CHAPTER XXXIV. THE RISE OF ALCIBIADES
Thucydides remarks that after the Peace of Nicias, there was but one of the predictions current at the commencement of the Peloponnesian War that was reputed to have received its fulfilment: it was the one which declared that the war would last three times nine years. There were indeed three acts in this war; we have seen the first: the second was the uneasy truce which extends from 421 to 413 when, though there was no general war, war was everywhere. The last, from 413 to 404, includes the catastrophe and the train of circumstances which brought it about.
The first period is filled with Pericles; his policy survives him, and in spite of Cleon his spirit governs Athens; the second and third are entirely taken up by Alcibiades, his passions, his services, and his crimes.
[450-421 B.C.]
Alcibiades whose descent was derived from Ajax, was connected on his mother’s side with the Alemæonids. The death of his father Clinias, killed at Coronea, left him to the guardianship of his relatives, Pericles and Ariphron, who, on his attaining his majority, handed him over one of the great fortunes in Athens. With wealth and noble blood, he joined that beauty which in the estimation of this artist-people added to the brilliance of talents and virtue on the brows of Sophocles and Pericles, and always seemed a gift of the gods, even on the features of an athlete. Parasites, flatterers, all who are attracted by fortune, grace, and boldness, thronged round the footsteps of this rich and witty young man, who had become what in Athens was a power, namely the ruler of fashion. Accustomed in the midst of this train to find himself applauded for his wild actions, Alcibiades dared everything, and all with impunity. The force and flexibility of his temperament rendered him capable of vice and virtue, abstinence and debauchery, according to the hour, the day, or the place. In the city of Lycurgus there was no Spartan more harsh towards his body; in Asia he outdid the satraps in luxury and self-indulgence. But his audacity and his indomitable petulance compromised the long meditated plans of his ambition for the sake of a jest or an orgy. Lively and diverse passions carried him now in one direction, now in another, and always to excess, while in the stormy versatility of his character he did not find the curb which might have restrained him, namely, the sense of right and duty.
One day he was to be seen with Socrates, welcoming with avidity the noble lessons of the philosopher, and weeping with admiration and enthusiasm; but on the morrow he would be crossing the agora with a trailing robe and indolent, dissolute mien, and would go with his too complacent friends to plunge into shameful pleasures. Yet the sage contended for him, and sometimes with success, against the crowd of his corruptors. In the early wars they shared the same tent. Socrates saved Alcibiades at Potidæa, and at Delium Alcibiades protected the retreat of Socrates.
From his childhood he exhibited the half heroic, half savage nature of his mind. He was playing at dice on the public way when a chariot approached; he told the charioteer to wait; the latter paid no heed and continued to advance; Alcibiades flung himself across the road and called out, “Now pass if you dare.” He was wrestling with one of his comrades and not being the strongest, he bit the arm of his adversary. “You bite like a woman.” “No, but like a lion,” he answered. He had caused a Cupid throwing a thunderbolt to be engraved on his shield.
He had a superb dog which had cost him more than seven thousand drachmæ. When all the town had admired it he cut off its tail, its finest ornament, that it might be talked of still more. “Whilst the Athenians are interested in my dog,” he said, “they will say nothing worse concerning me.” One day he was passing in the public square; the assembly was tumultuous and he inquired the cause; he was told that a distribution of money was on hand; he advanced and threw some himself amid the applause of the crowd: but according to the fashion among the exquisites of the day he was carrying a pet quail under his mantle: the terrified bird escaped and all the people ran, shouting, after it, that they might bring it back to its master. Alcibiades and the people of Athens were made to understand one another. “They detest him,” said Aristophanes, “need him and cannot do without him.”
One day he laid a wager to give a blow in the open street to Hipponicus, one of the most eminent men in the town; he won his bet, but the next day he presented himself at the house of the man he had so grossly insulted, removed his garments and offered himself to receive the chastisement he had deserved. He had married Hipparete, a woman of much virtue, and responded to her eager affection only by outrageous conduct. After long endurance she determined to lay a petition for divorce before the archon. Alcibiades, hearing this, hurried to the magistrate’s house and under the eyes of a cheering crowd carried off his wife in his arms across the public square, she not daring to resist; and brought her back to his house where she remained, well-pleased with this tender violence.
Alcibiades treated Athens as he did Hipponicus and Hipparete, and Athens, like Hipparete and Hipponicus, often forgave this medley of faults and amiable qualities in which there was always something of that wit and audacity which the Athenians prized above everything. His audacity indeed made sport alike of justice and religion. He may be excused for beating a teacher in whose school he had not found the Iliad: but at the Dionysia he struck one of his adversaries, in the very middle of the spectacle, regardless of the solemnity; and at another time, in order the better to celebrate a festival, he carried off the sacred vessel which was required at that very moment for a public and religious service. A painter having refused to work for him he kept him prisoner until he had finished decorating his house, but dismissed him loaded with presents. On one occasion when a poet was pursued by justice, he tore the act of indictment from the public archives. In a republic these actions were not very republican. But all Greece had such a weakness for Alcibiades! At Olympia he had seven chariots competing at once, thus eclipsing the magnificence of the kings of Syracuse and Cyrene; and he carried off two prizes in the same race, while another of his chariots came in fourth. Euripides sang of his victory and cities joined together to celebrate it. The Ephesians erected him a magnificent pavilion; the men of Chios fed his horses and provided him with a great number of victims; the Lesbians gave him wine and the whole assembly of Olympia took their seats at festive tables to which a private individual had invited them. Posterity, less indulgent than contemporaries, whilst recognising the eminent qualities of the man, will condemn the bad policy which made the expedition to Sicily, and the bad citizen who so many times gave the scandalous example of violating the laws and who dared to arm against his own country, to raise his hand against his mother. Alcibiades will remain the type of the most brilliant, but the most immoral and consequently the most dangerous citizen of a republic.
[421-420 B.C.]
In spite of his birth which classed him among the Eupatrids, Alcibiades, like Pericles, went over to the side of the people, and made himself the adversary of a man very different from himself, the superstitious Nicias, who was also a noble, rich and tried by long services. But Alcibiades had the advantage of him in audacity, fascination, and eloquence. Demosthenes regards him as the first orator of his time; not that he had a great flow of language; on the contrary, as his phrases did not come quickly enough, he frequently repeated the last words of his sentences; but the force and elegance of his speech and a certain lisp which was not displeasing, rendered him irresistible. His first political act was an unwelcome measure. He suggested an increase of the tribute of the allies, an imprudence which Pericles would not have committed. But Alcibiades had different schemes and different doctrines. He believed in the right of might and he made use of it; he looked forward to gigantic enterprises and he prepared the necessary means in advance. His inaction began to weigh on him. He was thirty-one years old and had as yet done nothing; so he bestirred himself considerably on the occasion of the treaty of 421. He would have liked to supplant Nicias and win the honour of the peace for himself. His flatteries to the prisoners of Sphacteria met with no success; the Spartans relied more on the old general, and Alcibiades bore them a grudge in consequence.
Alcibiades
There was no lack of men opposed to this treaty. It was signed amidst the applause of the old, the rich, and the cultivators, but in it Athens, through Nicias’ fault, had allowed herself to be ignominiously tricked. The merchants who during the war had seen the sea closed to their rivals and open to their own vessels, the sailors, the soldiers, and all the people of the Piræus who lived on their pay or their booty, formed a numerous party. Alcibiades constituted himself its chief. The warlike spirit which was to disappear only with Greece itself soon gave him allies from outside.
What Sparta and Athens were doing on a large scale was being done by other towns on a small one. Strong or weak, obscure or illustrious, all had the same ambition: all desired subjects. The Eleans had subdued the Lepreatæ, Mantinea and the towns in her neighbourhood; Thebes had knocked down the walls of Thespiæ in order to keep that town at her mercy; and Argos had transferred within her own walls the inhabitants of several townships of Argos, though in doing so she granted them civil rights. Sparta watched with annoyance this movement for the concentration of lesser cities round more powerful ones. She proclaimed the independence of the Lepreatæ, and secretly encouraged the defection of the subjects of Mantinea and the hatred of Epidaurus against Argos. But since Sphacteria she had lost her prestige. At Corinth, at Megara, in Bœotia, it was openly said that she had basely sacrificed the interests of her allies; indignation was especially felt at her alliance with Athens. The Peloponnesian league was in fact dissolved; one people dreamed of reconstituting it for their own advantage.
The repose and prosperity of Argos in the midst of the general conflict had increased her resources and her liberal policy towards the towns of the district had augmented her strength. But the new-comers were a powerful reinforcement to the democratic party whose influence impelled Argos on a line of policy opposed to that of the Spartans. This town therefore might and wished to become the centre of an anti-Lacedæmonian league. Mantinea, where the democracy predominated; the Eleans, who had been offended by Lacedæmon; Corinth, which, by the treaty of Nicias, lost two important towns in Acarnania, were ready to join their grudges and their forces. The Argives skilfully seized the opportunity; twelve deputies were sent to all the Greek cities which desired to form a confederation from which the two cities which were equally menacing to the common liberty, namely Sparta and Athens, should be excluded. But an agreement could not be arrived at. A league of the northern states was thus rendered abortive; nothing could yet be done without Sparta or Athens.
Between these two towns there were many grounds for discontent. The lot had decided that Sparta should be the first to make the restitutions agreed on at the treaty of 421. For Athens the most valuable of these restitutions was that of Amphipolis and the towns of Chalcidice. Sparta withdrew her garrisons but did not restore the towns; and yet Nicias, deceived by the ephors, led the people to commit the mistake of not keeping the pledges which they had in their possession until Lacedæmon should have put an end to her bad faith. Sparta had negotiated for all her allies; and the most powerful were refusing to observe her engagements. The Bœotians restored Panactum, but kept the Athenian prisoners and only agreed to a truce of ten days. Athens, which had thought to win peace, was, ten days later, again at war with the Bœotians and uninterruptedly with Chalcidice. As regards the latter she had just given a terrible example of her anger. The whole male population of Scione had been put to death as a punishment for its recent revolt, in virtue of a decree of the people which the generals had carried with them.
All this furnished material which Alcibiades might work up into a war. First, he prevented the Athenians from evacuating Pylos. The helots and Messenians were simply withdrawn thence at the instance of Lacedæmon and were transported to Cephallenia. Then, warned by his friends at Argos that Sparta was seeking to draw that city into her alliance, he answered that Athens herself was quite ready to join the Argives. Athens at once concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with the Argives, the Mantineans and the Eleans. In the ardour of hatred against Sparta it was agreed that the alliance should last a hundred years; a long period for such spirits (420). We here remark a new and important point; it is that the alliance was concluded on a perfect footing of equality. The command of the allied troops was to belong to the people which should demand aid and on whose territory war should be made.
[420-418 B.C.]
The neutrality of the Argolid and of the centre of the Peloponnesus had hitherto preserved Lacedæmon from a continental invasion. War, after having long hovered on the outskirts of the peninsula, had not ventured, within the last few years, to do more than lay hold of certain points on the coasts to the west, south, and east, which were quite remote from Sparta, at Pylos, Cythera, and Methone. But now the Argives, the Mantineans and the Eleans were about to introduce it into the heart of the Peloponnesus, to bring it in the very face of the helots. Sparta became once more the patient, deliberate city of former days, even to the point of submitting to outrageous insults. On account of the despatch of the helots to Lepreum during the sacred truce, the Eleans had condemned the Lacedæmonians to a fine of two thousand minæ, and on their refusal to pay had excluded them by decree from the Olympic games. A Spartan of distinction, named Lichas, had however a chariot competing in the same race in which Alcibiades had displayed so much magnificence and obtained wreaths. When the judges learnt his name they had him ignominiously driven away with blows. Sparta did not avenge this outrage; she had ceased to believe in herself. At last Alcibiades passed over into the Peloponnesus with a few troops.
At Argos he persuaded the people to seize a port on the Saronic Gulf from the Epidaurians; from thence the Argives might the more easily receive succours from Athens which was in possession of Ægina opposite Epidaurus. But the Lacedæmonians sent this town three hundred hoplites who arrived by sea and repelled all attacks. At this news the Athenians wrote at the base of the column on which the treaty had been engraved, that Sparta had violated the peace, and the war began (419).
It was in vain that Aristophanes produced about this time his comedy entitled the Peace, resuming the theme he had taken up seven years before in the Acharnians. It was to no purpose that he personified War as a giant who crushes the towns in a mortar, using the generals for his pestles, and showed that with the return of Peace, drawn at last from the cavern in which she has been captive for thirteen years, banquets and feasts will recommence, the whole town will be given up to joy, and the armourers only will be in despair; he persuaded no one, not even the judges of the competition, who refused him the first prize.
The Lacedæmonians, under the command of Agis, entered the Argolid with the contingents of Bœotia, Megara, Corinth, Phlius, Pellene, and Tegea. The Argive general, cut off from the town by a clever manœuvre, proposed a truce which Agis accepted. This was not what was desired by the Athenians, who arrived shortly after, to the number of a thousand hoplites and three hundred horsemen; Alcibiades spoke in presence of the people of Argos and prevailed with them: the truce was broken, a march was made on Orchomenos and it was taken. The blame of the rupture fell on Agis. The Spartans, angry at his having given their enemies time to make this conquest, wished first to demolish his house and condemn him to a fine of a hundred thousand drachmæ; his prayers won his pardon; but it was determined that in future the kings of Sparta should be assisted in the war by a council of ten Spartans.
To repair his mistake, Agis went in search of the allies; he encountered them near Mantinea. “The two armies,” says Thucydides, “advanced against each other; the Argives with impetuosity, the Lacedæmonians slowly and, according to their custom, to the sound of a great number of pipes which beat time and kept them in line.” The Lacedæmonian left was driven in, but the right, commanded by the king, retrieved the fight and carried the day (418). This battle, which cost the allies eleven hundred men and the Spartans about three hundred, is regarded by Thucydides as the most important which the Greeks had fought for a long time. It restored the reputation of Sparta in the Peloponnesus, and in Argos the preponderance of the wealthy who suppressed the popular commune, put its leaders to death and made an alliance with Lacedæmon.
[418-416 B.C.]
This treaty broke up the confederation recently agreed on with Athens, Elis, and Mantinea. The last-named town even thought itself sufficiently endangered by the defection of Argos to consent to descend once more to the rank of an ally of the Spartans. A treaty, dictated by the latter, decreed that all the states, great and small, should be free and should keep their national laws with their independence. Sparta desired nothing but divisions and weakness round her. To the policy of concentration advocated by Athens, she opposed the policy of isolation which was to put all Greece at her feet, but would also afterwards place her, with Sparta herself, at the feet of Macedonia and of the Romans (417).
The victory of Agis was that of the oligarchy. At Sicyon, in Achaia, it again raised its head or established itself more firmly. We have just seen how it resumed power in Argos. But in that town, if we are to believe Pausanias, a crime analogous to those which founded the liberties of the people in Rome brought about the fall of the tyrants three months later. Expelled by an insurrection, the chief citizens retired to Sparta, whilst the people appealed to the Athenians, and men, women, and children laboured to join Argos with the sea by means of long walls. Alcibiades hurried thither with masons and carpenters to aid in the work; but the Lacedæmonians, under the guidance of the exiles, dispersed the workers. Argos, exhausted by these cruel discords, did not recover herself; and with her fell that idea of a league of secondary states which might perhaps have spared Greece many misfortunes by imposing peace and a certain caution on the two great states (417).
[416 B.C.]
The Athenians, who were acting weakly in Chalcidice, had recently lost two towns there and had seen the king of Macedon withdraw from their alliance; they resolved to avenge themselves for all their embarrassments on the Dorian island of Melos, which was insulting their maritime empire by its independence. At Naxos and Samos they had shown themselves merciful, because they were amongst the Ionians where they could reckon on a democratic party; at Melos, an outpost of the Dorians in the Cretan Sea, they were implacable because the blow struck at these islanders, faithful to their metropolis, was to find a mournful echo in Lacedæmon. A squadron of thirty-eight galleys summoned the town to submit, and on its refusal an army besieged it, took it, and exterminated all the adult male population. The women and children were sold (416). Before the attack a conference had taken place with the Melians.
“In order to obtain the best possible result for our negotiations,” said the Athenians, “let us start from a principle with which both sides shall be really satisfied, a principle which we know well and would employ with people who are as well acquainted with it as we are: it is that business between men is regulated by the laws of justice when an equal necessity obliges them to submit to it; but that those who have the advantage in strength do all that is in their power and that it is the part of the weak to yield,” and further: “nor do we fear that the divine protection will forsake us. In our principles and in our actions we neither depart from the idea which men have conceived of the Divinity nor from the line of conduct which they preserve amongst themselves. We believe, according to the received opinion, that the gods, and we know very well that men, by a necessity of nature, dominate wherever they have force. This is not a law that we have made; it is not we who have first applied it; we profit by it and shall transmit it to times to come; you yourselves, with the power which we enjoy, would follow the same course.”
The theory of force has rarely been so distinctly expressed. The reputation of the Athenians has suffered by it, without their having derived the slightest profit from this evil deed. But let us observe, even while we think with horror of the sanguinary act performed at Melos, that the practice, if not the theory of this right of the strongest is a very old one; it is the principle on which the whole of antiquity is based; it is nothing but the famous law, salus populi suprema lex, so many times evoked to justify odious enterprises or iniquitous cruelties; and it must be acknowledged with sadness that in all times and in almost all places men have thought with Euripides, “that wisdom and glory are: to hold a victorious hand over the head of one’s enemies.” Force is as old as the world, it is right which emerges slowly: can we believe that its reign will not come?
The Dorian colonists of Melos had counted on the support of Sparta. “She will abandon you,” the Athenians had answered; and the prudent city which, for its part regarded all things from the point of view of utility, had sent neither ship nor soldier. This inertia inflated the hopes of Athens: she believed that the moment had come for annexing to her empire the great island of the West where internal divisions had roused in several cities the desire for foreign protection.[b]
From a Greek Vase
