Against this scheme Alkibiadês protested, as narrow, timid, and disgraceful to the prodigious force with which they had been intrusted. He proposed to begin by opening negotiations with all the other Sicilian Greeks,—especially Messênê, convenient both as harbor for their fleet and as base of their military operations,—to prevail upon them to coöperate against Syracuse and Selinus. With the same view, he recommended establishing relations with the Sikels of the interior, in order to detach such of them as were subjects of Syracuse, as well as to insure supplies of provisions. As soon as it had been thus ascertained what extent of foreign aid might be looked for, he would open direct attack forthwith against Syracuse and Selinus; unless, indeed, the former should consent to reëstablish Leontini, and the latter to come to terms with Egesta.[283]
Lamachus, delivering his opinion last, dissented from both his colleagues. He advised, that they should proceed at once, without any delay, to attack Syracuse, and fight their battle under its walls. The Syracusans, he urged, were now in terror and only half-prepared for defence. Many of their citizens, and much property, would be found still lingering throughout the neighboring lands, not yet removed within the walls, and might thus be seized for the subsistence of their army;[284] while the deserted town and harbor of Megara, very near to Syracuse both by land and by sea, might be occupied by the fleet as a naval station. The imposing and intimidating effect of the armament, not less than its real efficiency, was now at the maximum, immediately after its arrival. If advantage were taken of this first impression to strike an instant blow at their principal enemy, the Syracusans would be found destitute of the courage, not less than of the means, to resist: but the longer such attack was delayed, the more this first impression of dismay would be effaced, giving place to a reactionary sentiment of indifference and even contempt, when the much-dreaded armament was seen to accomplish little or nothing. As for the other Sicilian cities, nothing would contribute so much to determine their immediate adhesion, as successful operations against Syracuse.[285]
But Lamachus found no favor with either of the other two, and being thus compelled to choose between the plans of Alkibiadês and Nikias, gave his support to that of the former, which was the mean term of the three. There can be no doubt—as far as it is becoming to pronounce respecting that which never reached execution—that the plan of Lamachus was far the best and most judicious; at first sight, indeed, the most daring, but intrinsically the safest, easiest, and speediest, that could be suggested. For undoubtedly the siege and capture of Syracuse, was the one enterprise indispensable towards the promotion of Athenian views in Sicily. The sooner that was commenced, the more easily it would be accomplished: and its difficulties were in many ways aggravated, in no way abated, by those preliminary precautions upon which Alkibiadês insisted. Anything like delay tended fearfully to impair the efficiency, real as well as reputed, of an ancient aggressive armament, and to animate as well as to strengthen those who stood on the defensive, a point on which we shall find painful evidence presently. The advice of Lamachus, alike soldier-like and far-sighted, would probably have been approved and executed either by Brasidas or by Demosthenês; while the dilatory policy still advocated by Alkibiadês, even after the suggestion of Lamachus had been started, tends to show that if he was superior in military energy to one of his colleagues, he was not less inferior to the other. Indeed, when we find him talking of besieging Syracuse, unless the Syracusans would consent to the reëstablishment of Leontini, it seems probable that he had not yet made up his mind peremptorily to besiege the city at all; a fact completely at variance with those unbounded hopes of conquest which he is reported as having conceived even at Athens. It is possible that he may have thought it impolitic to contradict too abruptly the tendencies of Nikias, who, anxious as he was chiefly to find some pretext for carrying back his troops unharmed, might account the proposition of Lamachus too desperate even to be discussed. Unfortunately, the latter, though the ablest soldier of the three, was a poor man, of no political position, and little influence among the hoplites. Had he possessed, along with his own straightforward military energy, the wealth and family ascendency of either of his colleagues, the achievements as well as the fate of this splendid armament would have been entirely altered, and the Athenians would have entered Syracuse not as prisoners but as conquerors.
Alkibiadês, as soon as his plan had become adopted by means of the approval of Lamachus, sailed across the strait in his own trireme from Rhegium to Messênê. Though admitted personally into the city, and allowed to address the public assembly, he could not induce them to conclude any alliance, or to admit the armament to anything beyond a market of provisions without the walls. He accordingly returned back to Rhegium, from whence he and one of his colleagues immediately departed with sixty triremes for Naxos. The Naxians cordially received the armament, which then steered southward along the coast of Sicily to Katana. In the latter place the leading men and the general sentiment were at this time favorable to Syracuse, so that the Athenians, finding admittance refused, were compelled to sail farther southward and take their night-station at the mouth of the river Terias. On the ensuing day they made sail with their ships in single column immediately in front of Syracuse itself, while an advanced squadron of ten triremes were even despatched into the Great Harbor, south of the town, for the purpose of surveying on this side the city with its docks and fortifications, and for the farther purpose of proclaiming from shipboard by the voice of the herald: “The Leontines now in Syracuse are hereby invited to come forth without apprehension and join their friends and benefactors, the Athenians.” After this empty display, they returned back to Katana.[286]
We may remark that this proceeding was completely at variance with the judicious recommendation of Lamachus. It tended to familiarize the Syracusans with the sight of the armament piece-meal, without any instant action, and thus to abate in their minds the terror-striking impression of its first arrival.
At Katana, Alkibiadês personally was admitted into the town, and allowed to open his case before the public assembly, as he had been at Messênê. Accident alone enabled him to carry his point, for the general opinion was averse to his propositions. While most of the citizens were in the assembly listening to his discourse, some Athenian soldiers without, observing a postern-gate carelessly guarded, broke it open and showed themselves in the market-place. The town was thus in the power of the Athenians, so that the leading men who were friends of Syracuse thought themselves lucky to escape in safety, while the general assembly came to a resolution accepting the alliance proposed by Alkibiadês.[287] The whole Athenian armament was now conducted from Rhegium to Katana, which was established as head-quarters. Intimation was farther received from a party at Kamarina, that the city might be induced to join them, if the armament showed itself: accordingly, the whole armament proceeded thither, and took moorings off the shore, while a herald was sent up to the city. But the Kamarinæans declined to admit the army, and declared that they would abide by the existing treaty; which bound them to receive at any time one single ship, but no more, unless they themselves should ask for it. The Athenians were therefore obliged to return to Katana. Passing by Syracuse both going and returning, they ascertained the falsehood of a report that the Syracusans were putting a naval force afloat; moreover, they landed near the city and ravaged some of the neighboring lands. The Syracusan cavalry and light troops soon appeared, and a skirmish with trifling loss ensued, before the invaders retired to their ships,[288] the first blood shed in this important struggle, and again at variance with the advice of Lamachus.
Serious news awaited them on their return to Katana. They found the public ceremonial trireme, called the Salaminian, just arrived from Athens, the bearer of a formal resolution of the assembly, requiring Alkibiadês to come home and stand his trial for various alleged matters of irreligion combined with treasonable purposes. A few other citizens specified by name were commanded to come along with him under the same charge; but the trierarch of the Salaminian was especially directed to serve him only with the summons, without any guard or coercion, so that he might return home in his own trireme.[289]
This summons, pregnant with momentous results both to Athens and to her enemies, arose out of the mutilation of the Hermæ, described a few pages back, and the inquiries instituted into the authorship of that deed, since the departure of the armament. The extensive and anxious sympathies connected with so large a body of departing citizens, combined with the solemnity of the scene itself, had for the moment suspended the alarm caused by that sacrilege; but it speedily revived, and the people could not rest without finding out by whom the deed had been done. Considerable rewards, one thousand and even ten thousand drachms, were proclaimed to informers; of whom others soon appeared, in addition to the slave Andromachus, before mentioned. A metic named Teukrus had fled from Athens, immediately after the event, to Megara, from whence he sent intimation to the senate at Athens that he had himself been a party concerned in the recent sacrilege concerning the mysteries, as well as cognizant of the mutilation of the Hermæ, and that, if impunity were guaranteed to him, he would come back and give full information. A vote of the senate was immediately passed to invite him. He denounced by name eleven persons as having been concerned, jointly with himself, in the mock-celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, and eighteen different persons, himself not being one, as the violators of the Hermæ. A woman named Agaristê, daughter of Alkmæonidês,—these names bespeak her great rank and family in the city,—deposed farther that Alkibiadês, Axiochus, and Adeimantus, had gone through a parody of the mysteries in a similar manner, in the house of Charmidês. And lastly Lydus, slave of a citizen named Phereklês, stated that the like scene had been enacted in the house of his master in the deme Thêmakus, giving the names of the parties present, one of whom—though asleep, and unconscious of what was passing—he stated to be Leogoras, the father of Andokidês.[290] Of the parties named in these different depositions, the greater number seem to have fled from the city at once; but all who remained were put into prison to stand future trial.[291] Those informers received the promised rewards, after some debate as to the parties entitled to receive the reward; for Pythonikus, the citizen who had produced the slave Andromachus, pretended to the first claim, while Androkles, one of the senators, contended that the senate collectively ought to receive[292] the money; a strange pretension, which we do not know how he justified. At last, however, at the time of the Panathenaic festival, Andromachus the slave received the first reward of ten thousand drachms; Teukrus the metic, the second reward of one thousand drachms.
A large number of citizens, many of them of the first consideration in the city, were thus either lying in prison or had fled into exile. But the alarm, the agony, and the suspicion, in the public mind, went on increasing rather than diminishing. The information hitherto received had been all partial, and, with the exception of Agaristê, all the informants had been either slaves or metics, not citizens; while Teukrus, the only one among them who had stated anything respecting the mutilation of the Hermæ, did not profess to be a party concerned, or to know all those who were.[293] The people had heard only a succession of disclosures, all attesting a frequency of irreligious acts, calculated to insult and banish the local gods who protected their country and constitution; all indicating that there were many powerful citizens bent on prosecuting such designs, interpreted as treasonable, yet none communicating any full or satisfactory idea of the Hermokopid plot, of the real conspirators, or of their farther purposes. The enemy was among themselves, yet they knew not where to lay hands upon him. Amidst the gloomy terrors, political blended with religious, which distracted their minds, all the ancient stories of the last and worst oppressions of the Peisistratid despots, ninety-five years before, became again revived, and some new despots, they knew not who, seemed on the point of occupying the acropolis. To detect the real conspirators, was the only way of procuring respite from this melancholy paroxysm, for which purpose the people were willing to welcome questionable witnesses, and to imprison on suspicion citizens of the best character, until the truth could be ascertained.[294]
The public distraction was aggravated by Peisander and Chariklês, who acted as commissioners of investigation, furious and unprincipled politicians,[295] at that time professing exaggerated attachment to the democratical constitution, though we shall find both of them hereafter among the most unscrupulous agents in its subversion. These men loudly proclaimed that the facts disclosed indicated the band of Hermokopid conspirators to be numerous, with an ulterior design of speedily putting down the democracy; and they insisted on pressing their investigations until full discovery should be attained. And the sentiment of the people, collectively taken, responded to this stimulus; though individually, every man was so afraid of becoming himself the next victim arrested, that when the herald convoked the senate for the purpose of receiving informations, the crowd in the market-place straightway dispersed.