While such preparations were going on in Sicily, debates of portentous promise took place at Sparta. Immediately after the battle near the Olympieion, and the retreat of Nikias into winter quarters, the Syracusans had despatched envoys to Peloponnesus to solicit reinforcements. Here, again, we are compelled to notice the lamentable consequences arising out of the inaction of Nikias. Had he commenced the siege of Syracuse on his first arrival, it may be doubted whether any such envoys would have been sent to Peloponnesus at all; at any rate, they would not have arrived in time to produce decisive effects.[349] After exerting what influence they could upon the Italian Greeks in their voyage, the Syracusan envoys reached Corinth, where they found the warmest reception and obtained promises of speedy succor. The Corinthians furnished envoys of their own to accompany them to Sparta, and to back their request for Lacedæmonian aid.
They found at the congress at Sparta another advocate upon whom they could not reasonably have counted, Alkibiadês. That exile had crossed over from Thurii to the Eleian port of Kyllênê in Peloponnesus in a merchant-vessel,[350] and now appeared at Sparta on special invitation and safe-conduct from the Lacedæmonians; of whom he was at first vehemently afraid, in consequence of having raised against them that Peloponnesian combination which had given them so much trouble before the battle of Mantineia. He now appeared, too, burning with hostility against his country, and eager to inflict upon her all the mischief in his power. Having been the chief evil genius to plunge her, mainly for selfish ends of his own, into this ill-starred venture, he was now about to do his best to turn it into her irreparable ruin. His fiery stimulus, and unmeasured exaggerations, supplied what was wanting in Corinthian and Syracusan eloquence, and inflamed the tardy good-will of the Spartan ephors into comparative decision and activity.[351] His harangue in the Spartan congress is given to us by Thucydidês, who may possibly have heard it, as he was then himself in exile. Like the earlier speech which he puts into the mouth of Alkibiadês at Athens, it is characteristic in a high degree; and interesting in another point of view as the latest composed speech of any length which we find in his history. I give here the substance, without professing to translate the words.
“First, I must address you, Lacedæmonians, respecting the prejudices current against me personally, before I can hope to find a fair hearing on public matters. You know it was I, who renewed my public connection with Sparta, after my ancestors before me had quarrelled with you and renounced it. Moreover, I assiduously cultivated your favor on all points, especially by attentions to your prisoners at Athens: but while I was showing all this zeal towards you, you took the opportunity of the peace which you made with Athens to employ my enemies as your agents, thus strengthening their hands, and dishonoring me. It was this conduct of yours which drove me to unite with the Argeians and Mantineians; nor ought you to be angry with me for mischief which you thus drew upon yourselves. Probably some of you hate me too, without any good reason, as a forward partisan of democracy. My family were always opposed to the Peisistratid despots; and as all opposition to a reigning dynasty takes the name of The People, so from that time forward we continued to act as leaders of the people.[352] Moreover, our established constitution was a democracy, so that I had no choice but to obey, though I did my best to maintain a moderate line of political conduct in the midst of the reigning license. It was not my family, but others, who in former times as well as now, led the people into the worst courses, those same men who sent me into exile. I always acted as leader, not of a party, but of the entire city; thinking it right to uphold that constitution in which Athens had enjoyed her grandeur and freedom, and which I found already existing.[353] For as to democracy, all we Athenians of common sense well knew its real character. Personally, I have better reason than any one else to rail against it, if one could say anything new about such confessed folly; but I did not think it safe to change the government, while you were standing by as enemies.
“So much as to myself personally: I shall now talk to you about the business of the meeting, and tell you something more than you yet know. Our purpose in sailing from Athens, was, first to conquer the Sicilian Greeks; next, the Italian Greeks; afterwards, to make an attempt on the Carthaginian empire and on Carthage herself. If all or most of this succeeded, we were then to attack Peloponnesus. We intended to bring to this enterprise the entire power of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks, besides large numbers of Iberian and other warlike barbaric mercenaries, together with many new triremes built from the abundant forests of Italy, and large supplies both of treasure and provision. We could thus blockade Peloponnesus all round with our fleet, and at the same time assail it with our land-force; and we calculated, by taking some towns by storm and occupying others as permanent fortified positions, that we should easily conquer the whole peninsula, and then become undisputed masters of Greece. You thus hear the whole scheme of our expedition from the man who knows it best; and you may depend on it that the remaining generals will execute all this, if they can. Nothing but your intervention can hinder them. If, indeed, the Sicilian Greeks were all united, they might hold out; but the Syracusans standing alone cannot, beaten as they already have been in a general action, and blocked up as they are by sea. If Syracuse falls into the hands of the Athenians, all Sicily and all Italy will share the same fate; and the danger which I have described will be soon upon you.
“It is not therefore simply for the safety of Sicily,—it is for the safety of Peloponnesus,—that I now urge you to send across, forthwith, a fleet with an army of hoplites as rowers; and what I consider still more important than an army, a Spartan general to take the supreme command. Moreover, you must also carry on declared and vigorous war against Athens here, that the Syracusans may be encouraged to hold out, and that Athens may be in no condition to send additional reinforcements thither. You must farther fortify and permanently garrison Dekeleia in Attica:[354] that is the contingency which the Athenians have always been most afraid of, and which therefore you may know to be your best policy. You will thus get into your own hands the live and dead stock of Attica, interrupt the working of the silver mines at Laureion, deprive the Athenians of their profits from judicial fines as well as of their landed revenue, and dispose the subject-allies to withhold their tribute.
“None of you ought to think the worse of me because I make this vigorous onset upon my country in conjunction with her enemies, I who once passed for a patriot.[355] Nor ought you to mistrust my assurances, as coming from the reckless passion of an exile. The worst enemies of Athens are not those who make open war like you, but those who drive her best friends into hostility. I loved my country,[356] while I was secure as a citizen; I love her no more, now that I am wronged. In fact, I do not conceive myself to be assailing a country still mine; I am rather trying to win back a country now lost to me. The real patriot is not he, who, having unjustly lost his country, acquiesces in patience, but he whose ardor makes him try every means to regain her.
“Employ me without fear, Lacedæmonians, in any service of danger or suffering; the more harm I did you formerly as an enemy, the more good I can now do you as a friend. But above all, do not shrink back from instant operations both in Sicily and in Attica, upon which so much depends. You will thus put down the power of Athens, present as well as future; you will dwell yourselves in safety; and you will become the leaders of undivided Hellas, by free consent and without force.”[357]
Enormous consequences turned upon this speech, no less masterly in reference to the purpose and the audience, than infamous as an indication of the character of the speaker. If its contents became known at Athens, as they probably did, the enemies of Alkibiadês would be supplied with a justification of their most violent political attacks. That imputation which they had taken so much pains to fasten upon him, citing in proof of it alike his profligate expenditure, overbearing insolence, and derision of the religious ceremonies of the state,[358]—that he detested the democracy in his heart, submitted to it only from necessity, and was watching for the first safe opportunity of subverting it,—appears here in his own language as matter of avowal and boast. The sentence of condemnation against him would now be unanimously approved, even by those who at the time had deprecated it; and the people would be more firmly persuaded than before of the reality of the association between irreligious manifestations and treasonable designs. Doubtless the inferences so drawn from the speech would be unsound, because it represented, not the actual past sentiments of Alkibiadês, but those to which he now found it convenient to lay claim. As far as so very selfish a politician could be said to have any preference, democracy was, in some respects, more convenient to him than oligarchy. Though offensive to his taste, it held out larger prospects to his love of show, his adventurous ambition, and his rapacity for foreign plunder; while under an oligarchy, the jealous restraints and repulses imposed on him by a few equals, would be perhaps more galling to his temper than those arising from the whole people.[359] He takes credit in his speech for moderation, as opposed to the standing license of democracy. But this is a pretence absurd even to extravagance, and which Athenians of all parties would have listened to with astonishment. Such license as that of Alkibiadês had never been seen at Athens; and it was the adventurous instincts of the democracy towards foreign conquest, combined with their imperfect apprehension of the limits and conditions under which alone their empire could be permanently maintained, which he stimulated up to the highest point, and then made use of for his own power and profit. As against himself, he had reason for accusing his political enemies of unworthy manœuvres, and even of gross political wickedness, if they were authors or accomplices—as seems probable of some—in the mutilation of the Hermæ. But most certainly, their public advice to the commonwealth was far less mischievous than his. And if we are to strike the balance of personal political merit between Alkibiadês and his enemies, we must take into the comparison his fraud upon the simplicity of the Lacedæmonian envoys, recounted in the last chapter but one of this History.
If, then, that portion of the speech of Alkibiadês, wherein he touches upon Athenian politics and his own past conduct, is not to be taken as historical evidence, just as little can we trust the following portion in which he professes to describe the real purposes of Athens in her Sicilian expedition. That any such vast designs as those which he announces were ever really contemplated even by himself and his immediate friends, is very improbable; that they were contemplated by the Athenian public, by the armament, or by Nikias, is utterly incredible. The tardiness and timid movements of the armament—during the first eight months after arriving at Rhegium—recommended by Nikias, partially admitted even by Alkibiadês, opposed only by the unavailing wisdom of Lamachus, and not strongly censured when known at Athens, conspire to prove that their minds were not at first fully made up even to the siege of Syracuse; that they counted on alliances and money in Sicily which they did not find; and that those who sailed from Athens with large hopes of brilliant and easy conquest were soon taught to see the reality with different eyes. If Alkibiadês had himself conceived at Athens the designs which he professed to reveal in his speech at Sparta, there can be no doubt that he would have espoused the scheme of Lamachus, or rather would have originated it himself. We find him, indeed, in his speech delivered at Athens before the determination to sail, holding out hopes that by means of conquests in Sicily, Athens might become mistress of all Greece. But this is there put as an alternative and as a favorable possibility, is noticed only in one place, without expansion or amplification, and shows that the speaker did not reckon upon finding any such expectations prevalent among his hearers. Alkibiadês could not have ventured to promise, in his discourse at Athens, the results which he afterwards talked of at Sparta as having been actually contemplated,—Sicily, Italy, Carthage, Iberian mercenaries, etc., all ending in a blockading fleet large enough to gird round Peloponnesus.[360] Had he put forth such promises, the charge of juvenile folly which Nikias urged against him would probably have been believed by every one. His speech at Sparta, though it has passed with some as a fragment of true Grecian history, is in truth little better than a gigantic romance dressed up to alarm his audience.[361]
Intended for this purpose, it was eminently suitable and effective. The Lacedæmonians had already been partly moved by the representations from Corinth and Syracuse, and were even prepared to send envoys to the latter place with encouragement to hold out against Athens. But the Peace of Nikias and the alliance succeeding it, still subsisted between Athens and Sparta. It had indeed been partially and indirectly violated in many ways, but both the contracting parties still considered it as subsisting, nor would either of them yet consent to break their oaths openly and avowedly. For this reason—as well as from the distance of Sicily, great even in the estimation of the more nautical Athenians—the ephors could not yet make up their minds to despatch thither any positive aid. It was exactly in this point of hesitation between the will and the deed that the energetic and vindictive exile from Athens found them. His flaming picture of the danger impending,—brought home to their own doors, and appearing to proceed from the best informed of all witnesses,—overcame their reluctance at once; while he at the same time pointed out the precise steps whereby their interference would be rendered of most avail. The transfer of Alkibiadês to Sparta thus reverses the superiority of force between the two contending chiefs of Greece: “Momentumque fuit mutatus Curio rerum.”[362] He had not yet shown his power of doing his country good, as we shall find him hereafter engaged, during the later years of the war: his first achievements were but too successful in doing her harm.