Выбрать главу

Another from the young bride:

… where are you, my love? It tortures me, not to know where your ship sails, though, if I knew, my torment would be equally excruciating. You must preserve yourself! Be a coward. If they make you fight, run away! I know you won't, but I wish it. Please be careful. Don't volunteer for anything!

From the same letter:

…you must now remark your life as mine, for if you fall, I perish with you.

And this:

Grant women rule and this war would end tomorrow. Madness!

Why, when all good things flow from peace, must men seek war?

Again from her:

…life seemed so complicated to me. I felt like a beast who rushes this way and that within its cage, yet discovers only more bars and walls. At once with you, my love, all is simple. Just to live, and love, and be loved by you! Who needs heaven, when we have such joy now?

Polemides responds:

It daunts me, my love, that I must now prove worthy of you. How shall I ever?

He takes steps to dissever himself from Eunice. He signs over half his pay to her and her children, makes application for citizenship for her and them, citing his years of service and the hardships Eunice and the children have borne at his side. He arranges transport for them to Athens and applies to his uncles and elder kinsmen to look to their care until his return.

This from his bride:

…I have learned from my father and brothers that a man's conduct at war may not be accounted by the measures of peace, certainly not one as yourself whose youth and manhood have been spent in service far from home and constant peril of his life. That existence which you have made before we met is yours; I may not judge it. I wish only that I might help, if that were possible without causing by our happiness unhappiness in those we wish to aid. Know that those children of the woman Eunice, yours or not, will receive support from our resources, my own and ours, yours and mine, and my father's.

Polemides dreams of reestablishing his father's farm, Road's Turn, at Acharnae, and settling there with his bride and child.

Peace, or victory which will drive the Spartans from Attica, is everything to him now. He writes his aunt, seeking to bring her, too, back to the land, and to those crofters who served during his father's term. He even prices seed and orders, at a bargain, an iron ploughs hare from a merchantman's inventory at Methymna. He ships this implement aboard the freighter Eudia, whose passage homeward is escorted by the fleet of Alcibiades, with Polemides again aboard the flagship Antiope, as her supreme commander returns to Athens in glory.

XXXIV

STRATEGOS AUTOKRATOR

Alcibiades had wished to return at break of winter, but elections at Athens were delayed; he must abide abroad, raiding the Spartan shipyards at Gytheium and killing time at other such offices. At last reports came. They could not have been better.

Alcibiades had been elected again to the Board of Generals; as was Thrasybulus, who had brought him home from Persia; Adeimantus, his mate and fellow exile; and Aristocrates, who had championed his recall before the Assembly. The other generals were either neutrals or men of independent virtue. Cleophon, leader of the radical democrats and Alcibiades' most bitter foe, had been supplanted, replaced by Archedemus, a thug but an amenable one, and a solicitor of Critias, Socrates' close friend.

Thrasyllus was at Athens already with the main of the fleet, whose crews would back their commander in anything. Yet still Alcibiades, whose sentence of death had not yet been rescinded, harbored apprehensions of the people's disposition. It was his cousin Euryptolemus' device, communicated by post from Athens, that the warships' arrival, only a flag squadron of twenty, be preceded by grain galleys (twenty-seven waited at Samos then, with another fourteen due out of the Pontus) and that these be known vessels of prominent houses, particularly those who had suffered most from Spartan depredations, and laden for the city, to recall to her that bounty set at her table by the son she had scorned.

This was only good manners, Euro's letter noted, as one would be rude to appear for a feast empty-handed.

So the galleys went ahead. These made port at Piraeus two days prior to the squadron, accompanied by a fast courier with instructions to return, reporting the vessels' reception. But the arrival of the merchantmen precipitated such elation in the port, with the news that Alcibiades' ships followed, that the people would not let the cutter reembark until a proper reception may be mustered to accompany her. Meanwhile the squadron, advancing unapprised of what awaited, began to fear. Beating round Cape Sounium into a fierce westerly, the lead vessels, descrying a score of triremes bearing down out of the sun so that their ensigns could not be made out, the younger Pericles, officer of the van, had brought the formation to line abreast to defend itself when it was realized that the advancing vessels bore not hazard but welcome, garlanded, and laden with parties of kinsmen and notables.

Still Alcibiades feared treachery. Beneath his cloak he wore not the light ceremonial cuirass, but a bronze breastplate of battle.

Directions were rehearsed to the marine party to remain about him at alert. The ships, which had been advancing in two columns, deployed to singles approaching the harbor entrance at Eetoniea.

Antiope layoff, seventh in column, that she may put about at once in the event of duplicity. We could see the ramparts now.

Reflections flared, as from spearpoints and armor of massed infantry. The flagship bore sidescreens “at the step,” primed for deployment. But as the vessels drew abreast of the bastion, the men could see the flares were not of missiles or armor, but of ladies' vanities and children's sundazzlers. Clouds of wreaths descended. Youths launched candies upon the breeze, suspended from the spruce spinners that old men whittle wharfside, which can soar for miles on the updrafts. These now came winging overhead, clattering against the hull and splashing amid the oar sweep.

Small craft swarmed, hailing the heroes. It seemed the entire city had taken holiday. The ships came parallel to the Choma now, where the trierarchs of the fleet for Syracuse had assembled so gravely before the apostoleis to receive the blessing and the Council's order to launch. Such a mob now swarmed upon the mole as to hide it entire. Atalanta advanced to our starboard, obscuring the vantage. Amid the throng, glimpsed through the rigging of our squadronmate's stern, ascended the figure of Euryptolemus, bald dome reflecting. With one hand this noble embraced himself, as if to fix his self-command; the other, with exuberant welcome, waved his straw sun hat.

“Can that be you, cousin?” Alcibiades spoke in a whisper, and, bending toward the apparition, permitted his arm to respond.

Ahead rose the pediment of the Bendidium and, beneath, the raked beaching ground of Thracian Artemis. Kratiste and Alcippe already executed reversions in place, for the bumpers to capture their sterns. Garlanded ephebes manned the shoring blocks awaiting Antiope. A pinging metallic clatter began to assault the deck. The people were throwing money. Boys swarmed over the gunwales and scrapped with their mates for the showering coins.

Where the Northern Wall abuts the Carriage Road, that dolorous highway I had trekked alone years past, returning from Potidaea; there where the hovels of the damned had sprawled during the Plague; now this gauntlet of horror had metamorphosed into a boulevard of joy. Cavalry mounts awaited the commanders.

Their hooves trod a carpet of lavender. Though the other generals rode in prominence, the mob paid no heed but rounded only to behold Alcibiades. Fathers pointed him out to sons, and women, elder dames as well as maidens, clutched at their bosoms and swooned.