CHAPTER XX

‘Thassay so sharp, so hard the conquering.’Chaucer:Par. of Foules.

‘Thassay so sharp, so hard the conquering.’

Chaucer:Par. of Foules.

Therewas plenty of work to do at Samos all that summer—defences to be made secure, old ships to be repaired and new ones built, military exercises to be gone through day by day. There were constant alarms to keep them on the alert. The Spartan fleet, which had been laid up for the most part at Rhodes through the past winter, pending the arrival of the long-promised armament from Persia, had been launched again, and taken in state to Miletos, where it stood threatening those at Samos. A Lakedaimonian general, they heard, had marched north towards the Hellespont, and was engaged in stirring up the cities on the way which were still faithful to the Athenian alliance. Abydos and Lampsakos had already thrown off the yoke. Spartan emissaries were at Byzantion, and in treaty with Pharnabazos, satrap of thePropontis, who, three years ago, had made offers of alliance to Sparta.

Then appalling news came that Tissaphernes was again negotiating with the Lakedaimonian commissioners. It was reported that he had actually concluded a fresh treaty with them, by which he pledged himself to renew his promised pay, and bring that wonderful fleet at last from Aspendos, that much-desired aid which was always coming, but which never came.

As soon as Alkibiades was elected general, he determined to go and see for himself what his Persian friend was doing. He knew the weakness of the Viceroy’s character—how easily, in his absence, the Spartans might persuade or frighten him into carrying out his promises to them. The whole Athenian fleet at the new Athens, as Samos was called, escorted him some way upon his journey, making no secret of the mission upon which the general was going to Tissaphernes. TheEroswas refitted, and if not quite so gay as it had been before time, and if hard work had made both the ship and its commander look less glorious than they had once appeared, yet, as he stood once more on the well-known deck, he could almost fancy that all was as it had been four years ago.

There was no attempt to avoid the Lakedaimonian navy as he went: he rather courted their attention. One of his purposes in going was to show the Spartans the power that he still had with Tissaphernes, although they, in his absence, had been endeavouring to undermine it. He landed with his retinue at Paniônion, and his armed cavalcade made an imposing show as it wound through the lovely grove where the Ionian cities met in solemn conclave to discuss the policy of all the several colonies, and where the Paniônian games were held, and thence along the delightful valley which lies between Mount Thorax and the Maiandros, and so through vales and hills, till it reached the residence of the Persian satrap.

How different was his entry into Magnesia now from what it had been when, a fugitive from treacherous Spartans, he came to ask for shelter and asylum! The state with which he travelled was not without its special reasons. If he wished to impress the Spartans and his fellow-countrymen with his power over the Viceroy, he also wished to show the Viceroy his power over his fellow-countrymen. The meeting between them was as cordial as ever. Poor Tissaphernes shed tears on seeing his friend, thinking how soon they would have to part again. The want of his Atheniancounsellor when he was gone was as the losing of a prop, a strong support to lean upon. He thought, too, of the happy days when his friend had come as a suppliant asking his protection.

Alkibiades got all that he demanded, and more than he expected, from the Viceroy. Though he knew that, when he was gone, the Persian would be prevailed upon, and perhaps would be obliged, to break his promises, yet promises were made, and they would last some little time. And so it was that the Persian fleet remained for the present at Aspendos, nor came to help the foes of Athens, and the poor satrap got worse into disgrace with his allies, and was openly accused by them of treason. The Spartan admiral, Astyochos, who all along had been faithful to his friend, got into trouble, too, with the commissioners for his remissness in executing the barbarous order of the king and ephors, and was recalled, while Mindaros, a rising sailor, was put into his place. These were some of the results of the stately visit of Alkibiades to the viceregal court of Tissaphernes.

On his way back a terrible temptation came over him, such as has seldom fallen upon any man. We have seen how, when Chaireas brought tidings of the doings of the four hundred oligarchsto Samos, the Athenian warriors were roused to such a pitch of fury that they were almost beside themselves with rage. The first act they called on Alkibiades to do for them, when they chose him general, was to take them straightway to Athens, to avenge the wrong that had been done to their country and restore her liberties. It was only his influence, backed by the loud voice of Thrasyboulos, that had restrained the soldiers and kept them for the defence of Samos. He was stronger now. He had good reason to believe, if he appeared with that large fleet and all his soldiers at the port of Athens, nothing could resist him. Why, then, not take them there on his return to Samos? His power at Samos was secure, his popularity unbounded; his influence with Tissaphernes greater, at any rate, than that of any other. The condition of Athens was most critical. A strong man, backed as he would be, would soon restore her native energy and scare away the swarm of bats whose unclean wings now flapped about the sacred city. Was not this the very moment to make the stroke he had been so long meditating, and give thecoup de graceto the cowardly, the treacherous four hundred?

Once there, his course was clear. Leader ofthe people, as Perikles had been—greater indeed than Perikles, for he would come not as a leader only, but as a saviour—might he not expect to rise to greater fame and more enduring honour than even Perikles had gained?

This was the temptation, and it came upon him like the nightmare which had weighed him down during the ride he had by night in this same country more than a year before. As he shook it off and resisted it with effort, it came again, and yet again. It was, in truth, a specious and splendid-looking prospect that was now displayed before him.

On the other side was duty—his devotion to his country, and his willingness to renounce for her his own particular plans of personal advantage. Was this the time to stir up civil war, to leave Samos and the other islands to the mercy of the enemy? Athens had but one army left, and one navy; both were under his command at Samos, guarding the remnant of her Ionian possessions. To take that force to Athens would be to leave all outside Attica without any defence to her enemies. Could he be right in doing that, even for the holy purpose of restoring liberty and vitality to Athens? Was this a time to gratify ambition and aggrandize himself, and wreak his vengeanceon his enemies, when Byzantion, Abydos, Lampsakos, were falling off?

He thrust the temptation from him. He refused to purchase his return to Athens at such a price; he determined he would never set his foot upon his country’s soil until he came with hands full of blessings to her.

When he returned to Samos he found his forces had been gaining strength. Some had come who had escaped from the tyranny at home, others from the islands. Among these arrivals was an embassy from the four hundred formally announcing the change in the government, and seeking to gain the army at Samos to its side. These deputies were received in open assembly, but the Athenian soldiers were so much enraged they could hardly be persuaded to listen to them. When they heard their excuses for the wrongs that had been inflicted on the people at home their anger became fiercer; it required all the power of Alkibiades to save the deputation from his soldiers’ violence.

As soon as they were gone, the whole army once more entreated him to take them forthwith to Athens. They declared that the four hundred could not prevent their landing or their march from the Peiræus; that the people would hail them as deliverers, and that the hoplites servingunder the usurpers would immediately desert their detested paymasters.

For a moment he paused. The anger of the troops was overwhelming and dangerous. Had he power to restrain them any longer? If he refused to lead them, might they not depose him and choose a more pliant leader? So near the completion of his work, was he to see it all destroyed? His hopes so nearly realized—were they all to be abandoned? And for what? For a too sensitive regard for a place and people which had thrust him from them as an evildoer. Must he stay there always to protect her outposts when, by a word, he might be ruling in her midst? How long was he to watch over her here at Samos, while miscreants ate her life out of her at home, and were even now negotiating with her enemies to come and enslave her—enslave his Athens—if only for a little while they might so prop up their falling tyranny? Was it not his duty to put a stop to that? The temptation was getting too strong for him.

Stand firm now, oh man. It may be some years yet before you see her. Not more than half your wandering, troubled exile may be over. And when you do return to her, your sad fate may send you quickly off to fight for her again,and you may again be sacrificed by her. And then through all the ages that shall come, when historians record your exploits, your victories, your wrongs, your triumphs; when new peoples shall have risen on the earth who can afford to smile at all the extraordinary fuss once made about your four-horse chariot races; when there shall be no more wars, and no more massacres of human folk or mangling of poor helpless animals; when nations shall no longer intrigue or conspire against each other, this shall be writ and read concerning you, as your most glorious deed—that you refused at such a time to go to govern Athens at the risk of hurting her, or to return at all to her till you could come unto that lovely mother with hands and arms full to overflowing with the blessings you could shower upon her head.

He rejected the temptation. With such a leader, whom even hostile writers hail as the liberator, the saviour of Athens—with such a one to lead them, his warrior citizens could also wait.

He pointed out to the excited sailors and hoplites what the result must be of abandoning this last Athenian outpost. Though they might save Athens from the usurpers, there would be little left to her when all her insular dependencies were gone.

‘Let the usurping tyrants alone for a while. Through their own rottenness they will fall to pieces of themselves. Athens will have greater cause to thank us if we preserve her distant territories than if we abandon them, even to save her.’

Thus he recalled the troops to reason and to their duty when some of them were in the act of leaving Samos in their ships.

When this ardour was quieted for a time, there came a welcome embassy from Argos. Those old friends and allies of his were true to him still, although he had beaten fifteen hundred of them at Miletos. They had been disgusted with the proceedings of the rest of the Athenians, but now that they heard he was at the head of affairs at Samos, they sent to offer their assistance in restoring to Athens her democracy.

Things were in such a good way in that island now that he was able to send Thrasyboulos with five triremes to blockade Eresos, in the island of Lesbos, which had revolted, and he was preparing another squadron to help the other fleet, which was still blockading Chios, when most exciting news came, interrupting all his other plans and preparations.

He had kept himself well informed of whatwas going on at Magnesia. The immediate future, perhaps the long-distant future, for both Athens and Sparta depended at this moment on Tissaphernes. The two Greek fleets balanced each other pretty evenly. Any addition to either would turn the scale. An addition of three hundred, or even one hundred, big warships to either side must swamp the other hopelessly. So now, when on the tenth of August, according to our style, 411 years before our era, Agrestides came with secret intelligence that Tissaphernes, at length seriously frightened by threats of Spartan commissioners to break off the alliance and return to Sparta and leave Athens to recover her old dependencies, had actually set off himself for Aspendos to fetch the Persian fleet, and had taken the commissioner Lichas and the commander Philippos with him, that they might see for themselves that he really was this time in earnest, then Alkibiades felt he must act at once, and with the greatest speed and energy, if this decisive action was by any means to be prevented.

When Agrestides left the mainland for Samos with the news, Tissaphernes, in his state long-ship, followed by the Spartans in two triremes, had also left Miletos, and was now coasting downthe Asiatic continent, and must, by the time the message reached Alkibiades, have got some distance on his way. The general knew Persian habits, and that Persians were not fond of moving too rapidly. He knew it took some time to overcome thevis inertiæthat was in their nature, and that in the case of Tissaphernes the habitual deliberation which marked their movements would not be easily startled into action on a business which, for more than one reason, he wished to be indefinitely postponed. Alkibiades knew, too, that there were no three hundred ships lying off Aspendos, and that Persian authorities did not waste their wealth on ships of war, which might never be wanted after all. He knew how many and great were the opportunities of spending their revenues in a way which more nearly concerned their own enjoyments. So he guessed that the voyage of Tissaphernes to Aspendos would not be rapid if he were left to himself. But there were two energetic Spartans with the satrap, and these might urge him on. So Agrestides had hardly finished his disquieting news before orders had been given to get thirteen of the quickest triremes in readiness to start in pursuit of the satrap and the persistent Spartans.

It was a hot, dreamy day when theEros, followedby the twelve swift Athenian ships, stood out of the harbour of Samos. They gave Miletos a wide berth. This was not a time for fighting; the general had other cares just now, and though his oarsmen pulled their hardest, the pace seemed all too slow for Alkibiades. His first object was to get to Kaunos, in Karia, before Tissaphernes left that port. Tissaphernes, he believed, must stop at Kaunos for water.

The great eyes carved on the prow of the good shipErosseemed to start with expectation and impatience as it breasted the smooth sea. By Kos and Knidos they scudded on. They saw the Spartan ships that had been left in Rhodes harbour still lying there, as at last with full swing they turned up north-easterly to Kaunos before the sun had set. But for all this haste, when they reached the port the Persian satrap and his Spartan monitors had been there and were gone.

They got in water and what provisions were required, and left again at daybreak, the sea still smooth as glass. Not a breath of wind came to fill the sails, and though a hundred times that day Alkibiades reminded himself that Tissaphernes and the Spartans were as much delayed by the incidents of weather as he was,it was difficult to console himself with that thought. He wanted to go fast and faster, to keep pace with his anxious mind.

‘Are we gaining on them?’ he said to Antiochos, his pilot.

Antiochos did not know. No one knew. They only knew that the Persian state ship was the swiftest one the Viceroy had, and that the Spartans were not likely to have chosen slow ones for their present purpose.

Phaselis was the next port Tissaphernes must make for on his journey to Aspendos.

‘When could they reach Phaselis? Can anyone see Phaselis? Were there three triremes anywhere ahead?’

‘No; only land on the left-hand side, no triremes.’

He called to the master of the rowers to redouble the vigour and the quickness of their strokes. But the poor sweating rowers had all day been toiling their very hardest at the oars. No Persian slaves on the state trireme, for all the whips of all the masters, could ever row like these men.

‘We must be gaining on them.’

On and on they went, due east now, right through the Lykian on to the Pamphylian Sea,for many slowly-passing hours that seemed interminable.

Now they turned up northerly, past the point Hieron, past the small island of Kambrousa.

‘How much further to Phaselis now? A hundred stades?’

‘More than that.’

‘What is that rock, those two distant rocks? Are they not rocks jutting out from the sea, with a thin line on each side of them? If the Spartans shall have made the weary Tissaphernes leave Phaselis before we get there, and we are kept long in watering, they will be at Aspendos before us after all, and what of the Persian fleet then? Perhaps we may be yet in time to stop their leaving.’

The two high rocks grew higher out of the water, more distinct. An old sailor whom the general called up to his side knew them.

‘Yes, that is Phaselis.’

‘Can anyone see three triremes there?’

‘No, not yet. There are some specks about.’

Antiochos went aloft again.

‘They look long; they must be ships. They cannot be common fishing-boats; too big.’

‘Are they triremes?’

‘Perhaps they are.’

The old sailor was standing near the pilot, shading his eyes with his hand.

“Are they triremes?’

‘Yes, they are.’

‘Which way are they looking?’

‘Seaward, I think.’

‘Row on now as you have never rowed before. Each one of you shall have his name up at the Agora at Athens—a drachma a day for life.’

‘Are they moving?’

‘No—yes, yes. By Zeus! I see the oars move now. They are out of port.’

‘Ye gods! shall we ever catch them? Turn your prow straight for them. Never mind Phaselis; make for the longest ship.’

‘They are well out now, making fast north-north-east, right for Aspendos. They see us. The smaller ships are behind. They are gaining on the long one; she is slacking. Now they are close to her; now they are nearly alongside of her.’

‘What are they doing now?’

‘The long ship has stopped. We shall catch them yet.’

In fact, when Tissaphernes heard it was theEros, Alkibiades’ own ship, that was pursuing him, he ordered his rowers to slacken speed, and, whenthe high commissioner Lichas and the commander Philippos came up to him in wonder, he declared he dared not go on with the Athenian fleet upon them; at any rate, he must wait to hear what message these vessels might be bringing.

So before nightfall Alkibiades had come aboard the Persian state long-ship, and Tissaphernes had embraced his friend once more. Lichas and Philippos had been allowed to leave under cover of the darkness, in great disgust at the weakness of the satrap, and had gone back towards Miletos, and the Athenians went on, together with the Persian state ship, to Aspendos.

It was a gay and happy time for Tissaphernes as he was rowed slowly in his great ship over the pleasant water, rid at last of those troublesome Spartans, who were always in earnest, always wanting to talk politics. He had his friend with him to amuse him and join him in his pleasures as of old.

They found the fleet—that terrible great fleet indeed!—lying off Aspendos. Certainly they were a goodly array of ships to look at from a distance. Though not three hundred—there were a hundred and forty-seven of them there—joined as auxiliaries with the Spartan force, they would have settled the question between Athens and Lakedaimon.

On closer inspection, even Tissaphernes had to admit they were not perfect. Dirty beyond description, with oars broken, planks starting and torn sails, to the Athenian sailors, accustomed to Greek niceness and perfection, they looked pitiable and disgusting objects.

Tissaphernes ordered them all back to the Phœnikian coast, and, with the help of his witty friend, made up and sent to Lichas the following curious reason for not keeping the promise he had made to Sparta:

‘Whereas by some, at present undiscovered, accident, my lord the King had not sent more than one hundred and forty-seven long-ships, and, as it appears to me, his viceroy, unworthy of the King of Kings that he should send to aid so great and powerful a people as the Lakedaimonians so small a fleet, I, Tissaphernes, the aforesaid viceroy, have sent them back again.’

This cynical defence, suggested by Alkibiades, for the breaking of the solemn promises given at least three times in as many separate treaties, pleased his Persian friend. It suited the wily nature of the man; and when the two parted at Aspendos, as soon as Alkibiades could get away, their love and friendship seemed strongerand likely to be more lasting than it had ever been before. And grave historians ever since have been puzzling their heads why it was that, although Tissaphernes allowed the Spartan envoys to go with him to fetch the fleet, the Spartans never did get it after all, and why he gave so curious an excuse for sending it back to the Phœnikian coast again.

Book III

‘That is Alcibiades. In the flower of his manly prime, in the bloom of his wonderful talents ... there stands the great moral antithesis, the living type of the Athenian character—the warrior, the fop—the statesman, the voluptuary—the demagogue, the patriot—the orator ... the lisper on whose utterance assemblies hung—the spendthrift, whose extravagance did honour to his native land—the man who would have made his country mistress of the world....’—Sir D. K. Sandford.

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