For the two or three months immediately succeeding the final resolution taken by the Athenians to invade Sicily, described in the last chapter, the whole city was elate and bustling with preparation. I have already mentioned that this resolution, though long opposed by Nikias with a considerable minority, had at last been adopted—chiefly through the unforeseen working of that which he intended as a counter-manœuvre—with a degree of enthusiasm and unanimity, and upon an enlarged scale, which surpassed all the anticipations of its promoters. The prophets, circulators of oracles, and other accredited religious advisers, announced generally the favorable dispositions of the gods, and promised a triumphant result.[236] All classes in the city, rich and poor,—cultivators, traders, and seamen, old and young, all embraced the project with ardor; as requiring a great effort, yet promising unparalleled results, both of public aggrandizement and individual gain. Each man was anxious to put down his own name for personal service; so that the three generals, Nikias, Alkibiadês, and Lamachus, when they proceeded to make their selection of hoplites, instead of being forced to employ constraint and incur ill-will, as happened when an expedition was unpopular, had only to choose the fittest among a throng of eager volunteers. Every man provided himself with his best arms and with bodily accoutrements, useful as well as ostentatious, for a long voyage and for the exigencies of a varied land-and-sea-service. Among the trierarchs, or rich citizens, who undertook each in his turn the duty of commanding a ship of war, the competition was yet stronger. Each of them accounted it an honor to be named, and vied with his comrades to exhibit his ship in the most finished state of equipment. The state, indeed, furnished both the trireme with its essential tackle and oars, and the regular pay for the crew; but the trierarch, even in ordinary cases, usually incurred various expenses besides, to make the equipment complete and to keep the crew together. Such additional outlay, neither exacted nor defined by law, but only by custom and general opinion, was different in every individual case, according to temper and circumstances. But on the present occasion, zeal and forwardness were universal: each trierarch tried to procure for his own ship the best crew, by offers of additional reward to all, but especially to the thranitæ or rowers on the highest of the three tiers:[237] and it seems that the seamen were not appointed specially to one ship, but were at liberty to accept these offers, and to serve in any ship they preferred. Each trierarch spent more than had ever been known before in pay, outfit, provision, and even external decoration of his vessel. Besides the best crews which Athens herself could furnish, picked seamen were also required from subject-allies, and were bid for in the same way by the trierarchs.[238]
Such efforts were much facilitated by the fact, that five years had now elapsed since the Peace of Nikias, without any considerable warlike operations. While the treasury had become replenished with fresh accumulations,[239] and the triremes increased in number, the military population, reinforced by additional numbers of youth, had forgotten both the hardships of the war and the pressure of epidemic disease. Hence the fleet now got together, while it surpassed in number all previous armaments of Athens, except a single one in the second year of the previous war under Periklês, was incomparably superior even to that, and still more superior to all the rest, in the other ingredients of force, material as well as moral; in picked men, universal ardor, ships as well as arms in the best condition, and accessories of every kind in abundance. Such was the confidence of success, that many Athenians went prepared for trade as well as for combat; so that the private stock thus added to the public outfit, and to the sums placed in the hands of the generals, constituted an unparalleled aggregate of wealth. Much of this was visible to the eye, contributing to heighten that general excitement of Athenian imagination which pervaded the whole city while the preparations were going forward: a mingled feeling of private sympathy and patriotism,—a dash of uneasiness from reflection on the distant and unknown region wherein the fleet was to act,—yet an elate confidence in Athenian force, such as had never before been entertained.[240] We hear of Sokratês the philosopher, and Meton the astronomer, as forming exceptions to this universal tone of sanguine anticipation: the familiar genius which constantly waited upon the philosopher is supposed to have forewarned him of the result. Nor is it impossible that he may have been averse to the expedition, though the fact is less fully certified than we could wish. Amidst a general predominance of the various favorable religious signs and prophecies, there were also some unfavorable. Usually, on all public matters of risk or gravity, there were prophets who gave assurances in opposite ways: those which turned out right were treasured up: the rest were at once forgotten, or never long remembered.[241]
After between two and three months of active preparations, the expedition was almost ready to start, when an event happened which fatally poisoned the prevalent cheerfulness of the city. This was the mutilation of the Hermæ, one of the most extraordinary events in all Grecian history.
These Hermæ, or half-statues of the god Hermês, were blocks of marble about the height of the human figure. The upper part was cut into a head, face, neck, and bust; the lower part was left as a quadrangular pillar, broad at the base, without arms, body, or legs, but with the significant mark of the male sex in front. They were distributed in great numbers throughout Athens, and always in the most conspicuous situations; standing beside the outer doors of private houses as well as of temples, near the most frequented porticos, at the intersection of cross ways, in the public agora. They were thus present to the eye of every Athenian in all his acts of intercommunion, either for business or pleasure, with his fellow-citizens. The religious feelings of the Greeks considered the god to be planted or domiciliated where his statue stood,[242] so that the companionship, sympathy, and guardianship of Hermês became associated with most of the manifestations of conjunct life at Athens,—political, social, commercial, or gymnastic. Moreover, the quadrangular fashion of these statues, employed occasionally for other gods besides Hermês, was a most ancient relic handed down from the primitive rudeness of Pelasgian workmanship and was popular in Arcadia as well as peculiarly frequent in Athens.[243]
About the end of May, 415 B.C., in the course of one and the same night, all these Hermæ, one of the most peculiar marks of the city, were mutilated by unknown hands. Their characteristic features were knocked off or levelled, so that nothing was left except a mass of stone with no resemblance to humanity or deity. All were thus dealt with in the same way, save and except very few: nay, Andokidês affirms, and I incline to believe him, that there was but one which escaped unharmed.[244]
It is of course impossible for any one to sympathize fully with the feelings of a religion not his own: indeed, the sentiment with which, in the case of persons of different creeds, each regards the strong emotions growing out of causes peculiar to the other, is usually one of surprise that such trifles and absurdities can occasion any serious distress or excitement.[245] But if we take that reasonable pains, which is incumbent on those who study the history of Greece, to realize in our minds the religious and political associations of the Athenians,[246] noted in ancient times for their superior piety, as well as for their accuracy and magnificence about the visible monuments embodying that feeling,—we shall in part comprehend the intensity of mingled dismay, terror, and wrath, which beset the public mind on the morning after this nocturnal sacrilege, alike unforeseen and unparalleled. Amidst all the ruin and impoverishment which had been inflicted by the Persian invasion of Attica, there was nothing which was so profoundly felt or so long remembered as the deliberate burning of the statues and temples of the gods.[247] If we could imagine the excitement of a Spanish or Italian town, on finding that all the images of the Virgin had been defaced during the same night, we should have a parallel, though a very inadequate parallel, to what was now felt at Athens, where religious associations and persons were far more intimately allied with all civil acts and with all the proceedings of every-day life; where, too, the god and his efficiency were more forcibly localized, as well as identified with the presence and keeping of the statue. To the Athenians, when they went forth on the following morning, each man seeing the divine guardian at his doorway dishonored and defaced, and each man gradually coming to know that the devastation was general, it would seem that the town had become as it were godless; that the streets, the market-place, the porticos, were robbed of their divine protectors; and what was worse still, that these protectors, having been grossly insulted, carried away with them alienated sentiments, wrathful and vindictive instead of tutelary and sympathizing. It was on the protection of the gods, that all their political constitution as well as the blessings of civil life depended; insomuch that the curses of the gods were habitually invoked as sanction and punishment for grave offences, political as well as others:[248] an extension and generalization of the feeling still attached to the judicial oath. This was, in the minds of the people of Athens, a sincere and literal conviction, not simply a form of speech to be pronounced in prayers and public harangues, without being ever construed as a reality in calculating consequences and determining practical measures. Accordingly, they drew from the mutilation of the Hermæ the inference, not less natural than terrifying, that heavy public misfortune was impending over the city, and that the political constitution to which they were attached was in imminent danger of being subverted.[249]
Such was the mysterious incident which broke in upon the eager and bustling movement of Athens, a few days before the Sicilian expedition was in condition for starting. In reference to that expedition it was taken to heart as a most depressing omen.[250] It would doubtless have been so determined, had it been a mere undesigned accident happening to any venerated religious object, just as we are told that similar misgivings were occasioned by the occurrence, about this same time, of the melancholy festival of the Adonia, wherein the women loudly bewailed the untimely death of Adonis.[251] The mutilation of the Hermæ, however, was something much more ominous than the worst accident. It proclaimed itself as the deliberate act of organized conspirators, not inconsiderable in number, whose names and final purpose were indeed unknown, but who had begun by committing sacrilege of a character flagrant and unheard of. For intentional mutilation of a public and sacred statue, where the material afforded no temptation to plunder, is a case to which we know no parallel: much more mutilation by wholesale, spread by one band and in one night throughout an entire city. Though neither the parties concerned, nor their purposes, were ever more than partially made out, the concert and conspiracy itself is unquestionable.
It seems probable, as far as we can form an opinion, that the conspirators had two objects, perhaps some of them one and some the other: to ruin Alkibiadês, to frustrate or delay the expedition. How they pursued the former purpose, will be presently seen: towards the latter, nothing was ostensibly done, but the position of Teukrus, and other metics implicated, renders it more likely that they were influenced by sympathies with Corinth and Megara,[252] prompting them to intercept an expedition which was supposed to promise great triumphs to Athens, rather than corrupted by the violent antipathies of intestine politics. Indeed, the two objects were intimately connected with each other; for the prosecution of the enterprise, while full of prospective conquest to Athens, was yet more pregnant with future power and wealth to Alkibiadês himself. Such chances would disappear if the expedition could be prevented; nor was it at all impossible that the Athenians, under the intense impression of religious terror consequent on the mutilation of the Hermæ, might throw up the scheme altogether. Especially Nikias, exquisitely sensitive in his own religious conscience, and never hearty in his wish for going, a fact perfectly known to the enemy,[253] would hasten to consult his prophets, and might reasonably be expected to renew his opposition on the fresh ground offered to him, or at least to claim delay until the offended gods should have been appeased. We may judge how much such a proceeding was in the line of his character, and of the Athenian character, when we find him, two years afterwards, with the full concurrence of his soldiers, actually sacrificing the last opportunity of safe retreat for the half-ruined Athenian army in Sicily, and refusing even to allow the proposition to be debated, in consequence of an eclipse of the moon; and when we reflect that Spartans and other Greeks frequently renounced public designs if an earthquake happened before the execution.[254]
But though the chance of setting aside the expedition altogether might reasonably enter into the plans of the conspirators, as a likely consequence of the intense shock inflicted on the religious mind of Athens, and especially of Nikias, this calculation was not realized. Probably matters had already proceeded too far even for Nikias to recede. Notice had been sent round to all the allies; forces were already on their way to the rendezvous at Korkyra; the Argeian and Mantineian allies were arriving at Peiræus to embark. So much the more eagerly did the conspirators proceed in the other part of their plan, to work that exaggerated religious terror, which they had themselves artificially brought about, for the ruin of Alkibiadês.
Few men in Athens either had or deserved to have a greater number of enemies, political as well as private, than Alkibiades; many of them being among the highest citizens, whom he offended by his insolence, and whose liturgies and other customary exhibitions he outshone by his reckless expenditure. His importance had been already so much increased, and threatened to be so much more increased, by the Sicilian enterprise, that they no longer observed any measures in compassing his ruin. That which the mutilators of the Hermæ seem to have deliberately planned, his other enemies were ready to turn to profit.