History of Greece, Volume 08 (of 12)

by George Grote

The generals, in their public letter, accounted for their omission by saying that the violence of the storm was too great to allow them to move. First, was this true as matter of fact? Next, had there been time to discharge the duty, or at the least to try and discharge it, before the storm came on to be so intolerable? These points required examination. The generals, while honored with a vote of thanks for the victory, were superseded, and directed to come home; all except Konon, who having been blocked up at Mitylênê, was not concerned in the question. Two new colleagues, Philoklês and Adeimantus, were named to go out and join him.[268] The generals probably received the notice of their recall at Samos, and came home in consequence; reaching Athens seemingly about the end of September or beginning of October, the battle of Arginusæ having been fought in August 406 B.C. Two of the generals, however, Protomachus and Aristogenês, declined to come: warned of the displeasure of the people, and not confiding in their own case to meet it, they preferred to pay the price of voluntary exile. The other six, Periklês, Lysias, Diomedon, Erasinidês, Aristokratês, and Thrasyllus,—Archestratus, one of the original ten, having died at Mitylênê,[269]—came without their two colleagues; an unpleasant augury for the result.

On their first arrival, Archedêmus, at that time an acceptable popular orator, and exercising some magistracy or high office which we cannot distinctly make out,[270] imposed upon Erasinidês a fine to that limited amount which was within the competence of magistrates without the sanction of the dikastery, and accused him besides before the dikastery; partly for general misconduct in his command, partly on the specific charge of having purloined some public money on its way from the Hellespont. Erasinidês was found guilty, and condemned to be imprisoned, either until the money was made good, or perhaps until farther examination could take place into the other alleged misdeeds.

This trial of Erasinidês took place before the generals were summoned before the senate to give their formal exposition respecting the recent battle, and the subsequent neglect of the drowning men. And it might almost seem as if Archedêmus wished to impute to Erasinidês exclusively, apart from the other generals, the blame of that neglect; a distinction, as will hereafter appear, not wholly unfounded. If, however, any such design was entertained, it did not succeed. When the generals went to explain their case before the senate, the decision of that body was decidedly unfavorable to all of them, though we have no particulars of the debate which passed. On the proposition of the senator Timokratês,[271] a resolution was passed that the other five generals present should be placed in custody, as well as Erasinidês, and thus handed over to the public assembly for consideration of the case.[272]

The public assembly was accordingly held, and the generals were brought before it. We are here told who it was that appeared as their principal accuser, along with several others; though unfortunately we are left to guess what were the topics on which they insisted. Theramenês was the man who denounced them most vehemently, as guilty of leaving the crews of the disabled triremes to be drowned, and of neglecting all efforts to rescue them. He appealed to their own public letter to the people, officially communicating the victory; in which letter they made no mention of having appointed any one to undertake the duty, nor of having any one to blame for not performing it. The omission, therefore, was wholly their own: they might have performed it, and ought to be punished for so cruel a breach of duty.

The generals could not have a more formidable enemy than Theramenês. We have had occasion to follow him, during the revolution of the Four Hundred, as a long-sighted as well as tortuous politician: he had since been in high military command, a partaker in victory with Alkibiadês at Kyzikus and elsewhere; and he had served as trierarch in the victory of Arginusæ itself. His authority therefore was naturally high, and told for much, when he denied the justification which the generals had set up founded on the severity of the storm. According to him, they might have picked up the drowning men, and ought to have done so: either they might have done so before the storm came on, or there never was any storm of sufficient gravity to prevent them: upon their heads lay the responsibility of omission.[273] Xenophon, in his very meagre narrative, does not tell us, in express words, that Theramenês contradicted the generals as to the storm. But that he did so contradict them, point blank, is implied distinctly in that which Xenophon alleges him to have said. It seems also that Thrasybulus—another trierarch at Arginusæ, and a man not only of equal consequence, but of far more estimable character—concurred with Theramenês in this same accusation of the generals,[274] though not standing forward so prominently in the case. He too therefore must have denied the reality of the storm; or at least, the fact of its being so instant after the battle, or so terrible as to forbid all effort for the relief of these drowning seamen.

The case of the generals, as it stood before the Athenian public, was completely altered when men like Theramenês and Thrasybulus stood forward as their accusers. Doubtless what was said by these two had been said by others before, in the senate and elsewhere; but it was now publicly advanced by men of influence, as well as perfectly cognizant of the fact. And we are thus enabled to gather indirectly, what the narrative of Xenophon, studiously keeping back the case against the generals, does not directly bring forward, that though the generals affirmed the storm, there were others present who denied it, thus putting in controversy the matter of fact which formed their solitary justification. Moreover, we come—in following the answer made by the generals in the public assembly to Theramenês and Thrasybulus—to a new point in the case, which Xenophon lets out as it were indirectly, in that confused manner which pervades his whole narrative of the transaction. It is, however, a new point of extreme moment. The generals replied that if any one was to blame for not having picked up the drowning men, it was Theramenês and Thrasybulus themselves; for it was they two to whom, together with various other trierarchs and with forty-eight triremes, the generals had expressly confided the performance of this duty; it was they two who were responsible for its omission, not the generals. Nevertheless they, the generals, made no charge against Theramenês and Thrasybulus, well knowing that the storm had rendered the performance of the duty absolutely impossible, and that it was therefore a complete justification for one as well as for the other. They, the generals, at least could do no more than direct competent men like these two trierarchs to perform the task, and assign to them an adequate squadron for the purpose; while they themselves with the main fleet went to attack Eteonikus, and relieve Mitylênê. Diomedon, one of their number, had wished after the battle to employ all the ships in the fleet for the preservation of the drowning men, without thinking of anything else until that was done. Erasinidês, on the contrary, wished that all the fleet should move across at once against Mitylênê; Thrasyllus said that they had ships enough to do both at once. Accordingly, it was agreed that each general should set apart three ships from his division, to make a squadron of forty-eight ships under Thrasybulus and Theramenês. In making these statements, the generals produced pilots and others, men actually in the battle as witnesses in general confirmation.

Here, then, in this debate before the assembly, were two new and important points publicly raised. First, Theramenês and Thrasybulus denounced the generals as guilty of the death of these neglected men; next, the generals affirmed that they had delegated the duty to Theramenês and Thrasybulus themselves. If this latter were really true, how came the generals, in their official despatch first sent home, to say nothing about it? Euryptolemus, an advocate of the generals, speaking in a subsequent stage of the proceedings, though we can hardly doubt that the same topics were also urged in this very assembly, while blaming the generals for such omission, ascribed it to an ill-placed good-nature on their part, and reluctance to bring Theramenês and Thrasybulus under the displeasure of the people. Most of the generals, he said, were disposed to mention the fact in their official despatch, but were dissuaded from doing so by Periklês and Diomedon; an unhappy dissuasion, in his judgment, which Theramenês and Thrasybulus had ungratefully requited by turning round and accusing them all.[275]

This remarkable statement of Euryptolemus, as to the intention of the generals in wording the official despatch, brings us to a closer consideration of what really passed between them on the one side, and Theramenês and Thrasybulus on the other; which is difficult to make out clearly, but which Diodorus represents in a manner completely different from Xenophon. Diodorus states that the generals were prevented partly by the storm, partly by the fatigue and reluctance and alarm of their own seamen, from taking any steps to pick up, what he calls, the dead bodies for burial; that they suspected Theramenês and Thrasybulus, who went to Athens before them, of intending to accuse them before the people, and that for this reason they sent home intimation to the people that they had given special orders to these two trierarchs to perform the duty. When these letters were read in the public assembly, Diodorus says, the Athenians were excessively indignant against Theramenês; who, however, defended himself effectively and completely, throwing the blame back upon the generals. He was thus forced, against his own will, and in self-defence, to become the accuser of the generals, carrying with him his numerous friends and partisans at Athens. And thus the generals, by trying to ruin Theramenês, finally brought condemnation upon themselves.[276]

Such is the narrative of Diodorus, in which it is implied that the generals never really gave any special orders to Theramenês and Thrasybulus, but falsely asserted afterwards that they had done so, in order to discredit the accusation of Theramenês against themselves. To a certain extent, this coincides with what was asserted by Theramenês himself, two years afterwards, in his defence before the Thirty, that he was not the first to accuse the generals; they were the first to accuse him; affirming that they had ordered him to undertake the duty, and that there was no sufficient reason to hinder him from performing it; they were the persons who distinctly pronounced the performance of the duty to be possible, while he had said, from the beginning, that the violence of the storm was such as even to forbid any movement in the water; much more, to prevent rescue of the drowning men.[277]

Taking the accounts of Xenophon and Diodorus together, in combination with the subsequent accusation and defence of Theramenês at the time of the Thirty, and blending them so as to reject as little as possible of either, I think it probable that the order for picking up the exposed men was really given by the generals to Theramenês, Thrasybulus, and other trierarchs; but that, first, a fatal interval was allowed to elapse between the close of the battle and the giving of such order; next, that the forty-eight triremes talked of for the service, and proposed to be furnished by drafts of three out of each general’s division, were probably never assembled; or, if they assembled, were so little zealous in the business as to satisfy themselves very easily that the storm was too dangerous to brave, and that it was now too late. For when we read the version of the transaction, even as given by Euryptolemus, we see plainly that none of the generals, except Diomedon, was eager in the performance of the task. It is a memorable fact, that of all the eight generals, not one of them undertook the business in person, although its purpose was to save more than a thousand drowning comrades from death.[278] In a proceeding where every interval even of five minutes was precious, they go to work in the most dilatory manner, by determining that each general shall furnish three ships, and no more, from his division. Now we know from the statement of Xenophon, that, towards the close of the battle, the ships on both sides were much dispersed.[279] Such collective direction therefore would not be quickly realized; nor, until all the eight fractions were united, together with the Samians and others, so as to make the force complete, would Theramenês feel bound to go out upon his preserving visitation. He doubtless disliked the service, as we see that most of the generals did; while the crews also, who had just got to land after having gained a victory, were thinking most about rest and refreshment, and mutual congratulations.[280] All were glad to find some excuse for staying in their moorings instead of going out again to buffet what was doubtless unfavorable weather. Partly from this want of zeal, coming in addition to the original delay, partly from the bad weather, the duty remained unexecuted, and the seamen on board the damaged ships were left to perish unassisted.