Now: what is the bold city?
“The bold city exalts aggrandizement. It cannot remain at home, content with its portion, but must venture abroad to plunder that of others. The bold city imposes empire. Contemptuous of heaven's law, it makes of itself a law unto itself. It sets its ambition above justice and acquits all crimes beneath the imperative of its own power. Need I name this city? She is Athens!”
Such an ovation acclaimed this as to resound throughout the harbor and roll, as thunder, even to the Athenian ships at their stations.
“Look there to sea, brothers, to those squadrons of the foe which flaunt their supposed supremacy at the very portals of our citadel.
They have accounted our inexperience at sea and deliberateness of action, which they deem liabilities and by which they hold to overturn us. But they have not reckoned their own impatience and restiveness, which are their flaws, and fatal. Our deficiencies may be overcome by practice and self-discipline. Theirs are intrinsic, indelible, and irremediable.
“Alcibiades thinks he blockades us, but it is we who blockade him. He thinks he is starving us, but it is we who starve him. We starve him of victory, which he must have, which the demos of Athens must have, because they do not possess courage but only audacity. And if you doubt the truth of these words, my friends, remember Syracuse. The world knows how that game played out.
They err fatally, our enemies, in their conception of the proper relation of man to God. They are wrong and we are right. God is on our side, who fear and reverence Him, not on theirs, who seek to shoulder their way up Olympus and stand as gods themselves.
“Citations interrupted Lysander so repeatedly that he must make interval now at nearly every phrase and wait for subsidence of the uproar.
“Our race, brothers, has set itself to study courage, and we have learned its source. Courage is born of obedience. It is the issue of self-less ness, brotherhood, and love of freedom. Boldness, on the other hand, is spawned of defiance and disrespect; it is the bastard brat of irreverence and outlawry. Boldness honors two things only: novelty and success. It feeds on them and without them dies. We will starve our enemies of these commodities, which to them are bread and air. This is why we train, men. Not to sweat for sweat's sake or row for rowing's sake, but by this practice of cohesion to inculcate andreia, to lade the reservoirs of our hearts with confidence in ourselves, our shipmates, and our commanders.
“Men say I fear to face Alcibiades; they taunt me for want of intrepidity. I do fear him, brothers. This is not cowardice but prudence. Nor would it constitute bravery to confront him ship for ship, but recklessness. For I reckon our enemy's skill and observe that ours is yet unequal. The sagacious commander honors his enemy's might. His skill is to strike not at the foe's strength, but at his weakness, not where and when he is ready, but where he is lax and when he least expects it. The enemy's weakness is time.
Thrasytes is perishable. It is like that fruit, luscious when ripe, which stinks to heaven when it rots.
“Therefore possess your hearts in patience, brothers. I tell you: I am glad we are not ready. Were we, I would seek pretext to hold even longer. For every hour we deprive the foe of victory is another we turn his own strength against him. Alcibiades in his godless vanity flatters himself that he is a second Achilles. Well, if he is, boldness is his heel and, by heaven, we will strike that heel and send him sprawling!”
More acclamation, deafening and unbroken.
“Lastly, men, let me tell you of this Alcibiades, and what I know of him. Brave men tremble at his name, so many are the victories he has brought his nation. Yet I tell you, and stake my life upon it, that he will fade away, by the hand of heaven or his own countrymen's. He must; his own nature calls this fate forth. For what is this man but the supreme embodiment of Athenian thrasytes? His victories have all come from boldness, none from courage. Let him strike us with terror and we will hand him his triumph. But only hold firm, brothers, undaunted by whatever flash and dazzle he throws at us, and he will crack and his nation with him.
“I know this man. He slept under my roof at Lacedaemon when he had fled there, condemned by his own countrymen for outrage against heaven. I loathed him then and despise him now. Before God I swore a mighty oath, that if He brought this man before my prow, I would break his pride and free Greece of his blasphemy and the tyranny of Athens with which he seeks to enslave us all.
“I plant my trust in you, brothers, in our arms and our andreia.
But before all I place it in God. Nor is this wishful thinking but objective observation of heaven's laws, for I perceive these faithworthy as the tides and immutable as the transit of the stars:
“Boldness produces hubris. Hubris calls forth nemesis. And nemesis brings boldness low.
“We are nemesis, brothers. Called into being by heaven's outrage at this would-be tyrant's pride, and at his city's presumption. We are the Almighty's right arm, God's holy agent, and no force between sea and sky may prevail against us.”
XLI
The alarm sounded deep into the third watch. I was dead asleep, in the villa at which Telamon and I had been billeted, which housed a dozen other officers and their women. These staggered now into the street. “Is it a drill?” one bawled from a terrace. The harbor lay a quarter mile below; you could see fire ships pouring in over the chain and, in their flare, Athenian triremes pulling fast in two columns with tow arrows and flame catapults arcing fire in all directions.
We armed and raced down the hill. You know the city, Jason.
Mount Coressus overstands the eminence, her shoulders embracing the sprawl of suburbs spilling back from the port. The great seawall, the Pteron, spans the harbor mouth. Behind its base extend the commercial wharves, the Emporium, and beyond these the Toll, the inner fortifications, and the naval bastion, Huntress'
Hood. The river Cayster debouches, dense with silt, between the temple of the Amazons and the great square of the Artemisium, with the dredging works and the marsh on the south side, the cavalry grounds, and more suburbs outside the walls. These are all on hills and were all ablaze.
It was clear to any who understood Alcibiades' frame that this assault was his answer to Lysander's speech and a leap upon the main chance of Prince Cyrus' presence on-site. Given the audacity of his generalship, he could have landed every regiment he had or even called in his Thracians, heaven help all who must face them. “I'm not too keen on this,” I shouted to Telamon amid the waterfront crush, meaning I was in no mood to go epitaph-hunting for either side. “Let's find a rat hole and sit this son of a whore out.”
We cracked into a warehouse adjacent the Armorers' Lane. You could see the fire ships brilliant as daylight now; crewless galleys stacked with pitch and blazing like Tartarus. I had never experienced an attack of Alcibiades from the receiving end. It struck like a terror show of shock and thunder, and it was pasting the piss out of the Peloponnesians. Twelve-oared longboats towed their incendiary trailers at a furious clip, sidescreens up to shield the oarsmen from the missile fire of the defenders, so far conspicuous only by its absence. A jig of Spartan six-stickers hauled to intercept the lead towboat. We could see the attacker dump her line; two enemy sixes struck her just as her fire ship, loosed now, ploughed into the roadstead where a dozen Spartan triremes rode at anchor. The impact snapped the incendiary's booms; they crashed thunderously, dumping their cargo of pitch and sulphur onto the decks of the foe.