A GREEK RELIGIOUS PROCESSION
Such was the deed which Cyrus and the Lacedæmonians did not scruple to enjoin, nor the uncle and brother of a Persian satrap to execute; and by which this celebrated Athenian perished before he had attained the age of fifty. Had he lived, we cannot doubt that he would again have played some conspicuous part—for neither his temper nor his abilities would have allowed him to remain in the shade—but whether to the advantage of Athens or not is more questionable. Certain it is that, taking his life throughout, the good which he did to her bore no proportion to the far greater evil. Of the disastrous Sicilian expedition, he was more the cause than any other individual; though that enterprise cannot properly be said to have been caused by any individual: it emanated rather from a national impulse. Having first, as a counsellor, contributed more than any other man to plunge the Athenians into this imprudent adventure, he next, as an exile, contributed more than any other man (except Nicias) to turn that adventure into ruin, and the consequences of it into still greater ruin. Without him, Gylippus would not have been sent to Syracuse, Decelea would not have been fortified, Chios and Miletus would not have revolted, the oligarchical conspiracy of the Four Hundred would not have been originated. Nor can it be said that his first three years of political action as Athenian leader, in a speculation peculiarly his own—the alliance with Argos, and the campaigns in Peloponnesus—proved in any way advantageous to his country. On the contrary, by playing an offensive game where he had hardly sufficient force for a defensive, he enabled the Lacedæmonians completely to recover their injured reputation and ascendency through the important victory of Mantinea. The period of his life really serviceable to his country, and really glorious to himself, was that of three years ending with his return to Athens in 407 B.C. The results of these three years of success were frustrated by the unexpected coming down of Cyrus as satrap: but just at the moment when it behoved Alcibiades to put forth a higher measure of excellence, in order to realise his own promises in the face of this new obstacle—at that critical moment we find him spoiled by the unexpected welcome which had recently greeted him at Athens, and falling miserably short even of the former merit whereby that welcome had been earned.
If from his achievements we turn to his dispositions, his ends, and his means—there are few characters in Grecian history who present so little to esteem, whether we look at him as a public or as a private man. His ends are those of exorbitant ambition and vanity; his means rapacious as well as reckless, from his first dealing with Sparta and the Spartan envoys, down to the end of his career. The manœuvres whereby his political enemies first procured his exile were indeed base and guilty in a high degree. But we must recollect that if his enemies were more numerous and violent than those of any other politician in Athens, the generating seed was sown by his own overweening insolence and contempt of restraints, legal as well as social. On the other hand, he was never once defeated either by land or sea. In courage, in ability, in enterprise, in power of dealing with new men and new situations, he was never wanting; qualities which, combined with his high birth, wealth, and personal accomplishments, sufficed to render him for the time the first man in every successive party which he espoused—Athenian, Spartan, or Persian—oligarchical or democratical. But in none of them did he ever inspire any lasting confidence; all successively threw him off. On the whole, we shall find few men in whom eminent capacities for action and command are so thoroughly marred by an assemblage of bad moral qualities as Alcibiades.[b]
LIFE AT ATHENS
[404-403 B.C.]
The state of Athens after the expulsion of the Thirty was in some respects apparently less desolate than that in which she had been left after the battle of Platæa. It is possible indeed that the invasions of Xerxes and Mardonius may have inflicted less injury on her territory than the methodical and lingering ravages of the Peloponnesians during the Decelean war. But in 479 the city, as well as the country, had been, for a part of two consecutive years, in the power of an irritated enemy. All that it required both for ornament and defence was to be raised afresh from the ground. Yet the treasury was empty: commerce had probably never yet yielded any considerable supplies, and it had been deeply disturbed by the war; the state possessed no dependent colonies or tributary allies, and was watched with a jealous eye by the most powerful of its confederates.
[403-402 B.C.]
Commerce had not only been interrupted by the blockade, but had sustained still greater detriment from the tyranny of the Thirty, which had crushed or scared away the most opulent and industrious of the aliens: and the cloud which continued to hang over the prospects of the state, even after freedom and tranquillity had been restored, tended to discourage those who might have been willing to return. The public distress was such that it was with the greatest difficulty the council could provide ways and means for the ordinary expenses. Even the ancient sacrifices prescribed by the sacred canons were intermitted, because the treasury could not furnish three talents [£600 or $8000] for their celebration: and the repayment of a loan of two talents which had been advanced by the Thebans, probably in aid of the exiles, was so long delayed through the same cause, that hostilities were threatened for the purpose of recovering the debt. The navy of Athens had now sunk to a fourth of that which she had maintained before the time of Solon, and it was limited to this footing by a compact which could not be broken or eluded without imminent danger; Piræus was again unfortified: the arsenal was in ruins: even the city walls needed repairs, which could not be undertaken for want of money; and on all sides were enemies who rejoiced in her humiliation, and were urged both by their passions and interests to prevent her from again lifting up her head.
