CHAPTER XIX
‘I fly from pleasure because pleasure has ceased to please. I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others.’—Rasselas.
‘I fly from pleasure because pleasure has ceased to please. I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others.’—Rasselas.
Assoon as Peisandros and the other envoys were arrived at Athens the people assembled in their Ekklesia to hear and discuss the news from Samos. Peisandros began by moving for the recall of Phrynichos on account of incompetence and cowardice, and gave such good reasons for his motion that it was carried without difficulty. He then laid before them the business that had brought him there, and the result of his mission to the court of Tissaphernes. His task, as may well be imagined, was not an easy one—to propose before an assembly of the people the abolition of their power and existence as a governing power, and that people the Athenian demos.
His proposal, put in many ways, and with great tact, was the recall of Alkibiades, the governmentof the few, and an alliance with Persia which would give them the victory over Sparta.
Such a hubbub, such an outcry, as followed this address has seldom come from human lungs or from human throats. One after another the champions of the people rose, with the one answer, supported by six thousand voices, ‘Never!’ The orators declared the democracy eternal. The enemies of Alkibiades protested against the enormity of recalling one who had been convicted of the worst possible offence against the laws of Athens, one who was still civilly dead. The Eumolpidai, the privileged priests of the cult of Demeter, who felt, perhaps, as strongly for their exclusive rights and emoluments as for the honour of the goddess, reminded the assembly of the awful curses which still rested on him for his profanation of the mysteries of which they were the guardians, and which he had treated with derision and contempt.
When the opponents of his proposition had expended all their wrath, Peisandros rose again to answer them.
‘Of what use is it to preserve the mere form and semblance of a constitution when the spirit of the thing is gone, and the state is tottering? Is it not better to modify somewhat your existing laws than to lose them altogether, and with themyour power of making others? We ask only that you will let your democratic forms be in abeyance while we treat with the Great King. He is ready to come to your assistance if you will meet him in a reasonable spirit. Let, then, the power of the many for a time be entrusted to the keeping of your wisest counsellors, chosen by yourselves, men whom all of you can trust; and when the clouds, which now are big and bursting with destruction, shall have passed away, you can have back again your glorious and time-honoured constitution. There is but one man who can save you in this hour of need; he is a lover of the people: that man is Alkibiades.’
The force of this argument, and the apparent truth of these assertions, had so much influence on the assembly that objectors were silenced, and the people took the first step towards the abdication of their power, though they were not prepared to make so violent a change as that which had been just suggested to them all at once. They decreed that ten deputies should be sent with Peisandros to Tissaphernes to arrange the best terms on which an alliance with Persia might be carried out.
Before Peisandros left for Asia, he resorted to other devices to further his designs on thedemocracy, of which he had hitherto put himself forward as a firm supporter. He set the secret clubs in motion. The secret clubs in Athens, chiefly of the oligarchic faction, were of immense political importance. It was by them that the work of party intrigue was carried on. At no time in history, not even during the French Revolution, have secret clubs been better managed for this purpose than they were at this time in Athens, nor did they ever work together in more perfect order. While the democracy was unbroken and Athens flourished they dared not show themselves or their doings too openly. The time was now come for their hidden power to manifest itself. Their members need now hesitate at no crimes which might advance their political designs. Crimes might be done by them and be forever undiscovered, and so committed with impunity. Having set these secret societies to work, Peisandros left, with the ten deputies, for the court of Tissaphernes.
Alkibiades had found the full length to which he could go with his friend the satrap, or, which was nearly the same thing, the amount of power the satrap had independently of the king. Stopping the pay of Spartan sailors was all very well: it saved the Persian’s purse. Keeping his master’s fleet in safety and idleness at Aspendoswas better than furnishing it with its full complement of men and arms, and letting it be knocked about by the Athenian sailors. But an alliance out and out with Athens was different altogether. It meant parting with the Spartans finally, and all real chance of recovering dominion over the islands and coast towns of Ionia. The king was not under the spell of the favourite of Tissaphernes. He never would believe that the Athenians intended to give up a dominion they had bought at so great a cost and had exercised so long. Tissaphernes knew his master would decline the Athenian alliance, even when urged with the same arguments which his friend had used with so much force on him. So he was forced to tell his guest, with much regret, that there were difficulties in the way.
But neither was Alkibiades willing that all the terms of the propounded treaty should be accepted. He distrusted Peisandros, and despised the wretched Phrynichos. He did not believe in an oligarchic government for Athens. Much as he longed to get back home again, he would not go there but with honour. Little as the people deserved his care and sympathy, he declined to inflict further punishment upon them. We shall see how—like another exile who, seventeenhundred years afterwards, rejected the desire of his soul, and refused to return to his beloved birthplace upon conditions which he deemed unworthy of him—he nobly refused the great object of his life, rather than obtain it to his country’s detriment.
Such was the condition of affairs when Peisandros arrived for a second time at Magnesia with his ten colleagues.
Alkibiades, rather weary of the effeminate life at the palace of the satrap, had been staying at a small country house which his indulgent friend had given him, in a secluded spot, far from the turmoil of the court, and some way inland, not far from the marble quarries at Melissa. Thither Tissaphernes had come in search of his friend, and had forced him to return with him to Magnesia. It was while staying there, and on the journey back, that he sounded the viceroy as to the limit of his powers, and made up his mind as to the answer he must give the Athenian envoys on his return. He undertook to receive the deputation in the presence of his host.
Seeing that the treaty could not be carried out with honour to Athens, and refusing to have anything to do with it on any other terms, he insisted on conditions with the deputies whichhe knew they must reject. Peisandros lost patience, broke off the conference, and returned to Samos. There he declared amongst his friends and partisans that his belief was that Alkibiades had never really wished to aid the oligarchic rising, and that he was using his power with the satrap to destroy the oligarchic party. This bad news roused the clique to energy; they determined to act without him, and to invite their friends at Athens to do the same. For this purpose Peisandros set out with the ten deputies for Athens, recruiting a force of fighting men to help them on the way.
To the amazement of Peisandros and his friends, when at last they reached Athens, they found the engine he had set to work had acted with a success beyond his expectations. The democracy as a governing body had disappeared. It was as though the earth had gaped and swallowed up its mountains, towns, and rivers. The face of everything was changed. Loathsome animalcules, crawling and breeding underground, waiting for a sign of weakness in the body politic, seeing their time was come, had risen to the surface of the soil and seized upon their victim. In her robust and healthy state they might have swarmed about her harmless till they were crushed orsent back to the dirt from which they had emerged. But the demos tottered from the moment it first listened to a possibility of compromise. When it allowed the suggestion of an abdication to go unpunished, the process of its abdication was begun. Assassins pounced upon the few strong men left, and disappeared in darkness, no one knew where. The rest were too frightened to inquire. Daggers grew bolder, and struck right and left. Panic set in. Men dared not to speak their thoughts. They knew not who was or was not in the plot.
When the minds of weak men had been reduced to the required point of fear, the skulking conspirators, with Phrynichos at their head, and a professional rhetorician named Antiphon, came out, and by one final blow abolished, with the people’s trembling consent, the power of the people. They elected in its place a government of four hundred subservient tools, chosen beforehand by themselves. This was the new régime Peisandros found when he came back to Athens.
Very different events were taking place at Samos. For a short time the oligarchic faction there attempted the same plan of action, and slew poor Hyperbolos, the potter. Poor Hyperbolos! One always feels inclined to laugh whenhis name is mentioned. Yet there must have been something in him. He rose above the common level both at home and at Samos. But his name sounds so absurd by the side of those great ones who had been ostracized before him that we can hardly help a smile.
The hoplites stationed at Samos did not smile. They had a short time back listened for a moment to Peisandros, when he talked eloquently to them of the necessity of modifying somewhat their old form of government; but they never liked the notion of the change, and only tolerated it on the condition that Alkibiades was to come back to them, with or without the Persian fleet and Persian gold. It was the man they wanted more than the help of barbarous Persians.
The healthy democrats of Samos did not long suffer oligarchic daggers to be used on them. Luckily two of the generals of the Athenian army there were democratic. The stirring times called forth two other men, of whom we shall hear a good deal before long—Thrasyboulos, captain of a trireme, and Thrasyllos, now only a soldier serving in the ranks.
News of the attempted rising and its speedy overthrow was sent off to Athens by theParalos, the other sacred state trireme, whose sturdy crewhad given invaluable help in quelling the abortive Samian revolution. It was supposed that this good news would be joyously received at the Peiræus. One can imagine the astonishment of Chaireas, the captain, and the crew of the sacred ship, when they saw the change which had come over Athens, and found that they were, almost as prisoners, taken from theParalosand sent off on board another vessel to Euboia. Chaireas alone escaped, and after hiding at Athens for some time made his way back to Samos.
There he painted before his fellow-countrymen in vivid, highly-coloured pictures the state of things at home, and how it had been brought about: the miserable condition of the people; the savage triumph of the oligarchs; no assembly of the people now, no tribunals to which the injured could appeal. The traitors, he said, were even making overtures to Sparta to come and sustain them in their power on the ruins of the state.
On hearing this, the soldiers could hardly be prevented from rushing on any whom they suspected of having been in the late plot. They were only restrained by some with cooler heads, who pointed out the danger of fighting among themselves while Sparta’s fleet was but a fewmiles off at Miletos, ready to come down upon them and destroy both parties. They had good reason to be united and to respect themselves. Athens gone, who was there left to carry on Athenian institutions but this band of Athenians at Samos? Athens was there.
Thrasyllos and Thrasyboulos came forward and impressed upon them the responsibilities they lay under. By keeping united, by firmness and good faith, they might restore order and right at home, and make such examples of the traitors as would be a warning to all others who might in the future contemplate like treason.
‘You have here—indeed, you are yourselves—the chief part of all the force now left to our ill-fated land. Here is a strong town from which you can issue to attack the enemy, and to which you can retire at need. Athens has little left now but you. Expect no further aid from her. Rely upon yourselves. Continue the war. And if the worst should happen, you have ships to carry you to some place where you will not want for fields to till, nor towns to live in, and where you may found a new and happier Athens beyond the seas.’
The soldiers rose and swore a solemn oath to act together, and never to separate till they had done their duty to their old country. Some ofthe suspected leaders they deposed. Thrasyboulos and Thrasyllos were chosen in their place. The soldiers were animated by a new confidence in one another, and in their mission, ready to live and die in the cause of liberty.
But to make sure against their twofold enemy a strong general was wanted, and they felt, too, that if aid could be obtained on honest terms from Persia, they would be more than a match for Sparta. In this state of feeling they met again a few days afterwards. Thrasyboulos boldly advised that Alkibiades should be invited to come to Samos, and be invested with supreme command. The proposal was received with acclamation, and Thrasyboulos himself went off to the Court of Tissaphernes with the invitation. He found the great Athenian still at Magnesia amid his eastern pleasures, with the satrap as much under his influence as ever.
Alkibiades at first supposed it was on some fresh quest for Persian help that this new deputy was come. When he heard what the message was his heart bounded; he could scarce conceal his feelings. To be free from the clogging atmosphere of Asia, the cloying, enervating, unworthy life; to breathe again among free men; to have fresh opportunities of action—here wasat last one step on towards his end, the end of these long years of effort and of disappointment. He broke the news to the regretful Tissaphernes, and set out with his new-found friend, with whom he was soon to do so much for Athens.
The troops and sailors and all the people were looking out for him at Samos. As the triremes came out to meet and welcome him on the bright May day on which he reached the port, he could almost imagine that his long exile was already ended. An assembly of Athenians was speedily called together. Alkibiades stood up before them; but what could he say to them? His usual clear, incisive sentences were broken by his unconcealed emotion. He could not but be affected when standing once more before his countrymen, after his long and weary wanderings. It was a foretaste of another great assembly, in another place, to which he knew he would be recalled some day, and in which he would be received with even greater shouts and gratulations by the people.
He spoke to them at first a little of his wanderings and sufferings. But this, he said, was not a time for speaking of the past. It was as active men, prepared to meet with many difficulties and a dangerous future, that he met them therethat day. He spoke with courage and with the certitude of final triumph. Whatever he could do to aid them with his right arm, or his counsel, they might claim from him. Whatever influence he had with Persia, through the Ionian satrap, he would use to its utmost on their behalf. He told them of his great friendship with the satrap, and how that potent Minister of the Persian king had promised to assist them.
The story of what he had undergone through the unjust suspicions of his countrymen, excited by the slanders of his enemies, moved all who heard him. His self-reliance, his ability, cheered and encouraged them. His assurance of Persian aid raised their hopes to the highest pitch of expectation. They chose him with one voice commander of the Athenian forces, with absolute power to deal with friends and foes.