CHAPTER XI
‘Each by each was thoughtThe man who did the deed, but no man’s guiltWas proved, for each denied it.’Antigone.
‘Each by each was thoughtThe man who did the deed, but no man’s guiltWas proved, for each denied it.’Antigone.
‘Each by each was thoughtThe man who did the deed, but no man’s guiltWas proved, for each denied it.’Antigone.
‘Each by each was thoughtThe man who did the deed, but no man’s guiltWas proved, for each denied it.’Antigone.
‘Each by each was thought
The man who did the deed, but no man’s guilt
Was proved, for each denied it.’
Antigone.
Thefleet was to have been ready to sail by the beginning of the following June. In the meantime each Athenian tried to outdo his neighbour in his eagerness to make the undertaking glorious. The citizens, whether bound to serve or not, pressed in to be enrolled as soldiers. The rich men emulated one another in the strength and size of the great ships they offered. Ambassadors were sent to all allies demanding aid for the important conquest—aid in men, in money, and provisions. The generals were allowed a free hand in their expenditure.
By the time appointed everything was ready, but by an unfortunate coincidence the date fixed for the departure of the fleet fell on the Adônia, the days when the Athenian women kept their yearly mourning for the lamentable death of thebeautiful youth, beloved of Aphrodite, and then celebrated their rejoicing at the glad festival of his happy resurrection. Clearly the fleet must not put to sea at such a time.
Other unforeseen delays postponed the sailing till the first of August. Before that day arrived a horrid and unspeakable event occurred at Athens. The religious custom of the time had placed in every street a stone image of the divine champion Hermes, and a rough statue of this god, so dearly loved and reverently worshipped, stood at all the cross-roads, before every temple, and many of the private houses. These images were more than sacred: they were objects of peculiar devotion, for Hermes was not only messenger of Zeus, he was protector of the state and Constitution. To do offence to him was to offend the state, and tempt the potent deity to desert the city.
Some days before the fleet was to have sailed, when everyone was up and about betimes, and full of eager preparation, it was discovered by someone who had gone first abroad that one and then another of these statues had been shamefully cut and disfigured. Dismayed and horrified, those who first heard of it spread the dreadful news about the town. Then, by degrees,the fact was realized that not one or two, but almost every image of the god before the temples and the houses, as well as at the cross-roads, had been treated in the same disgraceful, sacrilegious manner, and in many instances reduced to a mere shapeless block of stone.
To understand the great horror of the people, we must recollect how religious feeling in a Greek permeated his whole being, lived in his life, his thoughts, his actions, and, as it were, controlled him; how it was closely bound up with the state political; how he believed that the gods were incorporated with the city; how the deity, too, was almost identical, and embodied with his statue. To do reverence to the statue was to reverence the god; the reverse had never been conceived as possible.
Astonishment was soon turned to indignation. Rumour ran wild. The timid, the more religious, the superstitious, feared the wrath of Heaven, the destruction of the state. Others saw in it the work of traitors in their midst. It was the work of secret emissaries of Syrakuse, or of Korinth, the parent country of the Syrakusan colony. Or it was a party of the citizens, too cowardly to oppose openly the Sicilian expedition, who had thus attempted to turn men’s thoughts awayfrom the great enterprise; or perhaps it was a deep-seated plan of the ever-suspected oligarchs to overthrow the democratic Constitution. All were, at any rate, agreed that, whoever the sacrilegious culprits were, their punishment should be exemplary, so that the anger of the gods might be averted and the honour of the city vindicated.
The Senate immediately met and appointed three citizens, whom they called ‘searchers,’ to sift the matter to the bottom, and report to the Assembly. The perpetrators of the outrage, it was evident, must be very numerous. It was impossible that a few conspirators could, in one short summer’s night, have worked this havoc on hundreds of the cherished effigies. Rewards were offered, and other inducements were held out to all men of whatever rank, even to slaves, to give any information which might lead to the discovery of participators in the abomination. Even pardon was assured to an accomplice who should inform against his co-conspirators.
In the midst of this religious zeal and fury a meeting of the Ekklesia was summoned to give its last instructions to the generals. For a time, while the concluding counsels were being taken, and the plan of the campaign settled,—and it was being arranged how, after succouring Egestaagainst its enemies, the people of Leontini should be restored, and how, when Syrakuse had been taken, its inhabitants should be sold as slaves,—the cloud which had hung over Athens for the last few days was almost dissipated.
The Assembly was about to separate, having given full powers to their trusted generals to act, in all contingencies, as it might seem best to them for the good of Athens and her allies, when Pythonikos mounted the Tribune and demanded silence.
‘Athenians,’ cried he, ‘one of the men to whom you have given the care of this great armament, a general to whom you have confided the safety of your soldiers, your sailors, your ships, and perhaps the future of the State, is a profaner of the mysteries of Eleusis. I am here by my witnesses to prove it; do to me as to you seems good if I fail to establish this accusation.’
On minds already strung to the highest pitch by that other dire undiscovered sacrilege this charge fell like a thunderbolt. The Ekklesia was paralyzed, and sat in stupid silence. Pythonikos continued:
‘I will call before you one Andromachos, a slave, who, being himself uninitiated, will tell you how he saw the mysteries profaned, and onhis oath before the gods declare it was Alkibiades himself who did it.’
The slave was called, but before he gave his evidence all who had not been initiated were ordered by the President to leave the Ekklesia, lest they might hear what it was not lawful for them to know about the holy mysteries. Andromachos related to those who stayed, scarce knowing what they listened to, in their horror and astonishment, all he pretended to have seen and heard—how, being in the house of Polytion, he had seen Alkibiades and Miletos and Nikiakles burlesque and parody the sacred rites.
Alkibiades rose in indignation, denounced the charge as a conspiracy of certain oligarchs and of his personal enemies to deprive him of the command with which the people had invested him, and declared the base charge had been kept back till the last moment in order that he might not have an opportunity of meeting it before he sailed. He called upon them to judge him then and there, and not only to deprive him of his command, but decree that death he well deserved if this accusation should be proved against him.
His open adversaries, as well as his secret enemies, were frightened by his boldness. They knew his power with the people, who were morethan ever devoted to him since the part he had taken in the Sicilian campaign. Those who were ordered out of the Assembly before Andromachos gave his evidence carried the news of the horrible charge into the city. It rang through the town. The Argive and the Mantineian contingents that had come to fight for Athens said it was mainly for their love of Alkibiades they had been induced to come, and if any wrong were done to him they would go back again.
The people vowed vengeance upon his enemies. The excitement rose. Their zeal against the Syrakusans was for a moment turned against Pythonikos and his associates. Pythonikos knew this, and the impossibility of hitting the object of his hatred while he was there in Athens. So he prayed that the further hearing of his charges might be postponed for the present.
No one could say of him that he had not made them in the presence of the accused. ‘Let him go forth,’ he said, with assumed generosity—‘let him go forth and lead the fleet, and when he returns, as we all hope, triumphantly, he shall present himself before the proper judges, and be tried according to the law.’
Alkibiades saw through the scheme.
‘No,’ said he; ‘let me not go on such a longand arduous enterprise with a charge like this hanging over me, filling my thoughts, embittering my days, weakening my arm while I am fighting for you. This, indeed, were too unjust. If guilty, I am not worthy to go; if innocent, ought I to bear so great a punishment?’
His prayer prevailed not. The people would on no account allow the conquest of Sicily to be put off. Without knowing it, they drove their ablest citizen, their strongest bulwark, from them, placed him in the power of unscrupulous assailants, drove him into the arms of their inveterate enemies, and took the first step towards their own destruction.