“Then you see not just for Athens, Alcibiades, but for her subjects and enemies as well?”
“And the wide world!” Pericles put in.
Alcibiades responded with a peal of irony light as spindrift. He indicated the plates and platter before us.
“I merely set out the banquet and stand aside while my companions dine.”
Returning to our billets, we passed those of Anytus, Critias, and Charicles, yet astir and hissing with conspiracy. Alcibiades' enemies intrigued for a device by which to bring him low. They did not reckon that that agent which would despoil him, and themselves, had already at that hour debarked at Castolus in Ionia, under guard of the Caranedion, the Royal Horse of Prince Cyrus of Persia.
Book VIII
XXXVIII
Have you ever seen a wagonload of gold, Jason?
It doesn't look like much. Just two ingots, swathed in fleece and no bigger round than firestand logs, but so heavy, the escort officers informed Telamon and me, permitting us a glimpse outside the treasury at Ephesus, that they must be loaded by tackle up a rollered incline. Each bar has to set directly over an axle or the weight will break the wagon's back. Such a burden must be drawn by oxen; draft horses or mules could pull it on the flat, but not up a grade.
Prince Cyrus had conveyed nine of these to Castolus with instructions from his father, Darius of Persia, to supply the Spartans with everything they needed to destroy the fleet of Athens. Past this, reports said, the prince had pledged his personal fortune and vowed even to break up his golden throne. This was five thousand talents in all, ten times the treasury of Athens. You tell me, my friend, what won the war for Lysander.
Sailors of Athens were drawing three obols; Lysander paid four.
An Athenian crew was three-quarters foreigners then; some ships listed as few as twenty citizens. Lysander's recruiters could sell these lads hard. And the Spartan paid “on the bollard,” full wages each month, not a third only, as our own paymasters, the rest held back till you made home port…
At this point precisely-I recall because my notes break off in midsentence-a commotion from the Iron Court interrupted Polemides. A turnkey appeared with the report that a woman claiming to be the prisoner's wife had forced her way into the jailer's station and was, in the most scabrous tongue, demanding entry to him. This could be none but Eunice. “What shall I tell her?”
“That I am otherwise occupied.”
We could hear her oaths, rivaling any boatswain's, as the porter conducted her from the yard.
“The lone privilege of incarceration,” Polemides observed.
“Privacy. “
His concentration had been broken, however. I had other obligations; we cut the session short. Though at this juncture, my grandson, I may profitably interject, to continue Polemides' train, several documents of my own possession.
These are captain's logs of the younger Pericles, commanding Calliope at that time, deposited by him into my care following the trial of the generals of Arginousai. They make a sketch of the early campaign against Lysander.
8 Hecatombaion, Mycale straits. Beleaguering the Pedagogue. [The Athenians called Lysander this, as well as Schoolmaster and Professor.] He will not come out to play.
12 Hec. Blockading Ephesus. Profs 76 won't stick nose out to face our 54.
27 Hec. Raid villages east of Elaeus. 60 taken, mostly women, worth barely a mina. 6 wounded, 4 severely. Pay: 40 days arrears.
3 Metageitnion, Imbros. Chased 2 sq of 6 and 8 all day from Myrina. They drag ashore, flee by night.
11 Meta. Aenus, Thrace. Pillage. 4 wounded. No pay.
14 Meta. More villages. No pay.
2 Boedromion, Samos. Indomitable in. Alcib with 3 sq has been chasing Lys from Aspendus. Still no action.
This was the Spartan navarch's answer to the supreme pitch of readiness possessed then by his enemies. He refused to be brought to battle. He would not fight. Pericles writes his wife, Chione: It is one thing among commanders to grasp Lysander's strategy and steel oneself with patience for its overthrow, and another entirely to sell this to the men. The crews discharge their frustration not on Lysander, but on us.
To his son Xanthippus, already schooling the lad to the commander's trade:
…money remains the naval officer's bane. Nothing, not even a horse-breeding establishment, eats cash like a ship, and none gobbles it more greedily than a trireme. The replacement of a single plank with its mortise-and-tenon joinery requires the vessel to be careened, girdle unshipped, and often a complete section of hull replaced and refitted, a task of such complexity as to require the skills of master ship's carpenters, not to mention the right wood of the right age in the right dimensions, and where can you find any of these when you need them? But the main loot-devourer is the men, who spree every spit the instant they touch it, and who can fault them, breaking their backs in all weathers at constant peril of their lives? Try telling them, after ten days of eighteen-hour pulls, cold chow, no sleep, all of it up and down a hostile shore, that you can't come up with their ante!
The trierarch expends the capital of his credibility every time he puts his men off, which he will covet sorely when next they see action, and if he's rich, which he must be (or so the men believe) or the city would not have lumbered him with command of a vessel of war, then the bitching oarsmen want to know why he doesn't dip into his own gravy now, for their sake, and bill the treasury later. Of course many do, to their ruin. For once a captain has funded his crew from his own purse, he can never say them nay again. He has ceased to be their commander and become their slave.
Foremost among Alcibiades' aptitudes, and the element by which he has held the nearly bankrupt fleet together for so long, is his mastery of extracting treasure from a city or rural district against its will. For believe me, these planters can bury their goods deeper than you can dig to find them, and to put their feet to the fire only doles to the enemy exactly what he wants.
Alcibiades alone can make them cough the loot up on their own.
Contributions. He charms or swindles them or writes his notorious W.C.'s-Warrants of Compensation. The fleet may send no one else to perform this wizardry. They can't pull it off.
This produces a further liability, for Alcibiades must be drawn from command purely to raise money. This eats like acid at morale, but the fleet possesses no alternative and Lysander knows it.
Our commanders, driven by the hard pinch, must make acquaintance of the terrible chore of pillage. Its cardinal mischief is the hazard at which it sets the men. Seamen are equipped neither physically nor constitutionally for land warfare; it unnerves them. Those who are leaders on ship fall back as the column presses inland, while the bullies and blackguards mount to the fore. It is not the oarsman's forte to assault palisades, drive off sheep, or round up for the slave dealers urchins and grandmothers. If a village puts up resistance, the men hunker, sullen, and refuse to attack. If the foe caves in, they run amok.
Atrocities. The officer dreads this before all. For every maiden raped means another hamlet handed on a plate to the foe and, of more immediate peril, the massacred victim's kin roused to vengeance, harrying our passage back to the ship, bronze heads and stones raining on our rear guard, javelin-slinging zealots making rushes on us, horseback, while the very loot we've risked our hides to bag must be dumped willy-nilly as we lighten loads to flee.