Alcibiades was guilty of these, my mate observed, and of another violation of heaven's law.
Alcibiades perceived war as a means. In truth it was an end.
Where our commander claimed to honor only Necessity, Telamon served a divinity more primordial.
“Her name is Eris. Strife. All things are brought forth through Strife, my friend, even ourselves torn from our mothers' wombs.
Look there to those hawks on the hunt; they serve her, as even these weeds at our feet, whose roots duel beneath the earth for each square fist of dirt.
“Strife is life's oldest and most holy fundament. You tease me, my friend, that I have not aged. If this be true, it arises of obedience to her, this dame at once ancient as earth and youthful as the morrow's dawn.”
I smiled. “Do you know how many times I have heard this sermon?”
“Yet still you do not learn.”
War waged for advantage yields only ruin. Yet one may not disown war, which abides as constant as the seasons and eternal as the tides.
“What world is it you seek, Pommo, that is 'better' than this? Do you imagine like Alcibiades that you, or Athens, may elevate yourselves or anyone to some loftier sphere? This world is the only one that exists. Learn its laws and obey them. This is true philosophy.”
Perhaps to him. Yet I was not ready to don the perennial soldier's kit and enlist, beyond hope, in Strife's battalions. I stayed.
How my aunt despised me! We worked the lambing together, barefoot in aprons. “Don't credit yourself with preserving us. We would all be here just the same, absent your intercession.”
“Thank you, dear.”
At table she had assumed the patriarchy, abdicated by myself, and employed this pulpit to decant at full strength for the innocents' edification love of freedom and enmity of tyranny. I knew how desperate her patriot's heart had grown when one day from her harangue arose the name Alcibiades. “By the Holy Twain, none remains but he, possessed of the bowels to resuscitate the state.”
In the country markets one overheard kindred sentiments.
Gravers inquired of merchants from the city, did Alcibiades yet live? Had we driven him, by our repudiation, apart from Athens' cause forever?
To me this was madness. He had gone over to the Persian now.
God knows what robes he swathed himself in and what fictions he wove to preserve his hide. Let Athens, like her waste and weary lands, set her own store to order. Let it rest! Let him!
I trekked in to the port one day with my nephew and a vintner of the overhill farm. Cresting the track at Butadae, one could see the city walls, untouched and imposing as ever. Then you made the turn above the Academy, where the Carriage Road and the Northern Wall conjoined.
There was nothing left of it.
The quarter west of Melite had been leveled to the distance of a furlong. We passed Maroneia, the played-out silver mines, where these bricks and stones had been dumped. The rubble covered acres, deep enough to bury a fleet, which in the truest sense it had.
When we passed the Legs themselves, the walls that had linked city to port, you could see from one side to the other, so utterly had the fortifications been obliterated. Far gone as I thought I was, this sight chilled my heart. My companion, the vintner, wept.
My aunt Daphne died on the twenty-third of Boedromion, final day of the Mysteries.
My son had come out, as on several prior occasions, run off from Eunice. I must restore him to her, but let him stay for now. He seconded me at the old dame's obsequies. We sang the Hymn for the Fallen, the first time in our family for a woman. She had earned it.
Some days later a party of deputies from the city appeared at Road's Turn. I was coming in from the fields and saw them before they saw me. Should I run? What good would it do? They took me into town to an abandoned private home two blocks off the Sacred Way. Windows had been bricked, all furnishings removed. Where the hearth had stood, the stone squatted dark with blood.
I was led into a back room. There were other men, armed, and a plank desk, behind which sat two, unknown to me, but by whose demeanor I recognized as agents of the Thirty.
“Your name has come up on a list,” the taller asserted.
“Which list?”
He shrugged.
The shorter passed two documents across, inquiring which I wished him to sign. The first was my death certificate, the second a warrant of Athenian citizenship for my son and daughter.
“We have a job we want you to do.”
Before any spoke, I knew what it was.
“I call him friend,” I declared, “and the last hope of our country.”
A sound came from the side door; I rounded toward it. Telamon filled the frame to the lintel, in his kit of war. I turned back to the agents.
“That is why,” the taller spoke, “you must kill him.”
Alcibiades had fled Thrace by sea to Phocaea, heading east into the Empire. That country is vast but roads are few; it is no chore to track a man once on his trail. From Smyrna one makes Sardis in two days; three more carry him to the Lydian city of Cydrara and another to Colossae and Anaua in Phrygia.
Roadhouses, called “ordinaries,” terminate each trek. Every fifth day is an inn, where it is the custom of the country to layover two nights to rest one's stock. Other troopers gave report of him. He traveled with his mistress Timandra and a party of Mysian mercenaries, fewer than five, serving as bodyguards.
Others hunted him as well. Darius of Persia had deceased that spring, succeeded on the throne by his son Artaxerxes. Alcibiades, aware that the Thirty at Athens were applying pressure to Lysander to procure their countryman's end, had approached the satrap Pharnabazus, against whom he had won many victories but to whom now he proposed friendship. He wished, Alcibiades did, to offer his services to the throne of Persia and had intelligence to impart concerning certain perils, namely Prince Cyrus, abetted by Lysander, who, no longer vexed by Athens, would turn about and make his own run for the Crown. Alcibiades could be of great use to the king in this campaign and, he assured Pharnabazus, advance the satrap's standing as well. Pharnabazus, dazzled by his new friend, provided an escort and sent him on to the Interior. It was then that envoys arrived from Sparta. These informed the Persian that if he wished to avoid incurring Lysander's wrath, not to say full-scale war, he would rethink the hospitality he had vouchsafed to the only man living who constituted a threat to Spartan hegemony in Greece. Pharnabazus did not need to hear music to know when to dance. He dispatched riders to overhaul and assassinate Alcibiades. Alcibiades evaded these, slaying several.
His Mysians vanished and so did he.
A second pursuit party was organized at Dascylium under Susamithres and Magaeus, Pharnabazus' deputies and kinsmen. It was to this posse that Telamon and I became attached. This was at Callatebus. Endius accompanied this cohort, with two other Peers of Sparta, under orders of Lysander to confirm the kill.
Reports put Alcibiades on the track to Celaenae. The party pushed to Muker and the Stone Mounds, beneath which the Phoenix is said to have deposited two eggs, to hatch on that day when the race of men tames its unpacific heart. Privateers scoured the trace. The price on Alcibiades' head, one told us, was ten thousand darics; another quoted a hundred thousand. Between Canae and Utresh are no towns, only a staging area, a coop, called the Tailings. At this site we encountered five brothers of the Odrysians, likewise in pursuit of Alcibiades. My horse had developed an abscess and was suffering terribly; one of these brothers possessed skill with the lancet; he performed the veterinary's service and would take no money. I spoke aside with him.
Alcibiades had dishonored the brothers' sister; the maid had taken her life. Such an outrage is called in the Thracian tongue atame; it may be requited only by blood. The brothers claimed to have scoured the dozen overnights to the east; their prey, they swore, was behind us; we had overrun him. They would spur in that direction; their youngest in fact made off that night. Our guides informed us that no Odrysian may exact blood vengeance, inatame, absent his prince's permit, in this case Seuthes'.