Alkibiades, a tale of the Great Athenian War

by Charles Hamilton Bromby

To understand the great horror of the people, we must recollect how religious feeling in a Greek permeated his whole being, lived in his life, his thoughts, his actions, and, as it were, controlled him; how it was closely bound up with the state political; how he believed that the gods were incorporated with the city; how the deity, too, was almost identical, and embodied with his statue. To do reverence to the statue was to reverence the god; the reverse had never been conceived as possible.

Astonishment was soon turned to indignation. Rumour ran wild. The timid, the more religious, the superstitious, feared the wrath of Heaven, the destruction of the state. Others saw in it the work of traitors in their midst. It was the work of secret emissaries of Syrakuse, or of Korinth, the parent country of the Syrakusan colony. Or it was a party of the citizens, too cowardly to oppose openly the Sicilian expedition, who had thus attempted to turn men’s thoughts away from the great enterprise; or perhaps it was a deep-seated plan of the ever-suspected oligarchs to overthrow the democratic Constitution. All were, at any rate, agreed that, whoever the sacrilegious culprits were, their punishment should be exemplary, so that the anger of the gods might be averted and the honour of the city vindicated.

The Senate immediately met and appointed three citizens, whom they called ‘searchers,’ to sift the matter to the bottom, and report to the Assembly. The perpetrators of the outrage, it was evident, must be very numerous. It was impossible that a few conspirators could, in one short summer’s night, have worked this havoc on hundreds of the cherished effigies. Rewards were offered, and other inducements were held out to all men of whatever rank, even to slaves, to give any information which might lead to the discovery of participators in the abomination. Even pardon was assured to an accomplice who should inform against his co-conspirators.

In the midst of this religious zeal and fury a meeting of the Ekklesia was summoned to give its last instructions to the generals. For a time, while the concluding counsels were being taken, and the plan of the campaign settled,—and it was being arranged how, after succouring Egesta against its enemies, the people of Leontini should be restored, and how, when Syrakuse had been taken, its inhabitants should be sold as slaves,—the cloud which had hung over Athens for the last few days was almost dissipated.

The Assembly was about to separate, having given full powers to their trusted generals to act, in all contingencies, as it might seem best to them for the good of Athens and her allies, when Pythonikos mounted the Tribune and demanded silence.

‘Athenians,’ cried he, ‘one of the men to whom you have given the care of this great armament, a general to whom you have confided the safety of your soldiers, your sailors, your ships, and perhaps the future of the State, is a profaner of the mysteries of Eleusis. I am here by my witnesses to prove it; do to me as to you seems good if I fail to establish this accusation.’

On minds already strung to the highest pitch by that other dire undiscovered sacrilege this charge fell like a thunderbolt. The Ekklesia was paralyzed, and sat in stupid silence. Pythonikos continued:

‘I will call before you one Andromachos, a slave, who, being himself uninitiated, will tell you how he saw the mysteries profaned, and on his oath before the gods declare it was Alkibiades himself who did it.’

The slave was called, but before he gave his evidence all who had not been initiated were ordered by the President to leave the Ekklesia, lest they might hear what it was not lawful for them to know about the holy mysteries. Andromachos related to those who stayed, scarce knowing what they listened to, in their horror and astonishment, all he pretended to have seen and heard—how, being in the house of Polytion, he had seen Alkibiades and Miletos and Nikiakles burlesque and parody the sacred rites.

Alkibiades rose in indignation, denounced the charge as a conspiracy of certain oligarchs and of his personal enemies to deprive him of the command with which the people had invested him, and declared the base charge had been kept back till the last moment in order that he might not have an opportunity of meeting it before he sailed. He called upon them to judge him then and there, and not only to deprive him of his command, but decree that death he well deserved if this accusation should be proved against him.