Alkibiades, a tale of the Great Athenian War

by Charles Hamilton Bromby

‘The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.’

Tennyson.

The loss of Alkibiades was soon felt at Athens. Konon, in the spring of 406, through mismanagement, lost thirty ships in an action against the Lakedaimonians near Lesbos. He retreated into the port of Mytilene with the rest of his fleet, and there found himself caught in a trap by the Spartans, and completely shut up both by land and sea. Two ships alone escaped to carry the news of the disaster and perilous position of the general and his fleet to Athens. The Assembly decreed that a new fleet must by all practicable means be raised and sent to rescue the blockaded general at Mytilene. Every old hulk was furbished up, every craft that could possibly be made use of was pressed into the service of the state. In a month one hundred ships were ready, manned by old and young. The lowest classes, as well as the highest, were enlisted. Knights, and even slaves, were made to go on that final and most fatal expedition. The cloud of fate hung over it, the great gods hated it from the beginning.

Facing Lesbos, and close to it, are three small islands, then called the Arginousai. Thither in July the new fleet came. Kallikratidas, who commanded the Lakedaimonians, leaving fifty ships to keep up the blockade of Konon and his armament at Mytilene, foolishly engaged the new Athenian fleet with inferior numbers. During the action the Spartan admiral was drowned. The Spartans fled, the Athenians followed them, and took or destroyed more than sixty of their vessels. But all was of no avail. That last victory was the final blow by which the overthrow of the Athenian state was consummated; the prowess of its sons was as the lurid ray of an angry setting sun before a night of utter gloom.

The generals were charged with having, in the ardour of the pursuit, neglected their sacred duty to the wounded and drowning sailors, whose hands, the accusers said, were in vain uplifted to them, praying to be rescued from the waves. The people of Athens had been brought, through their misfortunes and their exhausting struggle, to a condition of delirious tension. Their feelings were strung to such a pitch that they could be worked upon with ease by designing enemies. The oligarchic faction took advantage of the opportunity. To them, anything which might weaken the existing order of things was a gain, even if it involved the slavery of Athens. The victory at Arginousai was unwelcome news to these men. The alleged inhuman and impious conduct of the generals after the fight was eagerly laid hold of by them. It gave them the means of nullifying the effect of the success, and of getting rid of the only able officers left to Athens. With these intriguing politicians were now, for this same purpose, combined the demagogues, who were not displeased at finding an excuse for attacking men in the high position of the generals.

The people heard with dismay and indignation a highly-coloured tale of dying and dead seamen and soldiers abandoned to their fate. On the same day, and at the same sitting of the Ekklesia, they thanked the generals for the victory they had gained, and dismissed them from their offices at this time of peril, ordering them to return at once to Athens.

Two of them fled, one died, the rest came back. Then, worked upon by many an artifice, by which the designing and unscrupulous knew how to mislead the people, the Assembly, without proper trial, and without even jurisdiction to try the cause, sentenced them to death. As far as we can judge from the evidence on either side, it seems that the accused men had done everything in their power, consistent with their duty to the state, to save the shipwrecked and the dying. Theramenes, who, if anyone, was guilty of neglect of this duty, which had been specially imposed on him—Theramenes, the evil genius of the time, who always comes upon the scene when there is anything particularly evil to be done, became, to save himself, the principal accuser. All of those in whose breasts the old Athenian love of justice and fair trial burned felt the degrading iniquity of the proceedings and the sentence. But, so low had Athens fallen from her old estate, they dared not raise their voices in protest against the deed, lest perchance they might be involved in the like fate. There was one left who cared not for the consequence of doing right, for the peril of refusing to take part in the wrong. Sokrates alone, as if prophetic of his own doom too soon to come, denounced the violation of the law.

Six of the generals, including Thrasyllos, to whom the people owed so much, and the son of Perikles and Aspasia, were poisoned. Thus the transient success at Arginousai robbed the Athenians of those who might still have done something towards saving them.