Next came the men-of-war, the triremes, in formation by squadron, ten and twelve across and four deep, with each commander on the left in the post of honor. First one-hundred-seventy-four-oared Procne, Autocles' ship, Lamachus' vice-admiral. Her squadronmates were Pompe, Ajax, Ptolemais, Gorgon, and Grampus, whose sail was crimson and bore the image of its guardian beast; then Circe, Thrush, Hippolyta,
Theama, Ram, and Relentless.
Under her crimson sail with griffin emblem came Pyrpnous, Fire-Breather, Pythiades' ship, the hero of Cos. Then Indomitable, Dynamis, Thraseia, Amphitrite, Euxinaia, Achilleia, Centaura, and the triplets Tisiphone, Megaera, and Alecto.
The Nereid squadron under Aristogenes: Thetis, Pytho, Panope, Galatea, Balte, Alcyone, Euploia, Sea Eagle, Invincible, Endeavor, and Aianateia. Then Two-in-Hand, Epitome, Vigilant, Equipoise, Redoubtable, and Medusa.
Nicias' flagship, Trident, led the Oceanus division, her sail of purple and gold and her forepeak triple-pronged in sheathed bronze. Flanking her advanced Tethys, Doris, Eurynome, Zephyr West Wind, Aias, and Antigonis, then Mentor and Bay of Marathon, the sister ships Styx and Acheron, funded by Crito, Socrates' devotee. Next Strife, Castalia, Scylla, Cecropis with its blazon half-woman, half-dragon, and Aphrodisia, whose figurehead, bare-breasted, had been crafted by Phidias himself.
Then Typho, Medea, Hellhound, Anthesteria, Tauropolis, Clytemnestra, Fear, and Discord; Paean, Indefatigable, and Dauntless. Last Syntaxis, Hippothontis, Eleusis, Hecate, Merciless, Ostracon, and Arete.
Now the Thunderbolt division, forty-one ships, under Alcibiades. His helmsman was Antiochus, wing commanders Chaemedemus, Menestheus, and Adeimantus. At the fore rode the flagship, Artemisia, then Atalanta and Parthenos, the Virgin, trailed by the Amazons, Antiope, Hippolyta, and Penthesilea, with Iris, Aigle, Valor, and Europa.
Next Leaina, Lioness, flanked by Hysteria, Reckless, Olympia, Fury, Sophia, Danae, Rhea, Psyche, and Euphranousa. Then Palladium, Semele, Althaea, Nightingale, and Leopard. Hebe, Devastator, Daphne, Erebus, the three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Last Pandora, Swift, Terror, Penelope, Owl, Corsair, Necropolis, and Calypso.
This was the mightiest armada ever launched beneath the banner of a single city. So densely lapped rose the sails of the second and third divisions that their mass cut off the wind of the first. What open water remained stood so thick with small craft that one could have trod from Eetion to Munychia and never gotten his feet wet. There must have been a thousand boys'
“itty-bits,” pressing so densely about the warships that the oars in their sweep overturned no small number. The boys cheered even as they foundered, clinging to the keels of their overturned pots.
You are impatient, my grandson. You wish me to get to the notorious affair of the Herms. Here is how I learned of it: The date was twenty-one days before departure. I had been up all night at Naval Affairs, racing not only to complete this document but to pack up the office, which was being relocated to quarters in the Choma mews, at the harbor. With two other officers, my friend Orestiades, captain of the Resolute, and the younger Pericles, son of the great Pericles and the courtesan Aspasia, I emerged to the dawn from our basement space. It was the morning after Gleaning Day, the early barley harvest, when the widows and orphans had had their hours to scavenge and the stubbled fields, picked clean, had been set ablaze outside the city and across on Euboea. The haze, drifting down the channel and mingling with the sea fog, cast the city in an eerie pall. We had just started toward the marketplace when a press of women hastened past on the Street of the Weavers. They were wailing and uttering cries of distress.
We turned the corner into Council Square. More throngs clamored in disorder. Two slaves dashed past. Pericles seized one and demanded to know what was going on. “They've knocked all the cocks off, sir!”
“By Heracles, speak plain and clear.”
“The herms, Captain. The whole city's dickless!”
During the night a pack or packs of vandals, identities unknown, had rampaged through a number of quarters, defacing the stone statues of Hermes that stood with their erect phalluses as good-luck pieces before private residences and government buildings. The criminals had batted these knobs off and even smashed the statues' faces.
Who could have committed such an outrage? No sentence shy of death could requite such an act of desecration! Here was a violation not alone of clan or tribe but of the commonwealth itself, of the divinity who shields all voyagers and sustains the very polity of our nation! Already the crowds-stricken with terror at the vengeance of heaven which such a stroke of impiety was certain to draw down, not to mention the evil luck it would pronounce upon the fleet-hissed with the names of notorious malefactors. Troops of vigilantes dashed off. The wheel and rack were readied. The square seethed in mob fury.
I recall the look of consternation upon the face of my comrade, the younger Pericles. Of his family, so devastated by plague and war, none remained save himself to link Alcibiades to the elder Pericles. For this reason, and the young man's native gifts, Alcibiades had clasped him close, more as an older brother than a twice-removed cousin; Pericles esteemed his elder without reservation.
“This is Androcles' work,” the young man declared at once. “He or the Philaidae in league with Anytus and his ilk.” He directed our attention to certain men who circulated, inflaming the mob's passion. Surely these were provocateurs, recruited to foment this unrest. “They will accuse Alcibiades. I must find him and inform him at once.”
Charges were lodged against Alcibiades that morning.
Witnesses were produced, slaves and freedmen, the former put to the torture, the latter granted immunity. On the wheel no few named the object their tormentors sought. In the Assembly Pythonicus, Androcles, Thessalus, and Anytus called for the penalty of death.
Alcibiades came forward, dismissing these accusations as a ham-fisted attempt by his enemies to frame him for a crime only a madman would commit. How witless did his foes imagine him to be, that on the eve of his most passionately sought triumph he would sabotage his own cause in this preposterous manner?
Alcibiades denied all charges and demanded to be tried at once.
This hysteria must be put behind him before the fleet sailed. But his enemies, reinforced now by Procles, Euthydemus, Hagnon, and Myrtilus, brought forward fresh indictments, including profanation of the Mysteries. The accusers produced slaves and attendants who, under grants of immunity, described evenings in private homes when Alcibiades and others of his circle had donned mock-sacral garments and, prancing about in unholy caricature of priests and mystae, had amused themselves by presiding over sham initiations in disreverence of divine Demeter. These offenses were cited not merely as outrages against the gods, meriting death on that account alone, but as evidence of their perpetrators' contempt for the democracy itself. They were the acts of a would-be tyrant, who set himself above all law.
Nor was Alcibiades the only man so charged, but scores and even hundreds, of all parties, fell under the informer's suit. For the scale of the desecration was so vast, the people believed, as to have been perpetrated only by a coalition, or coalitions in collusion with others of like minds, with intent to overthrow the state.
Rounds of arrests began. An informer of one faction would come forward, naming fifty or seventy or even a hundred. At once a second stooge materialized, as spokesman for the accused faction, to denounce those who had denounced his own.