Our coop gaped at the scale of construction. From the citadel of the Larissa, as far as vision could carry, the city circuit stood compassed by scaffolding and construction inclines, derricks and roller sledges, road cutters, timber mills, factors' tents and teamsters' trains, with overall such a multitude at labor that men shy of hods bore mortar on their bare backs, cupping it between their arms with fingers interlocked behind them. I located Euryptolemus, seeking a berth at wages for our coop. He clapped my shoulder, welcoming, and declared he could put us to far better use.
He signed us to train Messenian freedmen as heavy infantry, some two hundred who had been chattel at Sparta but fled to forts erected by Alcibiades and Nicias, securing their liberation. We would drill them all summer, accompanying Alcibiades to Patrae with the fall to bring that city into alliance as well. When I remonstrated with our commander, at last securing an audience, that these Messenians would never be ready to fight by fall, he only laughed. “Who said anything about fighting?”
He would win Patrae by love.
And he did. Here is how.
Patrae, as you know, commands the western portal to the Gulf of Corinth. She was a democracy and neutral. Now, however, with the other great democracies of the Peloponnese-Elis, Mantinea, and Argos-brought into alliance with Athens, Patrae was a fruit ripe to fall.
Have you spent time in Patrae, Jason? It is a most agreeable place. Her dishes are squid cooked in its own ink and baked thrush.
One dines there not in the marketplace, but at establishments called “flags,” which are private homes, many with terraces overlooking the sea. On entering, one takes a flag, a brightly colored swatch bearing a symbol, of a dolphin or trident, say, and ties it about his shoulders. With that, he is a son of the family.
That portion is his which he desires, or he may name a dish and the proprietress will produce it. At repast's end he folds his fare within his flag and leaves it on the bench.
The government of Patrae consists of two houses, the Council of Elders and the Assembly of the people. Alcibiades approached first those leading men with whom he was personally acquainted, and upon assuaging their fears of his and his nation's intentions, secured permission to address the commons. He was now thirty-two years old, twice a general of Athens, and the most spectacularly ascendant of the new breed of Greece. He spoke as follows:
“Men of Patrae, I proceed on the assumption that you, as all free Hellenes, would prefer independence and self-determination for your state, to having her affairs dictated by an alien power.
Neutrality, you must agree, is no longer an option. Today each state of Greece must align with Athens or Sparta; no third alternative obtains.”
The Assembly of Patrae meets in the open air on an eminence called the Collar, overlooking the gulf. Alcibiades gestured now to these straits.
“To which element, sea or land, is your nation's future bound?
This, I submit, is the decisive factor, for if land, her fate must stand with Sparta. This will produce the greatest security. But if one's hopes lie abroad through trade and commerce, he must recognize that that power which commands the sea cannot suffer another state to make use of this element to its advantage, if this works injury to herself.
“Patrae is sited on the sea, my friends, and upon a most strategic promontory. This works to your nation's benefit, making her of surpassing value to Athens as a friend, but to your peril, should you elect to make our city your foe. Do not delude yourself that this Peace will endure. War will come again. You must prepare now, determining which course yields the greater security-alliance with that naval power which needs you and must protect you, whose might opens up to your use all ports and sea-lanes of the world, shielding your merchantmen wherever their ambitions bear them and providing courts of law by which their interests may be safeguarded. Or choose to ally with a land power, Sparta and her League, which cannot defend you against seaborne assault, which will recruit your young men to fight as infantry where they are least well trained and equipped, and beneath whose hegemony you must suffer isolation and impoverishment, cut off from that intercourse of commerce which brings not alone the good things of life but the surplus of resource without which security is an illusion.”
He wanted Patrae to build long walls connecting the upper town to the port. When a Councilor resisted, narrating his fear that Athens would gobble Patrae up, Alcibiades responded, “What you say may be true, my friend. But if she does, it will be by degrees and from the feet. Sparta will take you headfirst and at one gulp.”
But his most telling argument required no articulation. This was the sight of the Messenian freedmen who, fired by their hatred of Sparta, had shaped into a crack unit. Here was what freedom and Athens could do for you, their presence said. Be like them, or face them.
Patrae did come over. With that, Alcibiades had detached from Sparta in her own backyard three powerful states and brought over a fourth from neutrality. He had fashioned a coalition whose combined armed forces rivaled that of her former master, all the while adhering to the letter of the Peace and setting not a solitary Athenian life at hazard. He would move next, or his proxies would, against a fifth state, Epidaurus, whose fall would complete that gambit by which the sixth and most crucial Spartan ally, Corinth, would find herself cut off and vulnerable as well.
Now for the first time one began to see Spartans and Spartan agents. Their cavalry appeared across Achaea and the Argolid, followed by those surrogates in scarlet of the seventy Laconian towns, the so-called Neighbors, heavy infantry drilled to such a pitch as exceeded all save the Corps of Peers itself. Mindarus arrived, the field marshal, and Endius and Cleobulus, leaders of the war party. They and their lieutenants began showing up at coops, the first time we had seen full Spartiates recruiting shields and free lances. One excelled all in the zeal of his application. This was Lysander the son of Aristocleitus, that same Lysander whose name would toll down Athenian annals, synonymous with doom.
Telamon took work from him and chided me for my reluctance.
Others of our coop ran “errands” as well. They would not recount these actions, even to me. One knew only that they were performed at night and they paid well.
With Telamon I heard Lysander address the Patraean Council.
“Men of Patrae, the speech of the Athenian general” (meaning Alcibiades, who had addressed the Assembly some days previous)
“is known to all and has been countered by ambassadors of my city, whose eloquence far outstrips my own. Nonetheless my regard for your nation is such that, though I come before you as a soldier only, I must add my voice to these rebuttals. Make no mistake, friends.
The course you elect now must bear profound consequences. I beg you resist the impulse to haste. The hare may leap into the pot, they say, but not back out once the lid is made fast.
“Let me speak to the distinction between the Athenian character and the Spartan. Perhaps you have not considered this.
What kind of nation are the Spartans? We are not a seafaring people, nor is it in our nature to covet empire. Our portion of the Peloponnese we hold, content, never seeking its aggrandizement.
Our alliances are defensive. Even when we strike overseas at our foes, our object is not to conquer, only to quell potential peril.