All expressed regret at the unfortunate nature of their errand. If Alcibiades wished, he need not return a prisoner aboard Salaminia but follow in his own ship. However, he must embark at once, no later than morning.
That night one spoke of nothing but the prospect of a coup.
Nicias and Lamachus called out the marines, myself and Lion among them; we were posted eight to a vessel and by companies at arms up and down the strand.
Years later I served aboard Calliope with the younger Pericles.
Alcibiades' executive officer Antiochus had been his mentor in naval warfare. Antiochus had told him, Pericles recounted, that Alcibiades, anticipating his recall for trial, had for months been orchestrating a campaign via post and through allies at home whose object was to have the charges against him reframed and the indictment of profanation, the only one he truly feared because of the passionate outrage it evoked among the people, dropped.
This goal, letters received two days previous confirmed, had been effected. Such was the news Alcibiades had been hoping for.
Against these reduced charges he was certain he could prevail, defending himself in person before the Assembly. Now on the strand at Catana, however, the summoners informed him, apparently in ignorance of the consequences, that the profanation charges had in fact not been dropped. Alcibiades had been double-crossed, and with brilliance, too late in the game to reply with a counter.
Among Alcibiades' counselors, Mantitheus, Antiochus, and his cousin also named Alcibiades lobbied most vehemently for a coup, dissent voiced by Euryptolemus and Adeimantus. Those who championed this supreme stroke urged Alcibiades to seize command of the expedition here and now, imprisoning or if necessary putting to death all who refused to take his side. Nor did these radicals quit there. They proposed abandoning the Sicilian campaign where it stood and setting sail with the entire fleet for Athens, where Alcibiades, backed by army and navy, would declare himself master of the state.
It was Alcibiades himself who repudiated this. “I would not take Athens as a mistress,” he asserted, “but a bride.”
Many have derided this quip as facile and disingenuous, contending that Alcibiades only acceded to the summoners' decree because he believed he had in place at Athens sufficient cohorts to carry his case; or that his agents had already suborned ample in authority to effect his exoneration. I don't believe this. I think he meant exactly what he said. I allege this not in defense of the man, to characterize him as chivalrous or honor-compassed (though he was both), for consider: such a statement bespeaks an arrogance both supreme and breathtaking.
That was how he felt, I believe. Athens was in his view not nation to be served, but consort to be won; to gain her by means other than her own freely offered affection would be to dishonor her and himself. He craved not love nor power but both, each fed by and founded upon the other.
I had conjured none of this then, as the deputies served their summons beside the beached Artemisia. All, I account, however, comprised Alcibiades' reflection. I regarded him. His expression was informed neither by rage nor vindictiveness, though he came subsequently to act with both in abundance. What I perceived was sorrow. I believe he stood in that instant apart from himself and his fate, as a man at the peak of peril will be lifted and granted vision of the full field. Like a master gamesman, Alcibiades perceived move and countermove four and five turns ahead, all boding evil, yet could discern no masterstroke by which he or his city could escape this end.
“What will you do?” Euryptolemus asked his cousin.
Alcibiades stared gravely, straight ahead.
“Not sail home to be murdered, that much is certain.”
XIX
Alcibiades fled at Thurii. To Argos first, men said, then Elis when that became too hot, one jump ahead of the state agents and fee hunters. My brother was among the military posse, led by the crew of the Salaminia, that chased him around Italy's boot.
… these vaunted elite of the state galley are a pretty confection, brother. Though of the cult of Ajax and thus kinsmen of their prey, they hunt him as he were a rabid dog. At Padras he was rumored to be fled to an inn; our search party torched the site in darkness, nearly incinerating a dozen innocents, nor tarried to proffer reparation, but another rumor of our quarry's whereabouts drove us on a further wild-goose chase. These buggers play for keeps, Pommo. They put one poor lad to the cheese grater, though the boy was no older than twelve. Next up was a sprat fisher. These heirs of Eurysaces took him two miles out and, heaving first one of his sons, then the other into the drink to drown, at last chucked the skipper himself. Such stunts these agents of the state perform with a dry eye and a wisecrack.
Clearly they fear the consequences of returning home without their charge; yet it is more than this, Pommo. Why do they hate him so? His own kinsmen! They own a zealotry more void of pity than the partisans we used to see in the islands. This very note must be smuggled out. If these birds cadge a peek at it, they will stretch my hide, and yours, upon the nearest door.
Alcibiades was not the only commander ordered home for trial.
Mantitheus, too, was indicted, trierarch of the Penelope, as was Antiochus, the ablest pilot in Greece, Adeimantus, and Alcibiades' cousin also named Alcibiades. Six other officers were summoned as well.
From my cousin Simon at Athens:
…Salaminia returned. No Alcibiades. He legged it in Italy, on hearing the Assembly had condemned him to death in absentia, though you probably have this news already. “I will let Athens know,” he is said to have pronounced, “that I am very much alive.”
Winter came. With Alcibiades and his companions gone, the fleet had lost not only its boldest and most enterprising officers but those most passionately devoted to the expedition. Nicias and Lamachus now shared command. At once all initiative fled. Instead of advancing with vigor against the cities of Sicily, cutting Syracuse off from her natural allies, Nicias made one halfhearted pass at cowing her directly, then ordered the fleet to retire for winter to Catana. I languished there two months before Pandora was dispatched, mercifully, to Iapygia, seeking horses for the cavalry. Lion was there too, with Medusa.
Iapygia, as you know, is the heel of Italy's boot. It blows like hell up there, wild gales the non-Greek natives call nocapelli, bald heads. You get all the news, though; every vessel puts in at Caras, and the crews, flush with gossip, are glad of a toasty hearth to spill it in. Lion and I learned of our absconded commander from the master of a Tyrrhenian coaster who had it from a boatswain of Corinth who had run Conon's blockade of the gulf. This Corinthian had accompanied his captain to Sparta; he had passed two evenings in the Hyacinthieum and even been permitted upon the porticoes of the apella, the Assembly, where foreigners are occasionally licensed to attend upon the debate within.
Alcibiades had fled neither to Italy nor to the moon, imparted our informant. He was at Sparta. “And not on the gibbet either. But free and in his glory, the cynosure of all Lacedaemon!”
This intelligence was greeted with hooting disbelief by the mariners who packed the public room.
“This same perfumed coxcomb,” our captain continued, unperturbed, “who in the Assembly of Athens swathed himself in purple and trailed his robe astern in the dust, this same profligate and libertine, I say, in short this consummate Athenian, now in Sparta has recast himself and hatched a new Alcibiades, unrecognizable to all who knew him hitherto.
“This new Alcibiades garments himself in plain Spartan scarlet, tramps about with soles unshod, curls cascading to his shoulders in the Lacedaemonian style. He takes his meals in the common mess, bathes in the frigid Eurotas, and lays himself down each night upon a bed of reeds. He dines on black broth and takes wine only in moderation. Of speech he is as parsimonious as if words were gold and he a miser. At break of day one may discover him afield and asweat, training upon the running course. Forenoon finds him in the gymnasium or upon the athletic grounds, into whose games he plunges with a passion exceeding even that of his most ardent and accomplished hosts. In short the man has become more spartan than the Spartans, and they idolize him for it. Boys trail him about, Peers compete to call him comrade, and women…well, the laws of Lycurgus promote polyandry, as you know, so that even men's wives may dote openly upon this paragon of whom all declare,