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 creed, each regards the strong emotions growing out of causes peculiar to the other—is usually one of surprize that such trifles and absurdities can occasion any serious distress or excitement. 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—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 temple of the gods.
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 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, god-less—that the streets, the market-place, the porticoes 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 offenses, political as well as others; 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.
Such was the mysterious incident which broke in upon the eager and bustling movement of Athens, a few days before the Sicilian expedition was starting. In reference to that expedition, it was taken to heart as a most depressing omen. It would doubtless have been so interpreted, 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. 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. Tho 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 Alcibiades[42]—to frustrate or delay the expedition. How they pursued the former purpose, will be presently seen: toward 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, 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 Alcibiades 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 Nicias, exquisitely sensitive in his own religious conscience, and never hearty in his wish for going (a fact perfectly known to the enemy), 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 afterward, 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 Greeks frequently renounced public designs if an earthquake happened before the execution.
But tho 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 Nicias—this calculation was not realized. Probably matters had already proceeded too far even for Nicias to recede. Notice had been sent around to all the allies; forces were already on their way to the rendezvous at Corcyra; at Argeian and Mantineian allies were arriving at Piræus to embark. So much the more eagerly did the conspirators proceed in that which I have stated as the other part of their probable plan; to work that exaggerated religious terror, which they had themselves artificially brought about, for the ruin of Alcibiades.
Few men in Athens either had, or deserved to have, a greater number of enemies, political as well as private, than Alcibiades; 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 seemed to have deliberately planned his other enemies were ready to turn to profit.