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

by Steven Pressfield

  “In my father's house I was taught that heaven reigns, and to fear and honor her mandates. This is the Spartan, Dorian, and Peloponnesian way. Our race does not presume to dictate to God, but seeks to discover His will and adhere to it. Our ideal man is pious, modest, self-effacing; our ideal polity harmonious, uniform, communal. Those qualities most pleasing to heaven, we believe, are courage to endure and contempt for death. This renders our race peerless in land battle, for in infantry warfare to hold one's ground is all. We are not individualists because to us such self-attention constitutes pride. Hubris we abhor, defining man's place as beneath heaven, not challenging her supremacy.

  “Spartans are courageous but not bold. Athenians are bold but not courageous.

  “I will detail for you, friends and allies, the character of our enemy. And call me short if I lie. Shout me down, brothers. But if I speak true, then acclaim my address. Let me hear your voices!

  “Athenians do not fear God; they seek to be God. They believe that heaven reigns not by might, but by glory. The gods rule by acclaim, they say, by that supremacy which strikes mortals with awe and compels emulation. Believing this, Athenians seek to please heaven by making clay gods of themselves. Athenians reject modesty and self-effacement as unworthy of man made in the image of the gods. Heaven favors the bold. And experience, they believe, has borne them out. Bold action preserved them from the Persian twice, brought them empire, and has maintained it since.

  Athenians are peerless at sea because boldness wins there. The warship accomplishes nothing holding the line but must strike her enemy. Boldness is a mighty engine, friends, but there is a limit to its reach and a rock upon which it founders. We are that rock.”

  Tumultuous acclamation interrupted Lysander's address. A wave rose from those near enough to hear unamplified, augmented by a second crest, as the heralds relayed their commander's words to the thousands upslope, and enlarged yet again as the rearmost at last received the heralds' resonation.

  “Our rock is courage, brothers, upon which their boldness breaks and recedes. Thrasytes fails. Andreia endures.

  Imbibe this truth and never forget it.

  “Boldness is impatient. Courage is long-suffering. Boldness cannot endure hardship or delay; it is ravenous, it must feed on victory or it dies. Boldness makes its seat upon the air; it is gossamer and phantom. Courage plants its feet upon the earth and draws its strength from God's holy fundament. Thrasytes presumes to command heaven; it forces God's hand and calls this virtue. Andreia reveres the immortals; it seeks heaven's guidance and acts only to enforce God's will.

  “Hear, brothers, what kind of man these conflicting qualities produce. The bold man is prideful, brazen, ambitious. The brave man calm, God-fearing, steady. The bold man seeks to divide; he wants his own and will shoulder his brother aside to loot it. The brave man unites. He succors his fellow, knowing that what belongs to the commonwealth belongs to him as well. The bold man covets; he sues his neighbor in the law court, he intrigues, he dissembles. The brave man is content with his lot; he respects that portion the gods have granted and husbands it, comporting himself with humility as heaven's steward.

  “In troubled times the bold man flails about in effeminate anguish, seeking to draw his neighbors into his misfortune, for he has no strength of character to fall back upon other than to drag others down to his own state of wickedness. Now the brave man.

  In dark hours he endures silently, uncomplaining. Reverencing the round of heaven's seasons, he does what must be done, sustaining himself with the certainty that to endure injustice with patience is the mark of piety and wisdom. This is the bold man, and the brave.

  Now: what is the bold city?

  “The bold city exalts aggrandizement. It cannot remain at home, content with its portion, but must venture abroad to plunder that of others. The bold city imposes empire. Contemptuous of heaven's law, it makes of itself a law unto itself. It sets its ambition above justice and acquits all crimes beneath the imperative of its own power. Need I name this city? She is Athens!”

  Such an ovation acclaimed this as to resound throughout the harbor and roll, as thunder, even to the Athenian ships at their stations.

  “Look there to sea, brothers, to those squadrons of the foe which flaunt their supposed supremacy at the very portals of our citadel.

  They have accounted our inexperience at sea and deliberateness of action, which they deem liabilities and by which they hold to overturn us. But they have not reckoned their own impatience and restiveness, which are their flaws, and fatal. Our deficiencies may be overcome by practice and self-discipline. Theirs are intrinsic, indelible, and irremediable.

  “Alcibiades thinks he blockades us, but it is we who blockade him. He thinks he is starving us, but it is we who starve him. We starve him of victory, which he must have, which the demos of Athens must have, because they do not possess courage but only audacity. And if you doubt the truth of these words, my friends, remember Syracuse. The world knows how that game played out.

  They err fatally, our enemies, in their conception of the proper relation of man to God. They are wrong and we are right. God is on our side, who fear and reverence Him, not on theirs, who seek to shoulder their way up Olympus and stand as gods themselves.

  “Citations interrupted Lysander so repeatedly that he must make interval now at nearly every phrase and wait for subsidence of the uproar.

  “Our race, brothers, has set itself to study courage, and we have learned its source. Courage is born of obedience. It is the issue of self-less ness, brotherhood, and love of freedom. Boldness, on the other hand, is spawned of defiance and disrespect; it is the bastard brat of irreverence and outlawry. Boldness honors two things only: novelty and success. It feeds on them and without them dies. We will starve our enemies of these commodities, which to them are bread and air. This is why we train, men. Not to sweat for sweat's sake or row for rowing's sake, but by this practice of cohesion to inculcate andreia, to lade the reservoirs of our hearts with confidence in ourselves, our shipmates, and our commanders.

  “Men say I fear to face Alcibiades; they taunt me for want of intrepidity. I do fear him, brothers. This is not cowardice but prudence. Nor would it constitute bravery to confront him ship for ship, but recklessness. For I reckon our enemy's skill and observe that ours is yet unequal. The sagacious commander honors his enemy's might. His skill is to strike not at the foe's strength, but at his weakness, not where and when he is ready, but where he is lax and when he least expects it. The enemy's weakness is time.

  Thrasytes is perishable. It is like that fruit, luscious when ripe, which stinks to heaven when it rots.

  “Therefore possess your hearts in patience, brothers. I tell you: I am glad we are not ready. Were we, I would seek pretext to hold even longer. For every hour we deprive the foe of victory is another we turn his own strength against him. Alcibiades in his godless vanity flatters himself that he is a second Achilles. Well, if he is, boldness is his heel and, by heaven, we will strike that heel and send him sprawling!”

  More acclamation, deafening and unbroken.

  “Lastly, men, let me tell you of this Alcibiades, and what I know of him. Brave men tremble at his name, so many are the victories he has brought his nation. Yet I tell you, and stake my life upon it, that he will fade away, by the hand of heaven or his own countrymen's. He must; his own nature calls this fate forth. For what is this man but the supreme embodiment of Athenian thrasytes? His victories have all come from boldness, none from courage. Let him strike us with terror and we will hand him his triumph. But only hold firm, brothers, undaunted by whatever flash and dazzle he throws at us, and he will crack and his nation with him.

  “I know this man. He slept under my roof at Lacedaemon when he had fled there, condemned by his own countrymen for outrage against heaven. I loathed him then and despise him now. Before God I swore a mighty oath, that if He brought this man before my prow, I would break his pride and free Greece of his blasphemy and the tyr
anny of Athens with which he seeks to enslave us all.

  “I plant my trust in you, brothers, in our arms and our andreia.

  But before all I place it in God. Nor is this wishful thinking but objective observation of heaven's laws, for I perceive these faithworthy as the tides and immutable as the transit of the stars:

  “Boldness produces hubris. Hubris calls forth nemesis. And nemesis brings boldness low.

  “We are nemesis, brothers. Called into being by heaven's outrage at this would-be tyrant's pride, and at his city's presumption. We are the Almighty's right arm, God's holy agent, and no force between sea and sky may prevail against us.”

  XLI

  FIRE FROM THE SEA

  The alarm sounded deep into the third watch. I was dead asleep, in the villa at which Telamon and I had been billeted, which housed a dozen other officers and their women. These staggered now into the street. “Is it a drill?” one bawled from a terrace. The harbor lay a quarter mile below; you could see fire ships pouring in over the chain and, in their flare, Athenian triremes pulling fast in two columns with tow arrows and flame catapults arcing fire in all directions.

  We armed and raced down the hill. You know the city, Jason.

  Mount Coressus overstands the eminence, her shoulders embracing the sprawl of suburbs spilling back from the port. The great seawall, the Pteron, spans the harbor mouth. Behind its base extend the commercial wharves, the Emporium, and beyond these the Toll, the inner fortifications, and the naval bastion, Huntress'

  Hood. The river Cayster debouches, dense with silt, between the temple of the Amazons and the great square of the Artemisium, with the dredging works and the marsh on the south side, the cavalry grounds, and more suburbs outside the walls. These are all on hills and were all ablaze.

  It was clear to any who understood Alcibiades' frame that this assault was his answer to Lysander's speech and a leap upon the main chance of Prince Cyrus' presence on-site. Given the audacity of his generalship, he could have landed every regiment he had or even called in his Thracians, heaven help all who must face them. “I'm not too keen on this,” I shouted to Telamon amid the waterfront crush, meaning I was in no mood to go epitaph-hunting for either side. “Let's find a rat hole and sit this son of a whore out.”

  We cracked into a warehouse adjacent the Armorers' Lane. You could see the fire ships brilliant as daylight now; crewless galleys stacked with pitch and blazing like Tartarus. I had never experienced an attack of Alcibiades from the receiving end. It struck like a terror show of shock and thunder, and it was pasting the piss out of the Peloponnesians. Twelve-oared longboats towed their incendiary trailers at a furious clip, sidescreens up to shield the oarsmen from the missile fire of the defenders, so far conspicuous only by its absence. A jig of Spartan six-stickers hauled to intercept the lead towboat. We could see the attacker dump her line; two enemy sixes struck her just as her fire ship, loosed now, ploughed into the roadstead where a dozen Spartan triremes rode at anchor. The impact snapped the incendiary's booms; they crashed thunderously, dumping their cargo of pitch and sulphur onto the decks of the foe.

  Now a second line of fire ships lit up astern of the first. The eruption of these, invisible heretofore, produced among the Peloponnesians a disseverment of the senses both palpable and paralyzing. “Don't mill about like bloody sheep!” A Spartan colonel waded into the press. “Launch ships, curse you!”

  At this instant Lysander himself thundered into the lane, horseback, compassed by his lifeguard of Knights. We could see the colonel dash before him, informing him of his order. Lysander countermanded it. Peloponnesian infantry were pouring onto the site. Athenian pinnaces continued to rake the ship sheds, slinging pinwheels and hello-theres. Shall we rush the Pteron? the colonel cried to Lysander, meaning make for the seawall to repel the landing.

  Lysander rejected this as well. One must give the bastard credit.

  Any other of his race would have hurtled mindlessly into battle's maw, seeking victory or glorious death. Lysander knew better. As he had baited Alcibiades, now his rival baited him. Lysander would not bite. He hauled toward the Artemisium and the great parade ground fronting the city. “Draw back! Marshal on the square!”

  Lysander had built walls dividing the residential quarter of Antenoris from the dockyards, an undertaking scorned even by his own officers as make-work and folly. Now one perceived its brilliance. The ramparts funneled seaborne attackers-those striking from the Pteron, as the Athenians had-onto the Exposition Road, quayside, with water at one hand and wall at the other. Here was a pen made for slaughter. All Lysander need do was wait.

  Where Telamon and I hid had become no-man's-land. From seaward rushed the Athenians and allies; landside marshaled the Spartans and Peloponnesians. They would clash in the rock-hemmed pound before us, and our troops would be massacred. So futile, however, are all designs of war. At once sprang an overthrow from the last quarter Lysander could have projected, for the lone motive against which he could not contend.

  This was Prince Cyrus, on fire for glory.

  We heard hooves on the Lane of the Armorers; into the open thundered a cohort of Royal Persian Horse. The troop galloped onto the square of the Artemisium, parting the massed Peloponnesians. The prince reined in before Lysander. The lad himself was but seventeen and slight as a stalk, yet so fired by the nobility of his blood and the impulsion to emulate the deeds of his ancestors that he seemed lit as though aflame.

  “The enemy is there, Lysander! Why do you hold?”

  Meet him! Attack!

  The prince wheeled and spurred. His Guard thundered at his heels. Peloponnesians and allies could not be held; the throng flooded onto the Exposition Road. Our warehouse sat right in its path. Athenian rangers who had advanced thus far now spun and bolted, slinging their brands into every eave and alley.

  Telamon and I peered about our coop. Paint. Our rat hole was a hive of pitch and encaustic. We flushed from this covert the instant she exploded. I felt hair and beard erupt; flaming turpentine spewed upon me. I careened into the lane, beating at the flames with my cloak, but it, too, was drenched with oil and blazing. Telamon pitched me into a mound of pumice, annexed to a construction site, moments before the hordes overran it. A Peloponnesian sergeant rounded upon us, beating at us with his staff to join the affray. My entire left side had been incinerated; I could not see nor feel of my face aught but charred meat. Telamon defended me. “By the gods, this man cannot fight!” He drew on the sergeant. “Go!” I propelled him, before he got himself arrested or worse.

  Down the Exposition Road prince Cyrus galloped with the troops from the Artemisium, above thirty thousand, while Lysander in fury drove his Knights in the youth's train, to deliver the lad from his own mad valor..

  Polemides continued his narration, to which we shall return.

  However, his object for the remainder of this action was clearly neither to participate nor to report, but to preserve his life. Let us shift narrators, then.

  It was the younger Pericles' assignment, under Alcibiades, to command the wave of assault ships succeeding Antiochus', those vessels which Polemides recounted as breaching the harbor chain and carrying the assault to the waterfront. I have drawn already from these logs, given me by his wife after his trial following Arginousai. In addition she placed in my care several of the journals Pericles penned in those hours, for his children, that they might not credit the slanders of his accusers, and also, I believe, to preserve his reason during that ordeal, whose chronicle I shall relate in its course. But to return to Ephesus, and Pericles' journal: The plan was Alcibiades', drafted in a single night by the trierarchs and squadron commanders working under his direction.

  Its impetus was receipt of the transcript of Lysander's address at the Games. Here was the Spartan's rejoinder, final and beyond appeal, to Alcibiades' overtures of alliance. He would slug it out to the finish, would Lysander, putting his faith less in God, as Alcibiades observed, than in the impatience of the Athenian electorate.
Lysander understood this monster as well as his rival.

  Victories in the hinterlands, even the sack of mighty cities, would not slake the beast's rapacity, not now, inflamed as it was by expectations of its all-conquering commander. Alcibiades must attack, and attack Lysander. No meaner object would serve. The monster would have its enemy's head, or his who failed to produce it.

  Such was the strategic objective. Tactical were three: to raze the shipyards and repair facilities; to destroy or carry off as many battleships as possible, in as spectacular a manner as possible; to capture the Pteron and despoil its superstructure. The assault was an amphibious operation comprising twelve thousand four hundred troops, ninety-seven capital ships, and a hundred and ten support vessels. It involved the coordination of eleven assault elements across a front of twenty miles. Forty-six objectives were assigned. The signal rolls were as thick as your wrist.

  Preliminary movements had commenced two days prior. A squadron of twenty-four under Aristocrates and another of twenty-eight under Adeimantus embarked from Samos, manned not by conventional crews, but by armored infantry doubling as oarsmen, with slingers and javelineers, as many as the vessels could bear without betraying their numbers by their draught, prone topside behind sidescreens. Aristocrates' squadron made southeast as for Andros, Adeimantus' north to the Hellespont. Both permitted their movements to be observed by Lysander's lookouts on Mounts Coressus and Lycon. They stood out to sea, beyond sight, doubling back on the second night to land their companies, Aristocrates in the planters' country between Priene and Ephesus, Adeimantus north at the resort colony called the Crook, deserted in this season on account of the Etesian winds.

  The horse transports crossed by night from Samos and Lade, putting ashore at an inhabited cove called the Crescent. Alcibiades commanded these. Detaining all who might dash ahead with the alarm, the units proceeded by back tracks across country, linking with Adeimantus' companies landed at the Crook. From there Alcibiades advanced on the city. So swiftly were all pickets overwhelmed that he was into the suburbs before any warning apprised Lysander.