He had advised a war against a power which was domineering over smaller states and cities allied with his country in Sicily. If he had been allowed to finish the war which he had strongly advised and prosperously begun, it would, as far as we can see, have redounded to the honour and glory of his country. He had given his whole energy to the conduct of the war; he was, he believed, about to bring it, in spite of the difficulties in his way, to a successful end. He was recalled while striving for this object, and doomed, without a spark of evidence worthy of a sane man’s belief, upon a silly, trumped-up tale, to die a shameful, a malefactor’s death. He knew he had been cursed by an interested hierarchy. He knew a stone had been set up in Athens recording his sentence and disgrace. The thought of that stone lie was never absent from his mind through all the weary time he lived at Sparta. Thenceforward, while that stone stood there, there never passed a day without a renewal of his vow that it should be cast down by the will and deed of those who had set it up, that the same voices which had ordered the lie to be engraved upon it should order its obliteration, and that the tongues which cursed him should recall their curse. Any other life but one devoted to this end and object would have appeared to him a life of cowardice. He declined to live in that condition.
Then when, in order to gain this end of his existence and to teach a salutary lesson to the workers of injustice, he had sought the help of Spartan enemies of Athens, and had promised to spare nothing in their cause, and they had accepted his assistance and made use of him, he kept his word to Sparta. How well he kept it she knew, and so did Athens. He would have kept it to the end, as throughout his eventful life he was ever true to whatever he had promised or had undertaken.
He had counselled the Spartan oligarchy, and told them what would come to pass if his advice was taken. They took his counsel; every word came true. His influence and power had gained for them the allies he had detached from Athens. Day and night he thought and worked, and fought and won, for his new associates. In the midst of his, and their, success came this second blow, as that other one had come before.
Perhaps we can grow accustomed to the hardest fortune by degrees. Succeeding sorrows, though on less grievous, seem to affect us less than the first great sorrow did. We do not grow callous, but we seem to get accustomed to them. This second stab was not felt so keenly as that other; at all events, it was not from his own people that it came. His vengeance, or rather the vindication of his fame from a suspicion that he could live without punishing this Spartan evil-doing, was no less startling and complete.
Through the long dark ride a nightmare of oppression had hung over him. He tried to shake it off; it came again, heavier and more oppressive. Had he no friends, no one on whom he could rely? Were all mankind alike—all unjust, all plotting for his death, all, especially those he deserved most thanks from, banded together for his destruction? His mind was in a state of high excitement and exaltation, by the time he got to Teichioussa. During their short stay there he had not slept, he had not rested; the nightmare was still on him, pressing the life out of him, just as the Spartan commissioners, or perhaps his friend Astyochos, or some purchased assassin, would have done, if they could have caught him at Miletos.
He rose to rid himself of this intolerable burden. He roused Agrestides; he had almost forgotten Agrestides and gone off without him. The honest sailor’s face cheered him as he looked at him for a moment, fast asleep, worn out by bodily fatigue. He woke him. Agrestides sat up and gazed round, half awake. He saw by the worn face of Alkibiades that he was suffering. A tear fell down the rough man’s cheek. His master noticed it, comprehended what it meant. All mankind, then, were not in league against him; there was at least this one who was true. There might be many others that he knew not of.
So they journeyed together. First, along the valley which they had passed through the night before, on to the reach of sea not far eastward of Miletos, then to the winding banks of the Maiandros, and through the rich and pleasant land by which it flows. Agrestides told all he knew of the conspiracy, and how he had been sent by Endios to warn Alkibiades of his fate and frustrate his enemies’ designs. Alkibiades had forgotten Endios. There was then another faithful friend that he could count upon.
He had put off the Spartan sailor’s dress, and wore a Persian robe of some magnificence which he had obtained at Teichioussa. His spirits rose again as he went on. With the bright, genial sunshine he had come out of the dark horror of the past night, and was living in the future, cheered by the new plans that he was already forming, with a double purpose—to get back in honour to his country and to punish Sparta.