Alkibiades, a tale of the Great Athenian War

by Charles Hamilton Bromby

The force of this argument, and the apparent truth of these assertions, had so much influence on the assembly that objectors were silenced, and the people took the first step towards the abdication of their power, though they were not prepared to make so violent a change as that which had been just suggested to them all at once. They decreed that ten deputies should be sent with Peisandros to Tissaphernes to arrange the best terms on which an alliance with Persia might be carried out.

Before Peisandros left for Asia, he resorted to other devices to further his designs on the democracy, of which he had hitherto put himself forward as a firm supporter. He set the secret clubs in motion. The secret clubs in Athens, chiefly of the oligarchic faction, were of immense political importance. It was by them that the work of party intrigue was carried on. At no time in history, not even during the French Revolution, have secret clubs been better managed for this purpose than they were at this time in Athens, nor did they ever work together in more perfect order. While the democracy was unbroken and Athens flourished they dared not show themselves or their doings too openly. The time was now come for their hidden power to manifest itself. Their members need now hesitate at no crimes which might advance their political designs. Crimes might be done by them and be forever undiscovered, and so committed with impunity. Having set these secret societies to work, Peisandros left, with the ten deputies, for the court of Tissaphernes.

Alkibiades had found the full length to which he could go with his friend the satrap, or, which was nearly the same thing, the amount of power the satrap had independently of the king. Stopping the pay of Spartan sailors was all very well: it saved the Persian’s purse. Keeping his master’s fleet in safety and idleness at Aspendos was better than furnishing it with its full complement of men and arms, and letting it be knocked about by the Athenian sailors. But an alliance out and out with Athens was different altogether. It meant parting with the Spartans finally, and all real chance of recovering dominion over the islands and coast towns of Ionia. The king was not under the spell of the favourite of Tissaphernes. He never would believe that the Athenians intended to give up a dominion they had bought at so great a cost and had exercised so long. Tissaphernes knew his master would decline the Athenian alliance, even when urged with the same arguments which his friend had used with so much force on him. So he was forced to tell his guest, with much regret, that there were difficulties in the way.

But neither was Alkibiades willing that all the terms of the propounded treaty should be accepted. He distrusted Peisandros, and despised the wretched Phrynichos. He did not believe in an oligarchic government for Athens. Much as he longed to get back home again, he would not go there but with honour. Little as the people deserved his care and sympathy, he declined to inflict further punishment upon them. We shall see how—like another exile who, seventeen hundred years afterwards, rejected the desire of his soul, and refused to return to his beloved birthplace upon conditions which he deemed unworthy of him—he nobly refused the great object of his life, rather than obtain it to his country’s detriment.

Such was the condition of affairs when Peisandros arrived for a second time at Magnesia with his ten colleagues.

Alkibiades, rather weary of the effeminate life at the palace of the satrap, had been staying at a small country house which his indulgent friend had given him, in a secluded spot, far from the turmoil of the court, and some way inland, not far from the marble quarries at Melissa. Thither Tissaphernes had come in search of his friend, and had forced him to return with him to Magnesia. It was while staying there, and on the journey back, that he sounded the viceroy as to the limit of his powers, and made up his mind as to the answer he must give the Athenian envoys on his return. He undertook to receive the deputation in the presence of his host.

Seeing that the treaty could not be carried out with honour to Athens, and refusing to have anything to do with it on any other terms, he insisted on conditions with the deputies which he knew they must reject. Peisandros lost patience, broke off the conference, and returned to Samos. There he declared amongst his friends and partisans that his belief was that Alkibiades had never really wished to aid the oligarchic rising, and that he was using his power with the satrap to destroy the oligarchic party. This bad news roused the clique to energy; they determined to act without him, and to invite their friends at Athens to do the same. For this purpose Peisandros set out with the ten deputies for Athens, recruiting a force of fighting men to help them on the way.

To the amazement of Peisandros and his friends, when at last they reached Athens, they found the engine he had set to work had acted with a success beyond his expectations. The democracy as a governing body had disappeared. It was as though the earth had gaped and swallowed up its mountains, towns, and rivers. The face of everything was changed. Loathsome animalcules, crawling and breeding underground, waiting for a sign of weakness in the body politic, seeing their time was come, had risen to the surface of the soil and seized upon their victim. In her robust and healthy state they might have swarmed about her harmless till they were crushed or sent back to the dirt from which they had emerged. But the demos tottered from the moment it first listened to a possibility of compromise. When it allowed the suggestion of an abdication to go unpunished, the process of its abdication was begun. Assassins pounced upon the few strong men left, and disappeared in darkness, no one knew where. The rest were too frightened to inquire. Daggers grew bolder, and struck right and left. Panic set in. Men dared not to speak their thoughts. They knew not who was or was not in the plot.

When the minds of weak men had been reduced to the required point of fear, the skulking conspirators, with Phrynichos at their head, and a professional rhetorician named Antiphon, came out, and by one final blow abolished, with the people’s trembling consent, the power of the people. They elected in its place a government of four hundred subservient tools, chosen beforehand by themselves. This was the new régime Peisandros found when he came back to Athens.

Very different events were taking place at Samos. For a short time the oligarchic faction there attempted the same plan of action, and slew poor Hyperbolos, the potter. Poor Hyperbolos! One always feels inclined to laugh when his name is mentioned. Yet there must have been something in him. He rose above the common level both at home and at Samos. But his name sounds so absurd by the side of those great ones who had been ostracized before him that we can hardly help a smile.