CHAPTER XVIII
‘In war was never lion raged more fierce,In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,Than was this young and princely gentleman.’Richard II.
‘In war was never lion raged more fierce,In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,Than was this young and princely gentleman.’Richard II.
‘In war was never lion raged more fierce,In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,Than was this young and princely gentleman.’Richard II.
‘In war was never lion raged more fierce,In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,Than was this young and princely gentleman.’Richard II.
‘In war was never lion raged more fierce,
In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,
Than was this young and princely gentleman.’
Richard II.
Asthey drew near Magnesia they were struck with the beauty and splendour of the place, differing so greatly from the magnificence of Athens or any other place they had seen. There was little architectural art in the form of temples or of statues. Art here was found chiefly in the beauty of the gardens, in directing Nature, and in adding to man’s luxury and comfort. As they reached the dwelling of the satrap, they were astonished at the vastness of the grounds through which they rode, the trees, the flowering shrubs, the roses, the citrons, and the myrtles. At length they reached the palace. Servants in gay Eastern dresses, bright with many colours, were about the doors, the courts and the arcades, some actively engaged in preparing for the banquet, others loungingabout or squatting on the ground as though they had nothing else to do in life but to enjoy its sunshine, till a court-official came with whip in hand to set the lazy dogs to work.
The Nubian porter was surprised at the appearance of the travellers. The commanding presence of one of them increased his wonder. When he saw the eager joy with which his lord and master, the mighty satrap, embraced him, his surprise was great indeed. The slaves had never heard of Alkibiades. They looked upon the Greeks as pale islanders who had settled on the coast, protected by the satrap of the King of Kings, and allowed by him to live as long as they paid tribute.
The reception by Tissaphernes was as warm and cordial as could be. After the traveller had refreshed himself by rest and a luxurious bath, such as he had not been able to enjoy for many a day, a banquet of more than usual splendour was given in honour of the Athenian.
He soon became the inseparable companion of the satrap, for there was a joyaunce in his whole demeanour, something peculiar and loveable about him, a gaiety and sprightliness in all he said and did, that relieved the monotony of life, and shed a lustre round it day by day; a spaciousness and beauty in his graver thoughts, a brightnesseven in the small, familiar opinions he expressed, on men and manners, that made all listen to him when he spoke; while there was a grace and beauty in his countenance which brightened and adorned everything about him.
He who lately had made the Spartans wonder at the hardness and simplicity of his life now astonished the effeminate Persians by the softness, gentleness, even the effeminacy, of his ways. He adopted all their habits, and amongst those luxurious Easterns none was more splendidly luxurious than he, or a more joyous companion in the pleasures and the pastimes of the satrap’s court. But when the viceregal hunt took place in the vast Magnesian “paradise,” the supple Greek threw off, for the time, his newly-assumed soft, dallying ways, and showed how his horse was fleetest in pursuit of deer, his spear of surest aim when the wild boar came across his path. And when high matters of state had to be considered, there was no counsellor so wise, none whose judgment was so luminous, or on whose sage diplomacy his friend and host could so implicitly rely. In a short time he gained a complete ascendancy in the councils of the Persian, who entered on no course of action save by the guidance of his constant companion and incomparable friend.
Alkibiades began by suggesting that perhaps it was not wise to let the Lakedaimonians become too strong. Athens, he said, was well-nigh crushed in Greece. Sparta had Athens in her power by land; if she was aided further by the Persian fleet and Persian money, she would gain complete mastery by sea, become too strong, be puffed up with pride and insolence, and kick against the terms of her treaty with the Persian king. The Spartans were a people of proverbially bad faith. It was better that these two powers should balance one another than that either should preponderate. It was the best course to let them go on destroying one another. Then Persia would gain an ascendancy in Ionia and in the Aigaian Sea. On the other hand, if it should happen that Athens ever did become a tributary state to Sparta, which now seemed not impossible, the Persians would have at great expense and loss to combat the successful state, in order to keep it within reasonable limits. These arguments had no little weight with Tissaphernes.
‘What, then, do you advise?’ he asked.
‘Keep back your fleet indefinitely. Reduce your payments to the Spartans. Pay them no more than three obols a day, and do not pay that too regularly.’
‘But if the Spartans threaten to break off the alliance before Athens is sufficiently weakened?’ objected Tissaphernes.
‘Point out to them that the Athenians allow their sailors but three obols, that the war has already lasted so long without result that it is impossible to go on paying the subsidy much longer. And the Spartan admirals and high officials are not above taking a small bribe—pay them, and they will not complain too loudly of the reduction of the payment to their men. Treat the towns and islands that have thrown off their allegiance to Athens in the same way—forget to pay the subsidy that you have promised.’
This advice was taken. It not only had the appearance of sound policy, but it happened to agree with the interests of Tissaphernes, who, like some others, would rather spend the money he squeezed out of the subjects of the king on his own delights and favourites than squander it in paying subsidies to other nations.
At the end of the next month the drachma a day for each man in the Spartan fleet remained unpaid, nor could their leaders get a satisfactory answer to their importunities. At length some of the high commissioners came to demand, rather indignantly, the fulfilment of the treaty. Tissaphernesreceived them courteously, and promised to put their grievances before the great king his master, and do his best to get the Persian fleet to come as soon as possible to their assistance. He assured them it would not be long before the order was given, and in the meantime he counselled them not to engage the Athenians at sea. As to the non-payment of the subsidy, he promised that something should be given at once, and a private douceur to each of the commissioners softened their feelings with regard to the ill-paid sailors. They returned to Rhodes and laid up the chief part of their fleet there for the present. It remained laid up all the autumn and the winter, a respite of incalculable benefit to Athens.
When the revolted Ionian towns came to complain that the pecuniary assistance promised them when they forsook the Athenian alliance was not paid, they were received in audience by Alkibiades, who seemed to manage everything now for Tissaphernes.
‘What!’ said he to those from Chios in a tone of anger. ‘You, the richest of the Greek islands, you who owe your freedom from the yoke of Athens to the Persians, you ask for money from them! Before you revolted, how much had you to pay to Athens? Ought you not to make asgreat, or greater, sacrifices now when it concerns your liberty?’
They went away dissatisfied.
At Samos the feeling we lately saw growing amongst the Athenians there was daily becoming more acute. Both army and navy were verging on an open demonstration against the government at home. Alkibiades, never idle, in the midst of his apparent indolence, was not ignorant of the movement. And so it happened that one day, towards the end of the autumn of 412, a sailor named Agrestides landed at Samos. He was not long in making friends among the Athenian sailors who swarmed about Samos doing nothing. They met in the wine-shops, on the quays, in many places. Agrestides had been in the Sicilian expedition, and had escaped, he said, after the fatal fight at Syrakuse, when the whole fleet with almost all the Athenian sailors was lost. He had been picked up by a Carthaginian vessel, and after many wanderings and adventures had found himself at Sparta, where he had passed as a Messanian; thence, he told them, he had got on board a Spartan ship and had gone with certain Spartan commissioners to Kaunos, and so on to Miletos. While there he had met his old general, Alkibiades, who was, he heard, greater than ever,and was now governing, in the satrap’s name, all the Ionian possessions of the Persian king.’
Having listened to this not improbable romance, they wanted to know more about Sicily and the fatal expedition, for then they would hear more about Alkibiades. Alkibiades was the hero of the fleet at Samos. They all wanted to hear of him. Even while he had been dealing the deadliest blows at them through Sparta, the Athenians had felt a sort of pride in him. It was not so much Lakedaimôn that was fighting them as it was one of themselves, justly incensed at the wrong the misled demos had done him, who was punishing them. And when Lakedaimôn in turn found he was too great for them, it was he, an Athenian, who was managing Tissaphernes, and leading Lakedaimôn such a dance as she had little bargained for.
Agrestides, having made due observation, got himself taken to Peisandros and some others of the leaders, who he discovered would be the most fit to receive his overtures. When he was convinced of their sincerity he told them that he had come from his great master, who was longing to get back amongst his countrymen again.
This was, indeed, good news for them. It was soon settled that Peisandros and two othersshould return with Agrestides to Magnesia. When they got there they found he had not exaggerated that part of his story in which he had told them of his master’s influence with Tissaphernes. The heart of Alkibiades yearned towards his countrymen when he saw them coming, as messengers from the Athenian forces at Samos, to make overtures to him. He felt as a brother meeting his brethren after a long absence among strangers in a distant land. All the magnificence, the soft allurements of his eastern life, seemed but the toys of children to him, as a long vista opened up before him, with home and Athens and honour at the end of it.
But no one knew better how to be practical when it was necessary so to be. He had been acquainted with Peisandros in old days—a man of some ability and power of speech, not to be trusted too far, and of doubtful courage. Alkibiades saw the difficulty the oligarchic deputation felt. He went before it, met it boldly and in diplomatic fashion. He told them frankly of his influence in the councils of the Persian, and of his efforts to break up the alliance between Sparta and Persia; that he had delayed the coming of the Persian fleet, and had stopped the Persian subsidies; that it was through his advice theSpartan fleet was now laid up inactively at Rhodes; and that he was at work endeavouring to bring about a Persian-Athenian alliance. ‘But,’ he added truthfully, ‘there is one thing I cannot do, there is one point on which the Minister of the king stands firm: he will not even enter into negotiations for a treaty with a democratic government; much less could I persuade him to make alliance with one. He distrusts the people; he says they will one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow. And even if I could overcome the objections of Tissaphernes to a democracy, neither he nor I could induce the Persian king to treat with any but a kingly government, or at least an aristocracy. These things would have been hard for me to say or hear at one time, but,’ he added sadly, ‘I, too, have been taught to distrust the justice of the people.’
Nothing could have been more welcome to Peisandros and the other Athenian deputies from Samos. This was the one thing they wanted, the one thing they feared it would be impossible to get. With Alkibiades friendly to an oligarchy, all difficulties vanished. The very condition they shrank from mentioning to him he had insisted on himself. He had smoothed the way. All was plain sailing now, they thought, at Samos, except for that miscreant Phrynichos; they onlydoubted about him. They knew his inveterate hatred of Alkibiades.
As soon as they got back to Samos they called together their friends, the chiefs of the oligarchic party there. Nearly all the leaders were oligarchic. Phrynichos, of course, was oligarchic. They told the happy outcome of their mission; all were delighted except that one. He avowed his scepticism. He knew the steadfast nature of Alkibiades too well to believe that he seriously intended to join himself to the enemies of the people, however little the people deserved his staunch fidelity. However much the people had injured him, the oligarchs had hurt him more. Phrynichos remembered how in years gone by they had tried to attract him to their side; he more than suspected that the old charges brought against Alkibiades had been due to the vengeance of that party, whose proposals he had scorned.
Passing by the doubts of Phrynichos as unworthy of consideration, Peisandros and his colleagues announced to the sailors and hoplites the joyful news that the great king was about to desert their enemies and make a grand alliance with them and pay them an enormous subsidy, and that Alkibiades was to be recalled. The people could not be restrained on hearing it. As eachitem of the news was told it was difficult to keep them still enough to listen to the next. It was almost too good to be true. When they came to the recall of Alkibiades their generous emotion overcame them; many a hard sailor’s face was moist with tears. Most of these common sailors, indeed, showed some dismay when, at the end, Peisandros told them of the one condition—that the democracy must be abolished, or at least greatly modified, for a time. ‘But, after all, what mattered the form of government,’ they began to think, ‘if they could but be extricated from their present dangers, and the great Alkibiades be back again to manage everything? He was the wisest. If he did not mind the change, who need care? He must be right.’
It was then resolved amongst the chiefs to send Peisandros and ten other deputies to Athens to prepare the way for a peaceful revolution. The deputies set off upon their mission, not unaware of the strength of the prejudices they would have to overcome.
Phrynichos was trembling with rage and terror; his cunning was not allowed to sleep. He determined to destroy Alkibiades by the hand of Astyochos, and scrupled not, in order to carry out his intended murder, to betray secrets of the statewhich had come to his knowledge as strategos, to this country’s enemy. He wrote privately to the Spartan admiral at Miletos, telling him who it was that was stopping the Persian payment of the Spartan fleet, and was endeavouring to dissolve the alliance between Persia and Lakedaimôn, and to bring about a treaty between the Persian king and Athens, and advised him to get rid, by any practicable means, of such a dangerous enemy as Alkibiades had become.
Astyochos, who, like every other honest man who knew him, loved his old friend and comrade, refused to take advantage of this odious treachery, by which Phrynichos, while entrusted with his country’s interests, was doing all he could to stop the services Alkibiades was rendering to Athens. He sent the treacherous letter on to Alkibiades. Alkibiades in turn sent it back to the other leaders at Samos, and so convicted Phrynichos. The soldiers when they heard of the base deed would have slain their general then and there but for their inbred Athenian respect for the due formalities of law. The criminal was reserved for future trial by the proper courts.
The cup of this man’s iniquity was not full, nor his cunning nearly exhausted. By a piece of trickery, so subtle that we can hardly help feelingsome sort of admiration for it, he wrote again to the Lakedaimonian admiral betraying the weak point of the defence of Samos, and offering to help him whenever he should invade the island, and gently complaining that his first letter had, by some accident, found its way into the hands of Alkibiades. Then, knowing that Astyochos would do with this overture as he had done with the other, and that it would soon come back to Samos, even as that other one had come, he advised his brother generals to strengthen with new forts the spot which he had suggested to Astyochos as the weak point of resistance. Astyochos refused to take advantage of this further apparent act of treason, and made it known to Alkibiades, who, as had been foreseen by the fox-like Phrynichos, straightway informed the Athenian generals at Samos.
The culprit, called upon for his defence to this second charge, declared that both were base calumnies got up by his enemy to ruin him, and he pointed to the fact that he had himself advised the fortifying of the very place he was now absurdly charged with betraying to the Spartans as the weak spot for their attack. This answer seemed conclusive, and, for a time, both charges were allowed to drop.