Alkibiades, a tale of the Great Athenian War

by Charles Hamilton Bromby

‘So I said all along, but none would hearken to me.’

‘And the great ones said he wished to make himself a tyrant in Athens.’

‘What! he? Why, he could have made himself a tyrant here any time these last three years.’

‘Or if he had come when the four hundred were murdering us, and ruining all things in Athens, the people would have crowned him king. And, like as not, he will be king, too, before long.’

‘And a good thing, say I for one, for then he would turn the Spartans out of Dekeleia, and we should get bread cheap again.’

‘They say he will not land till they have reversed the sentence on him. Some say his enemies will try even now to have it carried out. But see where the boats make way,—he comes! he comes!’

The whole crowd pressed forward to catch a glimpse as ten great Spartan triremes came slowly forward, their prows and sides covered with the armour taken at the fight at Kyzikos, while standing in sullen groups on the decks, were the Spartan hoplites who had been taken prisoners there, wearing the red tunics that the Athenians knew and dreaded.

Then came ten more triremes with Spartan spoils and prisoners from Abydos; ten others decorated in like manner from Chalkedôn and Chrysopolis; then ten more with the five hundred Spartans who surrendered at Byzantion. Then came ten other triremes with spoils of Thrakian cities, and with Thrakian soldiers who had followed the chief out of admiration for him, clad in skins of beasts, looking keenly round about them, gesticulating, and wondering at all they saw. Then came twenty other triremes, with Persian horsemen squatting on the decks, dressed in long robes of every hue, perfectly indifferent to everything.

Then, gently at first, over the calm, sparkling sea, came the sound of rhythmic song, growing gradually louder, and the stately Athenian triremes came grandly forward, their oars splashing in the sun, and keeping time to the measured music of the rowers’ voices as they pulled with one accord to the beat of the keleustes, who led their singing. Onward they came, majestic,—their sterns, prows, bulwarks, masts, garlanded with flowers and boughs of the wild olive-tree. Then, last of all, amid the shouts and cries of great delight, was seen the well-remembered Eros, dressed more plainly than any of the others. And there—yes, there—apparelled like the sun-god of the heavens, in his armour of chased gold and ivory, that glittered in the bright May-day, was Alkibiades.

The other triremes ranged themselves on either side as he came through them. With an unassumed modesty and a smiling carelessness upon his face, he could that day with difficulty conceal the emotion of his soul. Not at Selymbria, when he found himself with a few followers in the middle of a hostile town; not at the fight at Kyzikos, when the engagement was at its hottest, and he was nearly overcome by Mindaros;—never on any previous occasion—had the struggle been so hard as that one now, which called forth all his power to keep back the flow of tears. The first favoured ones who welcomed him were his cousin and many more relations. As soon as he saw them, he came from off the Eros to the wharf. Cries went up to Heaven, the crowd closed round him, each one striving to take his hand, or only touch his garments. When a way was made for him it became a path of flowers. Along this triumphal road, made by the long walls from Peiræus to the city, he passed upward to the Peiræian gate, past the colonnades with their well-remembered paintings, and the heroes’ statues that he had been wont to gaze on with wonder when a boy; past the house of his friend Polytion, where a lying slave had been tortured to tell the people that he had profaned the mysteries; and past the many well-known spots where his boyhood and his early manhood had been spent—the scenes of his joys, his pleasures, and his triumphs; and the thoughts that they brought back swelled up within him, and made the struggle to restrain his tears grow ever greater. But when he came to the turning which led up to the Pnyx, where the people in their Ekklesia were now assembling to receive him, there was a pause in the procession, and an opening in the deep lines of citizens, and out from amongst them came Deinomache, his mother, grown almost blind, led by his young son Alkibiades. As he folded his mother in his arms, the tears he had so long kept down broke out. It was the first, the only, time that he was ever seen to weep. Then he went upward with his son to the Ekklesia.