Callias: A Tale of the Fall of Athens

by Alfred John Church

CHAPTER X.
THE MURDER OF THE GENERALS.

All this time a gloom had been settling down over the Athenian people. The official despatch, which, as giving details of the loss in the late engagement, was so anxiously expected, did not arrive; but quite enough information to cause a very general anxiety came to hand in various ways. Private letters from men serving with the fleet began to be brought by merchantships; and not a few persons were found who had talked or who professed to have talked with sailors and marines who had taken part in the action. These written and oral accounts were indeed far from being consistent with each other. Some were obviously impossible; more were presumably exaggerated. But they were all agreed in one point. Not only had there been a serious loss of ships and men during the battle, but this loss had been grievously aggravated by the casualties that had taken place after the battle. It was pretty clear, unless the whole of these stories were fictitious, that the second loss had been more fatal than the first.

At last the long expected despatch arrived. It ran somewhat in this fashion:

“The victory which, by the favor of the gods and the good fortune of the Athenian people, we lately won over the Spartans and their allies at the Islands of Arginusæ has turned out to be no less important and beneficial to the state than we had hoped it would be. The squadron of the enemy that was blockading the harbor of Mitylene has disappeared: nor indeed are any of his ships anywhere to be seen. Our fleet, on the contrary, is stronger than it has been for some years past; and we are daily receiving overtures of friendship from cities that have hitherto been indifferent or hostile. But this success has not been achieved without loss. The late battle was long and obstinately contested, and, as has been mentioned in a former despatch, not a few of our ships were either disabled or sunk. We did not neglect the duty of succoring the crews of the vessels that had met with this ill-fortune, committing to officers whom we knew to be competent, the task of giving such help and assigning to them a sufficient number of ships. At the same time we did not omit to make provision for a pursuit of the enemy. But unluckily when the battle was but just finished, a storm arose so severe that we could not either rescue our friends or pursue our enemy. These then escaped, and those, or the greater part of them perished, having behaved as brave men toward their country. Lists of those that have so died, so far as their names are at present known, are sent herewith.”

In this official communication, it will be seen, no blame was laid on any person. The weather, and the weather alone, was given as the cause of the disaster that had occurred. But in their private communications with friends at home the generals were not so reticent. They had commissioned, they said, Theramenes and Thrasybulus to save the shipwrecked men. If all that was possible had not been done to execute this commission it was they and they only who were to be blamed. Such words, even if they are intended only for the private reading of the people to whom they are written, seldom fail sooner or later to get out. In this case so many people were profoundly and personally interested in the matter that they got out very soon. And, of course, among the first persons whom they reached were the two incriminated officers, Theramenes and Thrasybulus. It was a charge, hinted at if not exactly made, which no man would allow to be made against him without at least an attempt to refute it. Theramenes, who had come back on leave not many days after the battle, at once bestirred himself in his own defense. He was an able speaker, all the more able because he was utterly unscrupulous; and he had a large following of personal friends and partisans. On the present occasion he was reinforced by the many citizens who had lost relatives or friends in the late engagement. These were furious and not without some cause. What had been at first represented as a great victory had at length turned out to be as fatal as a great defeat. They loudly demanded a victim. Somebody, they said, must be punished for so scandalous, so deadly a neglect. Theramenes had the advantage of being on the spot, and of being able to guide these feelings in a way that suited his own personal interests. “I was commissioned,” he said, “to do the work; I do not deny it. But the charge was given me when it was almost too late to execute it, and I hadn’t the proper means at hand. I could not get hold of the ships that were told off for this task, or of the crews who should have manned them. If one of the ten had come himself to help me, things might have been different. As it was, the men either could not be found, or refused to come. A subordinate must not be blamed for failing in what ought to have been undertaken by a chief in command.”

These representations, in which, as has been seen, there was a certain measure of truth, had a great effect. An assembly was held to consider the contents of the second despatch, and at this it was resolved, with scarcely an opposing voice, that the generals should be recalled. They were publicly thanked for the victory which they had won, but they were suspended, at least for the present, in their command, and successors were sent out to replace them. Conon, as having been shut up at the time in Mitylene, and being therefore manifestly clear of all blame in the matter, was continued in office, and another of the ten had died. Eight, therefore, were left to be affected by the decree. Of these eight two determined not to run the risk of returning; the other six sailed at once for home. Of these six Diomedon, about whom something has been said already, was one.

As soon as was practicable after their arrival at Athens, an assembly was held and they were called upon for their defence. The chief speaker against them was Theramenes. His colleague, Thrasybulus, stood by apparently approving by his presence the charge that was brought but not opening his mouth. One man among the accused men might have easily secured his own safety at the expense of his colleagues. If Diomedon had stood up and recapitulated the advice which he had given in the council held after the battle; if he had affirmed what none of his fellows would have been able to deny, “I urged you to make the rescue of the imperilled crews your first business, to use for it all the means at your disposal, and to undertake it yourselves,” he must have been triumphantly acquitted, but he was of too generous a temper thus to save himself. He chose to stand or fall with his fellows. All, accordingly, put forward the same defence, and it was in substance this: “We did what seemed best in our judgment. We detailed for the duty of saving the crews what we considered to be an adequate force, and put over it men whom we knew to be competent. If Theramenes accuses us, we do not accuse him. We believe that he was hindered from doing the duty intrusted to him by the storm, and that if he had had double the number of ships, even the whole fleet, at his disposal, he would have been no less powerless to give the shipwrecked men any effectual help.”

There was a sincerity of tone about their defense which was just the thing to win favor of such an audience as the Athenian assembly. There were murmurs indeed. The friends and kinsfolk of the drowned men could not endure to think that no one would be punished for what they believed to be a shameful neglect. But the general applause drowned the dissenting voices, and the friends of the accused began to hope that they were safe. If there had been only a few more minutes of daylight, such might have been the result. A show of hands was taken by the presiding magistrate, and it was believed to be in favor of the accused, but it was too dark to count; no regular decision could be made; and the matter had to be adjourned to another meeting of the assembly.

But now came another change in the impulsive, passionate temper of the people. The next day or the next day but one was the first of the great family festival of Athens, the Apaturia, a celebration something like the Christmas Day or the New Year’s Day of the modern world. It was one of the most cherished, as it was one of the most ancient of the national festivals. All the great Ionic race, with scarcely an exception, kept it, and had kept it from times running back far beyond history. The family annals were now, so to speak, made up, and consecrated by a solemn association with the past. If a marriage had been celebrated in the family during the year it was now formally registered; if a son of the house had reached his majority his name was now entered upon the roll. These formalities were duly marked by customary sacrificing and sacrifices were accompanied, as always in the ancient world, by festivities. But family festivities are apt, as most of us know only too well, to be marred by melancholy associations. It is delightful to greet those that remain, but what of those who are gone? And so it had been year after year, since the day when Athens embarked on the fatal war which for nearly thirty years drained her resources. So it was, in a special way, in the year of which I am writing. The men whom Athens had lost were not hired servants but sons. Every one, the slaves only excepted, left an empty place in some family gathering. And now for the first time the city realized the greatness of her loss. The numbers had been known before; but numbers, however startling, do not impress the mind like visible facts, and now the visible facts were before the eyes of all. The streets were filled with men and women in mourning garb, for the families which had suffered individually assumed it. It seemed as if almost every passer by had lost a kinsman. There could scarcely have been any such proportion of mourners, but any uniform garb renders the impression of being much more numerously worn than is really the case.

And there can be but little doubt that the demonstration was purposely exaggerated. For now came in the sinister influence of political strife, which since the oligarchical revolution of five years before had grown more than ever bitter and intense. The accused leaders belonged to the party of moderate aristocrats; a party loyal to the democratic constitution of Athens, but disposed to interpret its provisions in a conservative sense. The oligarchy hated them, and Theramenes had been an oligarchical conspirator before, and was about to be again. And the extremists on the other side hated them. Between the two a plot was concocted. Men who had no kinsfolk among the lost soldiers and sailors were bribed or otherwise persuaded to behave as if they had,[36] to come into the streets with black clothes and shaven heads, and to swell the numbers of the mourners, thus increasing the popular excitement.