Alkibiades, a tale of the Great Athenian War

by Charles Hamilton Bromby

Having listened to this not improbable romance, they wanted to know more about Sicily and the fatal expedition, for then they would hear more about Alkibiades. Alkibiades was the hero of the fleet at Samos. They all wanted to hear of him. Even while he had been dealing the deadliest blows at them through Sparta, the Athenians had felt a sort of pride in him. It was not so much Lakedaimôn that was fighting them as it was one of themselves, justly incensed at the wrong the misled demos had done him, who was punishing them. And when Lakedaimôn in turn found he was too great for them, it was he, an Athenian, who was managing Tissaphernes, and leading Lakedaimôn such a dance as she had little bargained for.

Agrestides, having made due observation, got himself taken to Peisandros and some others of the leaders, who he discovered would be the most fit to receive his overtures. When he was convinced of their sincerity he told them that he had come from his great master, who was longing to get back amongst his countrymen again.

This was, indeed, good news for them. It was soon settled that Peisandros and two others should return with Agrestides to Magnesia. When they got there they found he had not exaggerated that part of his story in which he had told them of his master’s influence with Tissaphernes. The heart of Alkibiades yearned towards his countrymen when he saw them coming, as messengers from the Athenian forces at Samos, to make overtures to him. He felt as a brother meeting his brethren after a long absence among strangers in a distant land. All the magnificence, the soft allurements of his eastern life, seemed but the toys of children to him, as a long vista opened up before him, with home and Athens and honour at the end of it.

But no one knew better how to be practical when it was necessary so to be. He had been acquainted with Peisandros in old days—a man of some ability and power of speech, not to be trusted too far, and of doubtful courage. Alkibiades saw the difficulty the oligarchic deputation felt. He went before it, met it boldly and in diplomatic fashion. He told them frankly of his influence in the councils of the Persian, and of his efforts to break up the alliance between Sparta and Persia; that he had delayed the coming of the Persian fleet, and had stopped the Persian subsidies; that it was through his advice the Spartan fleet was now laid up inactively at Rhodes; and that he was at work endeavouring to bring about a Persian-Athenian alliance. ‘But,’ he added truthfully, ‘there is one thing I cannot do, there is one point on which the Minister of the king stands firm: he will not even enter into negotiations for a treaty with a democratic government; much less could I persuade him to make alliance with one. He distrusts the people; he says they will one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow. And even if I could overcome the objections of Tissaphernes to a democracy, neither he nor I could induce the Persian king to treat with any but a kingly government, or at least an aristocracy. These things would have been hard for me to say or hear at one time, but,’ he added sadly, ‘I, too, have been taught to distrust the justice of the people.’

Nothing could have been more welcome to Peisandros and the other Athenian deputies from Samos. This was the one thing they wanted, the one thing they feared it would be impossible to get. With Alkibiades friendly to an oligarchy, all difficulties vanished. The very condition they shrank from mentioning to him he had insisted on himself. He had smoothed the way. All was plain sailing now, they thought, at Samos, except for that miscreant Phrynichos; they only doubted about him. They knew his inveterate hatred of Alkibiades.

As soon as they got back to Samos they called together their friends, the chiefs of the oligarchic party there. Nearly all the leaders were oligarchic. Phrynichos, of course, was oligarchic. They told the happy outcome of their mission; all were delighted except that one. He avowed his scepticism. He knew the steadfast nature of Alkibiades too well to believe that he seriously intended to join himself to the enemies of the people, however little the people deserved his staunch fidelity. However much the people had injured him, the oligarchs had hurt him more. Phrynichos remembered how in years gone by they had tried to attract him to their side; he more than suspected that the old charges brought against Alkibiades had been due to the vengeance of that party, whose proposals he had scorned.

Passing by the doubts of Phrynichos as unworthy of consideration, Peisandros and his colleagues announced to the sailors and hoplites the joyful news that the great king was about to desert their enemies and make a grand alliance with them and pay them an enormous subsidy, and that Alkibiades was to be recalled. The people could not be restrained on hearing it. As each item of the news was told it was difficult to keep them still enough to listen to the next. It was almost too good to be true. When they came to the recall of Alkibiades their generous emotion overcame them; many a hard sailor’s face was moist with tears. Most of these common sailors, indeed, showed some dismay when, at the end, Peisandros told them of the one condition—that the democracy must be abolished, or at least greatly modified, for a time. ‘But, after all, what mattered the form of government,’ they began to think, ‘if they could but be extricated from their present dangers, and the great Alkibiades be back again to manage everything? He was the wisest. If he did not mind the change, who need care? He must be right.’

It was then resolved amongst the chiefs to send Peisandros and ten other deputies to Athens to prepare the way for a peaceful revolution. The deputies set off upon their mission, not unaware of the strength of the prejudices they would have to overcome.

Phrynichos was trembling with rage and terror; his cunning was not allowed to sleep. He determined to destroy Alkibiades by the hand of Astyochos, and scrupled not, in order to carry out his intended murder, to betray secrets of the state which had come to his knowledge as strategos, to this country’s enemy. He wrote privately to the Spartan admiral at Miletos, telling him who it was that was stopping the Persian payment of the Spartan fleet, and was endeavouring to dissolve the alliance between Persia and Lakedaimôn, and to bring about a treaty between the Persian king and Athens, and advised him to get rid, by any practicable means, of such a dangerous enemy as Alkibiades had become.

Astyochos, who, like every other honest man who knew him, loved his old friend and comrade, refused to take advantage of this odious treachery, by which Phrynichos, while entrusted with his country’s interests, was doing all he could to stop the services Alkibiades was rendering to Athens. He sent the treacherous letter on to Alkibiades. Alkibiades in turn sent it back to the other leaders at Samos, and so convicted Phrynichos. The soldiers when they heard of the base deed would have slain their general then and there but for their inbred Athenian respect for the due formalities of law. The criminal was reserved for future trial by the proper courts.