Tissaphernes ordered them all back to the Phœnikian coast, and, with the help of his witty friend, made up and sent to Lichas the following curious reason for not keeping the promise he had made to Sparta:
‘Whereas by some, at present undiscovered, accident, my lord the King had not sent more than one hundred and forty-seven long-ships, and, as it appears to me, his viceroy, unworthy of the King of Kings that he should send to aid so great and powerful a people as the Lakedaimonians so small a fleet, I, Tissaphernes, the aforesaid viceroy, have sent them back again.’
This cynical defence, suggested by Alkibiades, for the breaking of the solemn promises given at least three times in as many separate treaties, pleased his Persian friend. It suited the wily nature of the man; and when the two parted at Aspendos, as soon as Alkibiades could get away, their love and friendship seemed stronger and likely to be more lasting than it had ever been before. And grave historians ever since have been puzzling their heads why it was that, although Tissaphernes allowed the Spartan envoys to go with him to fetch the fleet, the Spartans never did get it after all, and why he gave so curious an excuse for sending it back to the Phœnikian coast again.
Book III
‘That is Alcibiades. In the flower of his manly prime, in the bloom of his wonderful talents ... there stands the great moral antithesis, the living type of the Athenian character—the warrior, the fop—the statesman, the voluptuary—the demagogue, the patriot—the orator ... the lisper on whose utterance assemblies hung—the spendthrift, whose extravagance did honour to his native land—the man who would have made his country mistress of the world....’—Sir D. K. Sandford.
CHAPTER XXI
‘The fish swam by the castle wall,
And they seemed joyous each and all;
The eagle rode the rising blast: