“I'd rather have a man who has closed with the foe and bears the scars than all the bronze-and-brightwork of the regatta. I can find unscathed captains anywhere. But where will I get brave men like you and your crews?”
This to the younger Pericles and his officers, when they had made plea for additional vessels:
Never forget, gentlemen, that you command Athenians and that those elements which make our countrymen great are intangible.
Daring and intelligence, adaptability and esprit. Put these in the bank for me and I will get you all the ships you need.
As he chastened men with banishment from himself, so he rewarded them with access. He loved to have his officers about him, particularly late at night as he worked. “Bear in mind, my friends, that access to your person is a mighty incentive to those in station beneath you. A smile, a kind word, a nickname spoken with affection. Recall how we as boys gloried in the moments at our father's knee, or how even now an invitation to dine with our commanders makes light of many a long pull into a hard wind.
Don't hoard your person, gentlemen. Money cannot buy the prize of your attention, and the men know it.”
He schooled his captains to think in terms of squadrons and wings, never single ships, and to bear in mind ever the fleet as a whole, which squadrons were where and how quickly they could be brought up, how swiftly one's own may withdraw to their aid.
He would react with fury to the report of vessels advancing out of formation. The phrase “in support of' permeated his orders. To any scheme his first question was “Who sails in support?”
In the advance he demanded ships “blade-to-blade,” that each draw courage from her mates' proximity. At sea he maintained signal traffic night and day, to link all vessels as a unit. Casualties he refused to segregate, but the wounded must be borne home with their shipmates, no matter if the deck sprawl with litters and blood trail onto the oarsmen's backs. Each must know he would never be abandoned, but his mates would bear him off. “None fears death more than the sea fighter, for the infantryman, falling, cedes his bones to the earth from which they may be recovered, but the sailor to the barren and pitiless main.” This to the younger Pericles, when he heard he had lost his temper at one of his oarsmen: The infantryman may fight without his captain and take to flight without him. But the sailor advances to battle yoked to his commander, with naught dissevering him from hell but his faith in you and a thumb's-breadth of pine.
Alcibiades drilled the fleet tirelessly in self-presentation, to make few look like many and many like few. He practiced the exploitation of headlands and promontories to conceal our presence and numbers. He accustomed the men to launching at all weathers, for storms and squalls not only offered concealment but magnified the theater of terror with which to overawe the foe. In the great victory at Cyzicus he obscured the fleet in a downpour he had anticipated for months, intelligence of the terrain having determined that at that hour at that season such weather could be counted upon.
Before he came, the men had tended to break up by specialties, marines and infantry disdaining the nautai, topside oarsmen despising holdsmen, and cavalry styling themselves superior to all.
Alcibiades effaced these distinctions not with chastisement, but with glory. Later, when Thrasyllus came out from Athens with a thousand heavy infantry and five thousand sailors trained as javelineers, but suffered defeat at Ephesus, Alcibiades' men would not let them enter the camp; they who had never been beaten disdaining their countrymen who had let the enemy erect a trophy to their shame. Alcibiades broke this up by pitting them side by side against main-force Spartans. Victory again effaced all distinctions.
He sought to keep fresh those squadrons not on campaign or pillage by employing them to bewitch the civil populace. The report of Athenian men-of-war, even two or three anchoring in a cove, would draw the locals from miles. Far from spurning these gawkers, Alcibiades ordered them haled aboard. Let them see what battleship and battle crew look like. Lads he sought especially to beguile, for their youth makes them seek heroes and models of emulation. They will tell us everything. Intelligence of tides, currents, and weather he prized above silver. Fishermen, whom the Spartans despised, he ordained favorites. No dinner lacked at least one of these characters, debriefed later for quirks of tide and channel, storm and season.
Under fire I cannot read the chart, but a pilot at my shoulder who says steer there where the rip runs.
Often he led raids himself, materializing from the darkness to strike a harbor with ax and brand, or sailing in in broad daylight, compelling the populace to fear him more than the garrison who occupied them. He loved to snatch from their beds mayors and magistrates. These he often interrogated in person, restoring them to home with gifts, his object to abash them with the might of the fleet, for one snatched in the night will behold all he sees with eyes widened by terror and magnify reports of the invincibility of his captors.
He sought not to drill the fleet to dull uniformity, but to enliven it with individuality and self-enterprise.
…each wing, and squadron within a wing, must be encouraged to forward its own identity, some skill or talent at which it exceeds all and in which it may take pride. Let one wing carry double complement of marines; let them train with the grapnel and the flying outrigger. Let another build out its catheads Corinthian-style and call itself Hammerhead or Ram. When sailors from different divisions meet in a tavern, I want insults to fly. I want fistfights. The more the better, for in their aftercourse the men are bound yet more tightly together.
Here is how he went about acquiring cavalry.
From raiding to support the fleet he had become acquainted with Thrace, their hordes of horsemen and the spirit of their savage princes-two in particular, Seuthes the son of Maisades, and Medocus, lords of the Odrysians. Thrasybulus and Theramenes pressed him to pay court to these. The army could acquire cavalry nowhere else. But Alcibiades understood the hearts of these wild knights. One may not approach them giftless, nor may the friendship offering be less than spectacular or presented in any manner other than the grand.
Now Alcibiades had two trierarchs he favored, brothers, Damon and Nestorides, of his home district, Scambonidae. They were the youngest of the fleet, the one twenty-three, the other a year younger. Do you recall the scandal at Athens, Jason, of the chorus of boys? This was ten years earlier, before Syracuse. Alcibiades' uncle Axiochus had sponsored a chorus of beardless lads at the Panathenaea; in the celebration of their victory Alcibiades had contrived to have the youths overnight at his estate rather than return home with their fathers. Lubricating his charges with their first noseful of the grape, he then produced a cohort of glamorous (and full-grown) hetairai.
He got the boys laid.
This touched off a terrific hubbub. Suit was brought for outrage, hybris. That was when Meletus issued his famous indictment,
“Cite not the whores but the whoremaster!” Alcibiades of course had judged the prize worth the hazard. He recognized in these lads the flower of the city, commanders and generals of the future. He sought by orchestration of this passage to manhood, the most indelible of their young lives, to bind them to him with chains of adamant.
Now the brothers, Damon and Nestorides, had arrived from Athens. Alcibiades had brought them out as armored infantry, they being far too callow to be given command at sea without causing a mutiny among the senior captains. Here is how he got them ships.
He dispatched the lads first as marines, in a series of reconnaissances of the Spartan shipworks at Abydos. They went in, ten nights in all, mapping the yard and its approaches. They reported four vessels under repair, nearly seaworthy. “Bring one back,” Alcibiades pledged, “and you'll command her.”