Alkibiades, a tale of the Great Athenian War

by Charles Hamilton Bromby

A flight of steps led up to the wide portico, supported by six Ionic columns, crowned by its sculptured tympanum, on this day hung with garlands. The massive doors, covered with beaten bronze plates, were opened as the festive band approached, and showed a troop of slaves, young men and maidens, upon either side, awaiting the arrival of their lord. The bridal procession entered the great courtyard, which had been much changed and ornamented since the days of Kleinias. A colonnade of sculptured columns now ran all round it; the walls were painted with scenes from the Argonautic expedition by the young painter Mikôn. A graceful fountain rose and fell in the centre of the court as they passed through to the rooms beyond, painted for this occasion with hymeneal subjects by Aristophôn. There the women had prepared the nuptial couch.

Athens was astir that day. All the world knew Alkibiades, and had heard many things of the riches and the ancestry of the daughter of Hipponikos. Slaves and dependents, from the demesnes of either house, followed in their train. Hipponikos was proud at having for his son-in-law one who had proved his valour in the field, and bade fair by his talents to become a leading man in Athens. The people lined the streets to see the show, and cheered their favourite as he went by as heartily as they applauded when the actors, in their great masks, mouthed out licentious satires of him on the comic stage.

At the rich feast which Hipponikos gave, friends and relations of bride and bridegroom, and most of the great men of the state, were present. Kallias, the brother of the bride, of course was there, with his philosopher Protagoras, and others of his loquacious Sophist friends, and Sokrates, who never spoke a word. The banquet, gay and joyous, with its great dishes of sesame cakes, lasted late, and then the bride bid adieu to her old sire, and left her home of innocence and peace, happiest of them all, unmindful of the troubles that were to come with the new life.

She thought that she indeed had cause to be contented. She had gained the bravest, cleverest, most splendid of all the Greeks. Even his gallantries, of which her women told her, could not lessen the admiration that she felt, and all these gallantries, excusable in him till now, she knew he would abandon for the love of her. Had she not cause to be contented?

And he, as the epithalamium he had written for her was sung outside their chamber door by girls and boys, to the music of the harps and flutes—he, tired with the day’s excitement, as he laid him down by her, he too was happy, while Timandra—poor Timandra!—was almost forgot.

Lonely Timandra, who had given up all else for him, and loved him as only such a one as she can love, in her fair Grecian villa—far from the bustle of the town, she sat her down in dark despair and rage. The very luxury with which he had surrounded her grew hateful to her. The garden perfumes from the orange-trees, whose blossoms the late autumn winds had not yet shaken off, grew sickly. The shaded seats, where they had sat on summer nights, looked drear. The birds, which had so often sung to them in the bright springtime, on quiet cloudless evenings, their songs of love and endless happiness, were still. All, all, was desolate.

She had sometimes feared this end. And yet what fault was it of hers that she was not descended from as long a line of ancestors as this Hippareté? Was her rival any better for her trip to Samos, and all the other childish myths about her family? Perhaps her own forefathers—who could tell?—had been as great as that one’s. Her mother—and now she almost wept—her kind, fond, virtuous mother, who had died hardly forgiving her, she, at least, was better than that poor doll’s, with three husbands living at one time. She was more beautiful, she knew, than poor Hippareté, for he had often told her so; and she had wit and learning, and was more skilled in every art than any woman in her time, except, perhaps, Aspasia.

So the day passed with her. When the night came on, a maddening frenzy seized her soul, till the chill morning dawned, and then an evil smile crept over her disdainful mouth; she knew her time would come.

For a season Alkibiades became another man. He laid aside the flowing Persian robe in which he loved to scandalize the sterner Greeks. The long and curling locks, tokens of youth, were cut at last. His days again were given to military exercise, and sometimes he would even seek out Sokrates, and listen to his teaching. The faithful Sokrates had never ceased to follow him through all his dissipation, had never ceased to love him for his beauty and his understanding, nor ceased to mourn for him as over a great soul departing.

As the spring drew on there was greater martial stir than ever in the town of Athens. It was indeed a time for all who cared for her or wished to make a name to brace themselves for action. Besides Korinthian, Spartan, and other Doric enemies in the Peloponnesos, Boiotians to the north, Megarians on the west, were threatening her. Now was the moment come for struggle, if she meant to burst the toils that were closing round about her.