time voices could be heard from the hall; at last the lodge fell silent. Sleep after such a symposium proved elusive, however; waking with an appetite, my room fellow and I crept down to raid the larder. To our astonishment Alcibiades was awake, in the kitchen, alone save his secretary, dictating correspondence. “My dear Pommo and Pericles! What calls you forth, a late supper or an early dinner?”

  He rose at once and, drawing benches to the great table, insisted on serving as chefs apprentice, to prepare us a snack of cold meat and breads. He dismissed his weary secretary and, inquiring of our welfare and that of our families, set to his task.

  “l couldn't summon the pluck to inquire in the presence of the others, Alcibiades,” our host's kinsman seized the moment to venture, “but can you truly be serious about this Persian business?”

  “Sober as a shroud, my friend.”

  “Surely you can't expect this night's synod to remain privileged.

  It wouldn't surprise me if reports were speeding now on the road to Athens.”

  Alcibiades smiled. “Tonight's caucus was for many audiences, Pericles, least of all those assembled to receive it firsthand.

  “ Alcibiades drew up and, his speech altering into that tenor of confidentiality which may not be dissimulated, addressed us as a master his acolytes or a hierophant his mystae. “Understand what may be accomplished. Victory over Sparta is a chimera. Persian treasure or no, her army remains invincible. Nor would one wish to overthrow her even if he could, lest such a consequence, in Cimon's phrase, make Greece over lame and rob Athens of its yoke-fellow.

  What, then, is possible? Not peace. This, Greece has never known and never will. Rather a nobler war. A war that will not alone turn the Monster from devouring her own vitals but set her upon a stage of such scale and moment as may permit the meanest to mount to prominence and the greatest to undying glory.”

  Alcibiades served the bread and meat. We both wondered at the daring of his vision and the extravagance of his ambition.

  “One perceives your purpose, sir. But in all candor, can such an adventure succeed?”

  “It must and it shall.”

  He sat then and, remarking Pericles' expression of incredulity, rejoined with a dissertation so extraordinary, and so revelatory of the configuration of his intellect, that this officer took the extraordinary measure upon return to our quarters of setting it down, as close to verbatim as he and I could recollect. I have the notes yet, in my sea chest.

  “Most men believe,” Alcibiades began, “that what they call waking life is our only existence, while dreams are such substanceless apparitions as visit our slumbering selves at night.

  The wild tribes beyond Bithynian Thrace warrant the opposite. To them true existence takes place in sleep, while this, waking life, they dismiss as phantom and illusion. They can locate wild game, that is, predict the site of its appearance, based on dreams which they claim to summon the night in advance. I have hunted with them and I believe it. They enter and exit dreams at will, they testify, and fear nothing more than to die in their dreams, while death in the flesh they account as nothing, the dream enduring absent even that vessel which housed it.”

  “What nonsense!” Pericles exclaimed. “If you die in a dream you don't wake up dead. But croak in real life and you'll dream no more!”

  Alcibiades only smiled. “One senses a world beneath this one.

  Not a dream exactly, but a possibility. That which is not yet but which may be. And which we may summon. As a boy lies in the grass at the brook edge, who may break the surface with his hand to snatch a pebble from the bottom. This is how one lives, is it not?

  A beast sees gross substance only, but a man sees dreams.

  “I have dined on dreams. Not alone to sustain myself but to set a feast before others. This is how the great identify one another and how the commander of vision leads free men. Ah,” Alcibiades continued, “but not any dream will do. Only one, and that, like the pebble in the stream, has long been nominated. This pebble has a name. It is called Necessity. Necessity is the dream. That which cries out to be born and summons all who would call themselves commanders to draw it forth.

  “As a boy I often observed this of the elder Pericles: that he was capable, through no force beyond that of his own person, of defining present and future not only for himself but for others. He could tell them what they saw and make them see it, perceiving no longer with their own eyes but with his. By such means he held the city, and the world, in thrall.

  “Lovers perform this service for each other, the elder elevating the younger by donating his nobler and more far-reaching vision.

  For all boys, and most men, are profoundly imperfect not only in themselves but in their aspirations, which are mediocre, vain, and self-interested. This was Socrates' gift to me, to exalt my aspiration, and I perceived of the power by which it held me that this was man's supreme gift to his fellows and also his mightiest instrument of ambition. For what may raise a man higher in his countrymen's esteem than to bear to them happiness and prosperity?

  “Socrates,” he continued, “considers politics inferior to philosophy, and in this I concur. What educated man wouldn't?

  But philosophy could not exist without politics. By this measure politics is the noblest calling of all, for it makes all others possible.

  And how would one define politics except the bringing forth of a vision for the people, that vision which is their destiny but which they sense only imperfectly and by part.”

  “That is no politician, Alcibiades, but a prophet!”

  “The prophet perceives truth, Pericles, but the politician brings it into manifestation, for his countrymen and often in the face of their bitter opposition.”

  “And in the case of Athens,” this officer put in, “that of our subjects and enemies.”

  Here was a point I myself wished to question.

  “Suppose, Alcibiades, that Justice were seated at this table and were to call you short, saying, 'My friend, you have left me from your equation. For what you call Necessity, others name Injustice, Oppression, and even Murder.' How would you respond to the goddess?”

  “I would remind Justice, my friend, that Necessity is elder to her and was made before even the earth. Justice, as she well knows, may not prevail even in heaven. Why should she, therefore, among mortals?”

  “This is a stern philosophy, Alcibiades.”

  “It is the philosophy of power and those who possess it. The philosophy of empire. And we have all embraced it who hold our subject states, Spartans and Persians as well as Athenians.

  Otherwise let them go! But then we fall, and fail, and slight our destiny. This to my mind is a far weightier crime than injustice, particularly our own benign species, which in fact brings greater security and material blessing than our subject states would be capable of providing for themselves without us.

  “But here is the point, my friends. Our so-called subject states are not subject in the deeper sense, th
at is, held down by force, but are instead compelled to emulate us, at our greatest, by their thralldom to our excellence. Otherwise why do their sons flock to our city and our fleet, even in her most embattled hours? Their destiny ascends with ours and is indivisible from it, as that of all those slumbering states whose armies will fall in freely and joyfully at our side when we advance against Asia.”

  “Then you see not just for Athens, Alcibiades, but for her subjects and enemies as well?”

  “And the wide world!” Pericles put in.

  Alcibiades responded with a peal of irony light as spindrift. He indicated the plates and platter before us.

  “I merely set out the banquet and stand aside while my companions dine.”

  Returning to our billets, we passed those of Anytus, Critias, and Charicles, yet astir and hissing with conspiracy. Alcibiades' enemies intrigued for a device by which to bring him low. They did not reckon that that agent which would despoil him, and themselves, had already at that hour debarked at Castolus in Ionia, under guard of the Caranedion, the Royal Horse of Prince Cyrus of Persia.

  Book VIII

  THRICE NINE YEARS

  XXXVIII

  THE GRAVITY OF GOLD

  Have you ever seen a wagonload of gold, Jason?

  It doesn't look like much. Just two ingots, swathed in fleece and no bigger round than firestand logs, but so heavy, the escort officers informed Telamon and me, permitting us a glimpse outside the treasury at Ephesus, that they must be loaded by tackle up a rollered incline. Each bar has to set directly over an axle or the weight will break the wagon's back. Such a burden must be drawn by oxen; draft horses or mules could pull it on the flat, but not up a grade.

  Prince Cyrus had conveyed nine of these to Castolus with instructions from his father, Darius of Persia, to supply the Spartans with everything they needed to destroy the fleet of Athens. Past this, reports said, the prince had pledged his personal fortune and vowed even to break up his golden throne. This was five thousand talents in all, ten times the treasury of Athens. You tell me, my friend, what won the war for Lysander.

  Sailors of Athens were drawing three obols; Lysander paid four.

  An Athenian crew was three-quarters foreigners then; some ships listed as few as twenty citizens. Lysander's recruiters could sell these lads hard. And the Spartan paid “on the bollard,” full wages each month, not a third only, as our own paymasters, the rest held back till you made home port…

  At this point precisely-I recall because my notes break off in midsentence-a commotion from the Iron Court interrupted Polemides. A turnkey appeared with the report that a woman claiming to be the prisoner's wife had forced her way into the jailer's station and was, in the most scabrous tongue, demanding entry to him. This could be none but Eunice. “What shall I tell her?”

  “That I am otherwise occupied.”

  We could hear her oaths, rivaling any boatswain's, as the porter conducted her from the yard.

  “The lone privilege of incarceration,” Polemides observed.

  “Privacy. “

  His concentration had been broken, however. I had other obligations; we cut the session short. Though at this juncture, my grandson, I may profitably interject, to continue Polemides' train, several documents of my own possession.

  These are captain's logs of the younger Pericles, commanding Calliope at that time, deposited by him into my care following the trial of the generals of Arginousai. They make a sketch of the early campaign against Lysander.

  8 Hecatombaion, Mycale straits. Beleaguering the Pedagogue. [The Athenians called Lysander this, as well as Schoolmaster and Professor.] He will not come out to play.

  12 Hec. Blockading Ephesus. Profs 76 won't stick nose out to face our 54.

  27 Hec. Raid villages east of Elaeus. 60 taken, mostly women, worth barely a mina. 6 wounded, 4 severely. Pay: 40 days arrears.

  3 Metageitnion, Imbros. Chased 2 sq of 6 and 8 all day from Myrina. They drag ashore, flee by night.

  11 Meta. Aenus, Thrace. Pillage. 4 wounded. No pay.

  14 Meta. More villages. No pay.

  2 Boedromion, Samos. Indomitable in. Alcib with 3 sq has been chasing Lys from Aspendus. Still no action.

  This was the Spartan navarch's answer to the supreme pitch of readiness possessed then by his enemies. He refused to be brought to battle. He would not fight. Pericles writes his wife, Chione: It is one thing among commanders to grasp Lysander's strategy and steel oneself with patience for its overthrow, and another entirely to sell this to the men. The crews discharge their frustration not on Lysander, but on us.

  To his son Xanthippus, already schooling the lad to the commander's trade:

  …money remains the naval officer's bane. Nothing, not even a horse-breeding establishment, eats cash like a ship, and none gobbles it more greedily than a trireme. The replacement of a single plank with its mortise-and-tenon joinery requires the vessel to be careened, girdle unshipped, and often a complete section of hull replaced and refitted, a task of such complexity as to require the skills of master ship's carpenters, not to mention the right wood of the right age in the right dimensions, and where can you find any of these when you need them? But the main loot-devourer is the men, who spree every spit the instant they touch it, and who can fault them, breaking their backs in all weathers at constant peril of their lives? Try telling them, after ten days of eighteen-hour pulls, cold chow, no sleep, all of it up and down a hostile shore, that you can't come up with their ante!

  The trierarch expends the capital of his credibility every time he puts his men off, which he will covet sorely when next they see action, and if he's rich, which he must be (or so the men believe) or the city would not have lumbered him with command of a vessel of war, then the bitching oarsmen want to know why he doesn't dip into his own gravy now, for their sake, and bill the treasury later. Of course many do, to their ruin. For once a captain has funded his crew from his own purse, he can never say them nay again. He has ceased to be their commander and become their slave.

  Foremost among Alcibiades' aptitudes, and the element by which he has held the nearly bankrupt fleet together for so long, is his mastery of extracting treasure from a city or rural district against its will. For believe me, these planters can bury their goods deeper than you can dig to find them, and to put their feet to the fire only doles to the enemy exactly what he wants.

  Alcibiades alone can make them cough the loot up on their own.

  Contributions. He charms or swindles them or writes his notorious W.C.'s-Warrants of Compensation. The fleet may send no one else to perform this wizardry. They can't pull it off.

  This produces a further liability, for Alcibiades must be drawn from command purely to raise money. This eats like acid at morale, but the fleet possesses no alternative and Lysander knows it.

  Our commanders, driven by the hard pinch, must make acquaintance of the terrible chore of pillage. Its cardinal mischief is the hazard at which it sets the men. Seamen are equipped neither physically nor constitutionally for land warfare; it unnerves them. Those who are leaders on ship fall back as the column presses inland, while the bullies and blackguards mount to the fore. It is not the oarsman's forte to assault palisades, drive off sheep, or round up for the slave dealers urchins and grandmothers. If a village puts up resistance, the men hunker, sullen, and refuse to attack. If the foe caves in, they run amok.

  Atrocities. The officer dreads this before all. For every maiden raped means another hamlet handed on a plate to the foe and, of more immediate peril, the massacred victim's kin roused to vengeance, harrying our passage back to the ship, bronze heads and stones raining on our rear guard, javelin-slinging zealots making rushes on us, horseback, while the very loot we've risked our hides to bag must be dumped willy-nilly as we lighten loads to flee.

  The party always comes back with wounded, and this works hell on the ship. Even one man gutted and wailing turns every other's bowels to squash, and it's worse if he's blinded or burned.


  God forbid a man catch iron in the privates; his mates huddle dread-stricken and only action, at once and to save their skins, keeps the aspiring demagogues among the crew from whipping the men to the brink of mutiny. You can flog them. You can hawse hole them. You can have the marines single out one and make an example. But a ship of war runs on heart as much as sweat. There must be love among the men or you're finished.

  XXXIX

  BAWLERS AND CRAWLERS

  I had a number of other obligations that day [Grandfather continued], several relating to Socrates, whose date of execution stood apart only four risings of the evening star; it was well past midnight when at last I reached home. To my astonishment, Eunice awaited, alone in the forecourt, with a mantle about her shoulders against the chill. She had been there all day, she reported, since vacating the prison. My wife had given her supper and set at her disposal an attendant to conduct her home, but the matter upon which she called was urgent, she declared, so she had elected to remain. She must speak to Polemides. It could not wait.

  I was exhausted and desired nothing more than a bowl of wine and a warm bed, but I sensed a chance at last to get to the bottom of things. “Who has filed this murder charge against Polemides?” I demanded in a manner both sudden and truculent. “Not the name on the indictment-I know that-but the real prosecutor. Who is behind this, and why?”