Alkibiades, a tale of the Great Athenian War

by Charles Hamilton Bromby

Lysandros, who was the son of a poor descendant of an ancient family, and whose mother was a slave, cherished an ambition to rise above the hereditary kings of Sparta and all the other high-born Lakedaimonians, who scorned him for his poverty and his want of thorough breed. His one idea was to gain his ends by success in war, untouched by pity, and unmoved by any sense of honour, or by any of the nobler feelings of humanity. The fox, he said, can often gain his object where the lion fails. Oaths, he once declared, were made to deceive mankind. He had studied the career of Alkibiades, and tried to learn the secret of his success. Without the genius or generosity of the latter, and a stranger to his higher qualities, he was also without his weaknesses, or, if he had any of them, he carefully concealed them, that he might the better gain the ends to which he devoted all his life, and to which he sacrificed everything worth living for. While the one man renounced despotic power that he might the better serve his country, the other formed designs by which he might gain such power, even at the cost of his country’s ruin. The Fates ordained that at the time when Lysandros came to take up his command, the instrument by which he was endeavouring to work out his plan was coming from far off to meet him.

Kyros, the younger son of Dareios, King of Persia, a prince of high ambition, careless as to the means by which he might obtain his objects, and moved by an inveterate hatred of everything Athenian, had been appointed by his father to the supreme military command of Lydia, over the head of Tissaphernes. On the way to take up his command he met Mantitheos, and the other Athenian legates, who were travelling with Pharnabazos to his father’s court to negociate the terms of peace. If they once got there they might, with the help of Pharnabazos, who now inclined towards Alkibiades and an Athenian alliance, persuade the king to alter his policy, and to recall the powers with which Kyros had been invested, and so destroy the hopes and schemes which filled his head. The prince ordered the ambassadors to be given up to him. Pharnabazos protested in vain that they were sacred envoys. Kyros cared nothing for all that, and ordered them to be imprisoned, so that they should neither proceed to Susa nor return to Athens to report the failure of their mission.

Kyros and Lysandros were necessary to one another. The new Spartan admiral, feeling the hopelessness of pursuing the war in the Hellespont without the assistance of the representative of Persia, turned his attention to the Ionian coast. From Sparta and her allies he collected a fleet of seventy ships, and sailed with them to Ephesos, where Athenian influence was weakest, and where he would be at the nearest point to Sardis, which Kyros had made his capital. He soon appeared at the young prince’s court. These two men became close allies; they suited and resembled one another. Lysandros laid before the Persian the needs of his country, and persuaded him to double the pay of the sailors of the Spartan fleet. Kyros showed the wondering Lakedaimonian the stores of gold he had brought with him for that purpose. By this means the Spartan fleet was restored to its old strength, and manned by the best sailors, who were drawn to it by the larger pay with which the admiral was now able to reward them. This fleet was lying ready for action at Ephesos, within a short distance of the port of Samos, when Alkibiades arrived in the island.

The new condition of affairs might well have discouraged one of less resources. The ground upon which he had been building crumbled beneath him. The very largeness of his fleet became a weakness to him; and his reputation, his almost unparalleled success, a cause of discontent. The object of his opponent in moving his station to the Ionian coast was twofold. It hindered the Athenians from getting their tribute and supplies from their tributary towns; and it enabled him to receive more readily the payment of the Persian subsidy. Alkibiades had reckoned upon the influence of Pharnabazos at any rate to stop any further payment to the Spartans. Without that payment he knew they would not long keep their fleet at sea. He now found the subsidy not only continued, but increased, while he could get scarcely anything with which to pay his sailors even the smaller wages he had promised them.

Instead, then, of attacking the enemy at once, he was obliged to lose time by employing his fleet in petty freebooting expeditions on the Karian coast. And when he had collected something in this way, he could not get the crafty foe to meet him in fair fight. In vain he brought out his ships, paraded them before Lysandros at Ephesos, and challenged him to come out and fight on equal terms. The fox was too wary to be caught. He knew that each day the enemy’s difficulties would increase, while he could tempt that enemy’s best sailors from him by the bribe of higher pay with Persian gold. Delay was what he wanted, not a hazardous engagement with the first commander in the world.

Not being able to entice the Spartan fleet to fight, Alkibiades determined to conquer, one by one, the Ionian towns which were in revolt. Leaving a portion of his fleet to blockade Lysandros in the port of Ephesos, under the command of a skilful sailor named Antiochos, who had been pilot of the Eros in the celebrated race in pursuit of Tissaphernes, with strict orders on no account to risk an engagement while he was away, but to keep the enemy shut up inside the harbour, he sailed for Phokaia. Thrasyboulos was already there, and they thought together to make a successful beginning of the final reduction of these rebellious dependencies.

Antiochos, whom he thus left behind, was an excellent sailor, and his chief, who had known him from boyhood, had no reason to suppose that he would disobey his orders. Unfortunately, he was one of those who mistake ambition for ability, and thought himself brave when he was only foolhardy. No sooner was his general-in-chief departed than, finding himself in unexpected power, he resolved to distinguish himself by fighting the Spartans. With only two triremes, he entered the port of Ephesos, rowed past the bows of the hostile fleet as it lay at anchor, and having by words and acts insulted Sparta and the Spartans, returned towards the rest of his ships, lying hard by in the Bay of Notion, imagining that he had done some valorous thing.

Lysandros, not believing that Alkibiades was really gone away, and thinking that this attack was but a ruse to draw him out, sent only a few swift ships to overtake and punish the lieutenant. The rest of the Athenian fleet came out to protect their temporary leader, and sailed in disorder towards Ephesos, not in close line, but one by one and anyhow. Then Lysandros knew the master was indeed gone, and hastened to take advantage of his absence. He met the Athenians in line, killed many of their men, amongst them the rash and disobedient Antiochos, took fifteen of their ships, and chased the others back to Samos. This victory at Notion was of itself of no very great importance to either side. But in its result it proved the most serious and fatal blow that had ever fallen upon Athens. To it we can trace, with certainty, her overthrow, the overthrow and final ruin of the most fascinating, and in some respects the greatest, people who have yet appeared upon the stage of the world’s theatre.

As soon as Alkibiades heard of this misfortune, he set out for Samos, but the old difficulty, the want of money, made it necessary for him to tarry on his way. He visited Kyme, not far from Phokaia, to receive the tribute that was due. The inhabitants refused to pay. He landed some troops. The native soldiers came against him. He was obliged to chastise them, and collect the tribute they had failed to pay and some booty by way of penalty. Then he returned to Samos.

There he found his fleet with its prestige injured, its numbers lessened, the friend to whom he had entrusted it killed in the miserable engagement at Notion, and all his men disheartened and murmuring. He alone was not disheartened at this second blow. He landed, learnt the whole truth of the bad tidings, and embarked again, confident that, if he could only get the enemy to fight, he would soon wipe off the temporary disgrace which in his absence had come upon his men. With the remainder of the ships he sailed straightway to Ephesos, and dared Lysandros to come out and try which was the better fleet, the abler admiral. Lysandros, notwithstanding the superiority of his forces, thought it wiser not to meet the conqueror of Kyzikos, and remained in port and in safety.