ALCIBIADES belonged to one of the leading family clans in Athens, that of the Alcmaeonidae. He was born about the year 450 B.C. His father was killed fighting against the Boeotians at Coronea when the boy was a child of three or four years. Pericles, of the same clan, became his guardian, and when he grew to young manhood Socrates the philosopher was his friend.
He was a handsome, turbulent, and self-willed boy, an extravagant, pleasure-loving, and athletic youth. The tales told about his younger days are many, though Thucydides will not admit him to his narrative until he is thirty years of age just after the Peace of Nicias, when he was “influential by reason of his noble birth, although he would have been thought too young for politics in any other city”.{488} But long before this, as boy and youth, he had been well known in the streets of Athens, and later generations treasured up the stories of the wilful, impetuous boy and the reckless, generous young aristocrat.
One day as a child he was playing at dice with other boys in the street. A heavy dray came up and he called to the driver to stop. The man drove right on and the other boys scattered. Alcibiades flung himself flat on the ground in the face of the waggon. “Go ahead then,” he cried, “drive on.” The man pulled his team hard back just in time, as the boy’s scared playmates ran forward shouting.
Another day he was wrestling with a comrade and getting the worst of the match. To prevent his being thrown, in a fury he bit the other boy’s hand, who promptly released his grasp. “You bite”, he said angrily, “like a woman.” “No,” said Alcibiades, “like a lion.”
At school he was obedient to all his other teachers, but he flatly refused when his music-master set him to learn the flute. “It isn’t fit for a gentleman,” he protested. “Look at a fellow’s grimaces playing the flute. His own chums wouldn’t recognise him. The harp is quite another matter. How can you talk, too, when you are flute-playing? Leave flutes to Theban boys. They can’t talk if they want to.” The boy was a hero among his school-fellows, and flute-playing promptly went out of fashion.
He had a magnificent dog which had cost a small fortune. One day the animal was seen running about the streets with its tail docked. “Everyone is cursing you because of the dog,” his comrades told him. “Just what I wanted,” he answered laughing. “Let them jabber about this, and so not have anything worse to say about me.”
Another day when he was a youth he caught sight of a rich, noble, and respected old citizen, Hipponicus by name, who was walking in the way. “You dare not,” said his comrades, when he whispered to them, pointing across the street. The lad strolled laughing up to his elder and smote him a buffet, in pure freakish delight. Athens rang with the insult. Everyone was naturally furious. Early next morning there came a knock at Hipponicus’ door. The lad came in, flung his robe off, and, presenting his naked body, “Now then, flog away!” he cried. The old noble forgave him on the spot, and presently gave him his daughter for wife.
Later on she quarrelled with her husband and came indignantly herself, as the law bade, to claim a divorce. As she entered the magistrate’s court Alcibiades swooped down on her and carried her off in his arms through the crowded market-place home. And they lived happily ever afterwards, that is until her death, “which soon befell”.{489}
His wealth was very great: his expenditure enormous. At the “International Games” at Olympia, probably those of 416 B.C.,{490} he entered as many as seven chariots, winning three prizes. Even Thucydides tells this event, for it was a political matter of some consequence. Nicias himself taunted him publicly with his love of horse-racing, his magnificent stud, his passion for extravagant display. “Youngsters of this stamp”, he cried, “impoverish themselves and harm the State.” “See what I did,” Alcibiades retorted hotly. “I sent into the arena seven chariots—no other private man ever did the like. I won the first, second, and fourth prizes—with what result? I, an Athenian, was my city’s representative. Men came to Olympia believing her exhausted by the war. They were amazed and believed us more powerful than even we are, when they saw what one single man could do. My display was an honour to myself, and to my forefathers, yes, but also it was a solid gain to my country. Is there not some use in the folly of a man who at his own cost benefits not himself alone but also the State?” Victory at Olympia in the curious world of ancient Greece meant much, not to the victor only, but also and always to the victor’s city. Nicias was sorely worsted in the argument.{491}
Ambition, it is said, was Alcibiades’ master passion. He dazzled the imagination of his fellow-citizens and delighted their eyes. Then the sober burghers went home and gravely shook their heads. Such a brilliant aristocrat was not to be trusted. “And it was this suspicion”, says Thucydides plainly, “which later on did more than anything else to cast the city down. His talents as a military commander were unrivalled. But men disliked his wild self-indulgence; they thought he was aiming at a tyranny. Because they objected on moral grounds to his private life, they handed over the command to others; and so they speedily shipwrecked the city.”{492}
“They”, and not “he”. For Alcibiades wished to be first in the democracy. Once at least, in 408 B.C.,{493} possibly twice, he had the chance of “seizing the tyranny” and ruling Athens with more than the glory of a Sicilian or Florentine despot. Of set choice he let the opportunity go by. He was attacked by parties and by rival politicians both on right and left. Nicias and the respectable Conservatives loathed and dreaded him, and hated his policy of opposition in every way and always to Sparta. The extreme Radical “Left” and its jealous leaders were far more crafty and malignant foes to him. What room was there in the State for a good honest demagogue, a manual worker, a labour leader, a self-made man, when this glorious and wealthy aristocrat proved himself the finest orator and the best general in the entire city? Then there were deadly family feuds, men of rival clans, with traditions of hatred for the Alcmaeonidae handed resentfully down from father to son. This was the treacherous turbulent sea over which Alcibiades must sail gallantly in his quest for leadership. And it engulfed him, and, with him, his city sank.
The “comic poets” of his day treated him with curious reserve, with the one exception, it seems, of Eupolis, who devoted an entire comedy, the Baptai (Fops), to him and his evil life. Fate has dealt hardly with Eupolis, and his comedy is lost.{494} But apart from Eupolis, the playwrights contented themselves with obvious and harmless jests concerning Alcibiades’ manners and morals, poking special fun at his famous and attractive lisp. Yet, as a clever French writer remarks,{495} “no man might seem less in harmony with the Conservative temper”, and it was this temper which animated the “Comic dramatists” of Athens. His political enemies in ancient times and many a writer since have credited him with a passion for intrigue and an undying love for crooked ways. Of all his critics it is the English historian Grote who discharges the heaviest artillery against him and never misses an opportunity for onslaught. For on no other terms can the Englishman hope to save his pet Athenian democracy from conviction for folly, ingratitude, and injustice. Grote, whose defence of a Cleon, even of a Cleophon, is masterly, cannot restrain himself when he comes to mention a greater man. The historian’s sense of fairness, even of the value of evidence, leaps overboard at once.{496}
Alcibiades in fact is a type of character than which no other could be more abhorrent to the sober and moral Radical Parliamentarian of the early Victorian era. But others will admit that despite his reckless ways and his sins against the State, which were many, Alcibiades did service to his city equalled by no other man since the death of Pericles, and would yet have brought her victorious out of the furnace of the war, had he been permitted by his political enemies. His service was but ill requited. Party Faction was the cause of the “fall of Athens”. This is the final and mature judgment of Thucydides himself.{497} The whole career of Alcibiades is its explanation.
When the war broke out Alcibiades, then some twenty years of age, in spite of all his love of racing, games, and pleasure, went at once to the front. He was in the trenches outside Potidaea, where he was severely wounded. At Delium he served in the cavalry. It was the Peace of Nicias which first brought him to the fore as a politician.
He utterly mistrusted the peace, and he hated Sparta with a deadly hatred. Men said this was due to pique. There had been old close official ties of friendship between his family and the Spartans which his grandfather had renounced. The grandson hoped to renew these in time, when peace came, and with this object in view had paid much kindly attention to the unlucky Spartan captives at Athens, brought there from Sphacteria. But in the peace negotiations the Spartan Government had passed him completely by and chosen rather to employ the more helpful and sincere good offices of the older and more influential Nicias. Alcibiades, they said, was too young. In a fit of temper, and envious of Nicias, Alcibiades flung himself into the opposite camp.{498}
But to personal motives there was added real political insight, when once the peace was made. Alcibiades was convinced from the first that it could never last. Everything speedily proved him only too likely to be right. Nicias the peacemaker would not and could not believe it. The hostility and bad faith of the Peloponnesian States became every day more manifest. Nicias shut his eyes to facts. Alcibiades was clear-sighted.
War was bound to come again. What then could Athens do? The young statesman saw at once that in an alliance with Argos, now at last free to act, lay such a weapon against Sparta both of offence and of defence as his city had not had to wield for thirty years. Cleon himself had bequeathed the idea to him. Already in 425 B.C. that statesman had paid a visit to Argos, seeking to revive that city’s ancient friendship with Athens, exploring tentatively the chances of an alliance when her peace with Sparta should, four years later, expire.{499} Now Alcibiades saw that the chance at last was come. What a chance it was! With an Argive army waiting on flank of the line of march no Spartan army dared advance to cross the Isthmus of Corinth into Attica. And with stout allies to help them the Argives might be more than a match for even the Spartans in the field. Attica would be untouched and Sparta compelled to fight for her very existence at home. Alliance with Argos was Athens’ great new hope. If war was bound to come again, Alcibiades’ “Argive policy” was a masterpiece alike of statesmanship and of strategy.
He secured the alliance by a finesse which has been hotly and unreasonably denounced as a “discreditable trick”. Thucydides and Plutarch between them tell the whole story at great length.{500} All was on the point of being lost. Sparta’s alliance with Boeotia had terrified Argos, who felt herself isolated. Very reluctantly she herself opened negotiations with Sparta. Then Alcibiades sent privately to her, urging her to apply to Athens. “Let Argive envoys come,” he wrote, “with others from Mantinea and Elis (States which then were evilly disposed to Sparta) and invite Athens to enter their joint alliance. Now is the time. I will do my utmost to help.” The Argives were delighted. Though their own ambassadors were at Sparta at the moment, they sent others to Athens to negotiate an alliance.
But with them came three Spartan envoys, sent off in hot haste and some consternation by the Spartan Government. Argos was every bit as valuable to Sparta, if it came again to war, as she was to Athens, and for exactly the same strategical reasons. The Spartan envoys came as plenipotentiaries, with full powers to treat concerning the complaints about the peace and its carrying-out which the Athenians were, very justly, making. On their arrival they came before the Council and told this to the Councillors. Alcibiades was alarmed. If they told this also to the Athenian people in Assembly next day, there was an end of all his own hopes and plans. The peace-party of Nicias and his friends was still all powerful. The relief from war was still a recent blessing. Who in Athens would not welcome a real chance of settling all outstanding differences between Sparta and Athens once and for all?
Alcibiades invited the three envoys to visit him that evening. He was an important statesman and they came. He warned them as a sincere friend not to be precipitate. Sparta wanted Pylos back particularly, he understood. Let them trust him to persuade the people himself. They were strange to Athens, he believed. They would find the Assembly a very different proposition from the Council. It was altogether fitting and very wise of them to have told the Council of their powers. The Council was always candid itself and liked others to be candid. But the Assembly! He was bound to say that the Assembly was both proud and very grasping. If his friends from Sparta just blurted out that they had full powers, what kind of a bargain could they possibly hope to make? He, at least, he regretted to say, would feel bound in this case openly to oppose them, and he had some small influence with the people. Far better for them to hold their tongues for a while and trust him, their very good friend, to arrange things quietly for them.
The three Spartans, men of an almost incredible simplicity, fell into the trap. They believed in the Athenian politician’s promise to assist them, which, moreover, he obligingly confirmed solemnly by an oath, and they went home to bed. Poor unlettered men, they knew nothing of Euripides the poet and his famous tragic line in defence of lying with which he shocked the moral sense of the entire Greek world from Aristophanes’ day to that of Origen:
“‘Twas but my tongue, ‘twas not my mind that swore.”
Next day they came into the Assembly, that huge concourse of people. Alcibiades rose at once. “Had their friends from Sparta come with full powers to treat?” he asked sweetly.
“No, not full powers,” they replied.
Alcibiades sprang to his feet.
“This then was Spartan honesty,” he stormed, “this was Spartan good faith. Prevaricators, shufflers—saying one thing one day, and its opposite the next! Rotten in action, rotten in speech! Who could have dealings with such men?”
The torrent of his angry eloquence beat about the envoys’ ears. They were dazed and stunned by his furious vituperation. The Councillors, all of them, were equally and more honestly wrathful. Nicias sat still, dismayed, perplexed, confounded. The people rose in their fury.
“Have in the Argives!” they cried.
The President rose to take the final vote upon the proposal of alliance with Argos. Suddenly there was an earthquake.
The Assembly at once broke up with some rapidity and hurried off home. Nicias had a welcome respite. Alcibiades was chagrined. He had not calculated on an earthquake. All was not lost. No man at least would believe the three Spartans again, whatever they said. But perhaps he ought not actually to have taken that oath.
Everything indeed was gained. Next day the Assembly met again. Nicias induced the people to postpone the question of the Argive alliance and to send him with others on an embassage to Sparta, to present their reasonable and irreducible demands, chief of them that Sparta must renounce her alliance with Boeotia, unless Boeotia would herself come into the general peace. Nicias failed hopelessly in his mission. On his return, Alcibiades proudly introduced the envoys from Argos. This time there was no earthquake, and in July 420 B.C. the Quadruple Alliance of Athens, Argos, Elis, and Mantinea was very solemnly concluded. Alcibiades’ trick had secured the delay necessary. But the Quadruple Alliance was in fact due to the imperative needs of the allies in face of Sparta’s increasing unfriendliness. Even the most laborious and heavy of all the many German historians of Greece, Georg Busolt, is exhilarated into calling “Der Demokratische Vierbund” a “brilliant example of Alcibiades’ political talent”.{501}
Unlike certain predecessors, this Alliance was, in fact, a genuine one, based on common sentiment as well as fortified by a common danger. In it political creed was stronger than the old familiar tie of blood. Dorian Argos, Arcadian Mantinea, Dorian Elis, Ionian Athens, all were linked together by their firm belief in the principles of democracy. Two elements of weakness there were in it none the less. The four allies had different objects in view. Elis was concerned with a border town, Lepreon, whose independence Sparta was upholding.{502} Mantinea, as always, was more than ever hopeful of using the alliance to crush her southern neighbour Tegea. Theirs is the most petty and the most persistent feud in the whole of Greece. One other risk remained. One party in Athens had concluded the alliance with Argos and elected its champion Alcibiades as general for the coming year, 419 B.C. But what guarantee was there against Nicias regaining his old position in the politics of that most fickle and light-witted of all Greek peoples, the Athenians? A change of politics at Athens, and not all the careful provisions of a binding covenant will be a guard against lukewarmness and slackness in carrying out its terms, if Nicias grasps the helm of State again.
The storm took long to gather. Throughout the year 419 B.C. there was bickering, there was quarrelling in plenty, but little indeed of interest. Alcibiades spent a summer in Achaea, wall-building at Patrae. Argos took the field and attacked Epidaurus. Did she hold this town, her Athenian allies could reach her direct by way of Aegina and Epidaurus and avoid a long sea voyage round Scyllaeum promontory and up the Argolic Gulf. Epidaurus held out stoutly, and presently the Spartans threw a small garrison into the town by sea. Athens retaliated by replacing the helot garrison at Pylos. Then there was marching and countermarching of armies such as would have delighted the Duke of York. The warrior King of Sparta, Agis, was less well pleased. Twice he led his own Spartan army to his northern frontier. Twice the omens there forbade him to cross it, and he had to be content with a route march back home again. With omens and sacred months and trouble about water-meadows the year ran its inglorious course.{503} Everything was slowly working up towards war on a greater scale. If that war, when it came, had its place in the Peloponnese, well-nigh at Sparta’s very doors, and no longer in the distant and more comfortable north, Sparta owed this to one man’s statecraft and insight only. And just in the year when Alcibiades’ new Argive policy is to be put to the final and conclusive arbitrament of arms he is not re-elected general at Athens. Such was the sense of the popular electorate in that the most stupid as the most brilliant of democracies.
In the summer of 418 B.C. the armies of the Peloponnesian Confederacy were mustered to relieve the pressure on Epidaurus by a great combined attack on the city of Argos. The commander-in-chief was the King of Sparta, Agis, son of Archidamus. The events of the summer are to reveal him both as a strategist and as a tactician of the very first rank in all the annals of Greek warfare. Thucydides, who may have drawn his information from Spartan sources jealous of the king, fails to do him justice.
The available armies upon the Peloponnesian side consisted of two widely separated forces. The Southern army under direct command of Agis consisted of Spartans (4200 hoplites), men of Tegea (1500 hoplites), Maenalians, and Heraeans, besides numerous helots and other light-armed troops. Its total strength in hoplites may be set at about 8000 men.
The Northern army must have numbered as many as 12,000 hoplites, contributed by the Boeotians (5000 hoplites), Corinthians (2000 hoplites), and the troops of Phlius, Epidaurus, Megara, Sicyon, and Pellene. The Boeotians also sent 5000 light-armed and 1000 cavalry and mounted infantry. To oppose these two armies the Allies could hardly muster more than 12,000 hoplites, of whom Elis contributed 3000, Mantinea perhaps as many, and the Argives the bulk of the remainder.{505} Of cavalry they had none. For these and for additions to their hoplite strength they depended on Athens. In actual fact, in this the first of the two campaigns of the year there was not one single Athenian soldier of any description who took part.
Agis, therefore, in his first campaign enjoyed a very large numerical superiority of available troops. His difficulty was that the united force of the Allies lay directly between his two armies. His own Southern army was concentrated at Sparta, the Northern army at Phlius. Argos, his objective, lay between. His first strategical problem was that of concentration.
He marched out of Sparta northwards, intending to join the Northern army at Phlius. He himself was heavily outnumbered by the enemy until he could effect this juncture.
The direct route from Sparta to Phlius ran by Caryae, Tegea, and Mantinea. This way was blocked by Mantinea. The sole alternative was the circuitous route to the west, by Belmina, the site of the later city of Megalopolis, Methydrion, Orchomenus (which at the moment was friendly to Sparta), and Oligyrton. Agis directed his march by this route.
The first and more pressing duty of the Argives was to intercept this march and prevent the Southern army joining the Northern army at Phlius. The latter was still in process of mobilisation and could be neglected. It clearly also was impossible for the Argives to march against Phlius without exposing both their city and their communications to attack by the Southern army in their absence. They also outnumbered the Southern army. The five Argive generals at once chose the obvious and the correct strategy. They marched out westwards from Argos with their whole army and took up a strong position at Methydrion on rising ground across the line of Agis’ advance. So they blocked his passage, and protected also both Mantinea and Argos itself. Agis could not swerve eastwards against either city without exposing his smaller army at once to isolation and attack.
The king had not the least intention of doing anything so foolish. He arrived at Methydrion and occupied the rising slope on the opposite side of the depression which separated him from the opposing army. The latter prepared for battle on the following day.
The morning came. There was neither life nor sound on the opposite hillside. Agis had quietly and comfortably marched off in the night while the enemy sentinels, it must be supposed, dozed, and, slipping unobserved round their position, the king was out of sight and beyond pursuit when day dawned. The Argives sadly marched off home to Argos again. Agis pursued his journey and duly arrived at Phlius. He had won a most notable strategical victory without losing a man. This use of night marching is commendable. Another Spartan general, Eurylochus in the north-west, had also employed it in exactly the same way to join his Ambraciot allies at Olpae in face of an enemy force blocking the way. The carelessness of the Argive watch defies language fitly to describe it.{506} The whole strategical character of the campaign was changed at once, immeasurably to the advantage of Agis.
Why, it might be asked, did not the Argives march promptly upon unwalled Sparta in the absence from that city of its king and army?
This is indeed a brave idea. But Sparta was probably not wholly denuded of troops, and the defence of Argos might also reasonably seem to have the prior claim. In fact, however, the Greek was not yet born who should indulge the dream of bearding the lion in its den.
Agis, now at Phlius, disposed of a powerful army of 20,000 heavy infantry, 5000 cavalry, and plentiful light-armed. The hostile city and its weaker defending army of some 12,000 hoplites, without cavalry, lay 16 or 17 miles away over the mountains. The king commanded what Thucydides calls “a finer Hellenic army than any seen hitherto”.{507} The strategical initiative had passed completely into his hands.
* * * * *
The watershed of the Asopus and Inachus rivers, a rough mountain country, which separated Phlius and the plain of Argos, was penetrated by one road only which was suitable for cavalry. This was the Treton Pass, which lay south of the hamlet of Nemea and came down to the plain by the site of Mycenae. The Argive generals marched northwards from their city to Nemea. They expected a frontal attack and had every prospect of repulsing it in their chosen position across the main road.
There was, however, another and even more direct route from Phlius which joined the main road at Mycenae. This was the Kelussa Pass, a short distance to the west of the Treton Pass. The Argives must have been well aware of its existence, and the position chosen for their army at Nemea instead of near Mycenae, where both approaches converge and join, debouching from the hills, is somewhat inexplicable. A modern general defending Argos against attack from the north could hardly do otherwise than make Mycenae his headquarters, and content himself with throwing a strong advance guard forward to Nemea. The Kelussa Pass, however, seems to have been difficult going and not easy for a large army. The Argives may have relied on Agis doing the obvious thing, on the known presence of cavalry in the enemy army, which cavalry must use the Treton Pass, and on being so near to Mycenae that they could at once fall back in time to save themselves should they be threatened from the Kelussa Pass. Whatever their reasons, out they marched with their army and blocked the road at Nemea.{508}
All was curiously quiet in their front. At daybreak a scout came hurrying. There was a Spartan army, he reported breathlessly, down on the Argive plain ravaging Saminthus, between themselves and the city. Agis had outwitted them again.
At Phlius he had learnt of a third way over the hills, still more to the west. This was but a rough bridle track by way of a village called Orneae, but it turned the hostile position even at Mycenae completely, leading down the Inachus valley into the Argive plain to the north-west of the city. The king resolved so to use it with a portion of his force as to cut off the enemy army completely and trap it between his armies. For this purpose another march by night was necessary.
He divided his forces into three columns. The right, his 8000 best troops from Sparta, Arcadia, and Epidaurus, was to pursue the westernmost track and reach the Argive plain by daybreak. The left, the 7000 men of Boeotia, Sicyon, and Megara, with all the cavalry, was to advance up the Treton Pass, some hours after the departure of the flanking column; and the centre, numerically the weakest, about 5000 men from Corinth, Pellene, and Phlius, was to follow the Kelussa Pass marching simultaneously with the left column. If the Argive army remained at Nemea it was trapped beyond all saving. If it retired southwards under pressure of the Boeotian advance, it would emerge upon the plain to find the right hand column in position between itself and Argos, and with the two other armies of the left and centre pressing hard upon its heels, with the many squadrons of the Boeotian horse scouring the plain to the east and cutting off its last hope of escape in this direction. The Argives would then be veritably “caught in the middle”.
It was a brilliant piece of strategy. But it involved certain risks, the night march and the difficulty of accurate timing. Yet such a strategy has won notable triumphs in the history of war.
The timed meeting upon the actual battlefield of armies converging to it by different routes to fight in co-operation, this is a famous stratagem of war. It is also one of the most hazardous.
So Wellington made his stand upon the low ridge of Waterloo, confident all through the hours of desperate battle that Blücher, the “indomitable old marshal”, would yet strike in upon his left in time to save the day.{509}
So fifty years later, on July 3, 1866, two Prussian armies attacked the Austrians on the heights to the west of the Elbe at Königgrätz. The assailants made no progress until, as planned, the Second Prussian army of the Crown Prince, marching by its different route, fell upon the right flank and right rear of the enemy at mid-day, and the Austrians fled.
In 418 B.C. the right hand column had the longest march, the hardest way to find, and the most perilous position to occupy when the march was done. Agis placed himself at its head, and the column disappeared in the darkness of the night. Night marching in a difficult country is notoriously slow. The distance was not far short of 20 miles. Yet it was duly in position “ravaging Saminthus” by daybreak. Probably no marching feat in the whole of the great war surpasses this achievement of the Spartan soldier and his king.
On receiving this information, the Argive army evacuated Nemea instantly and marched at full speed southwards. Its right flank on leaving the hills above Mycenae came into contact with the enemy’s centre column, as it emerged from the Kelussa Pass. The Argives brushed this aside without great loss, and, continuing their retreat, came out upon the plain and drew up in order of battle facing Agis and his 8000 men. The king’s centre column had obeyed orders. But it was not strong enough to do more than worry the flank of the enemy as he retired.
Overleaf is shown the position of the armies as planned by Agis that morning.
But now the story becomes puzzling, and Thucydides gives us no kind of a solution of its puzzles.
The first difficulty is that the Argive army was delighted with its own position. They had “cut off the Spartans in their own country and close to the city of Argos”.{510}
Obviously Agis and his 8000 were between the Argive 12,000 and the hostile city of Argos. But there were no troops in the city. And what of the Argive rear and left flank as it faced him? What in the situation here could delight the Argives?
The second difficulty is Agis’ own action. Just before the signal for battle was given, two men came from the Argive army and asked him for an interview. One was Thrasyllus, one of the five Argive generals, and the other was the official friend and representative of Sparta in Argos. They came entirely on their own initiative to suggest that both armies should be “called off”, and to offer arbitration, a treaty, peace. Then Agis accepted the offer, after consulting one of the two Spartan ephors who were with him. He concluded a four months’ truce on the spot and marched his army away. The Argives then themselves went home. The end of all this elaborate manœuvring was—no battle at all.
The greatest indignation against the commanders was expressed, and on both sides. Thrasyllus was stoned by his own troops before they entered Argos. He saved his life by taking refuge at an altar, but his property was confiscated. Agis’ soldiers were better disciplined, but there was angry grumbling in the ranks as he marched them off. And at Sparta, when the news came presently that the Allies had taken Orchomenus, the wrath of the Government with the king could hardly be restrained within measurable limits. “In a fit of passion quite unlike the Spartan character they all but resolved to raze his house and fine him a hundred thousand drachmae.” In the end, on his humbly promising atonement in the future, they contented themselves with passing a quite unprecedented law, that ten counsellors should be appointed whose consent he must in future obtain before he could lead the army from the city on any expedition.
“Such an opportunity for destroying the enemy had never occurred before.” Exactly the same view was taken on both sides, by both armies, and by both States.{511}
Why, when everything has gone “according to plan”, does Agis withdraw and not fight?
The German Busolt wrestles manfully with the problem on more than one occasion. The Athenians were expected every moment, he first suggests. Had they arrived, Agis’ peril would have been great.{512}
Quite obviously they had not arrived. Equally obviously they arrived (in miserable numbers) soon after, but not in time for battle, probably not on the day when there should have been the battle. Nor is there any hint that the Argives expected their coming. If this was expected, it would be but an inducement the more for Agis to fight at once before they came.
So Busolt has to fall back on a theory of “political motives”. Sparta had friends in Argos. “To make terms after a display of strength would encourage this party and win Argos over peaceably to the Spartan side.”{513}
This was a curious method of encouragement, to display your strength by refusing battle when you possess every advantage in numbers and occupy a position selected by yourself. The actual result was to leave the Argives with the rooted conviction that if their generals had not been fools or worse their troops would have annihilated the enemy.
The Cambridge historian remarks sagely that “Agis considered his position precarious”.{514} This is not over helpful. Why did he ever choose to occupy that position if, at the last moment, he was to discover it precarious? And how was it precarious?
There is surely just one solution of all these puzzles, namely, that things had not gone “according to plan”. Agis and his column had reached the plain. The centre column had marched and come into touch with the enemy. But the left column on which everything depended was not there. The Boeotians had failed him. No horse or foot pursued up the Treton pass. On the next page is shown the actual position on the morning.
ALCIBIADES
Just as General French and his 1000 gallant weary horse on the hill above Paardeberg looked anxiously westward all those interminable hours of the February morning in 1900—would the dust cloud never show the coming of the infantry to close the passage of the drift to Cronje’s 4000?—so Agis must have looked northward for his enclosing columns and his cavalry brigade and seen—nothing, save perhaps a weak centre clinging somewhat timorously to the hills. Where was the lost column? His own troops expected their coming and demanded battle, partly in the expectation, partly because Spartans would never admit any wisdom in retreat. The king was not so confident. The lost column had the easiest route, and all the cavalry. They had disobeyed orders? They never meant to come? They were delaying fatally at Nemea? The Athenians were threatening their rear, holding them back? Something untoward had happened at the last moment. They were not coming at all!
What now was his own position? He found himself isolated between an exultant enemy (who had three men to every two of his) and a hostile city some three miles or so in his rear, and in a hostile countryside, with his men weary after a long night march and scanty time for food. Indeed his position was precarious. It were better to extricate his men by agreement—so luckily offered him—without loss. Himself would bear every consequence. He would not run the risk of destroying Sparta’s only army. No wonder the Argive troops, seeing nothing, knowing nothing of any peril of consequence in the hills behind them, stoned their craven general.
Agis cannot openly blame the Boeotians at Sparta later. They are far too indispensable as allies to offend them by reproaches.{515} He will atone for a failure by fighting when he has the chance again. But the failure is not that of a faulty strategy nor of cowardice in the face of the enemy. Agis’ failure was in trusting too much, in a delicate and complicated strategy, to the intelligence and prompt obedience of his divisional commanders. Had he himself remained at Phlius’ headquarters to see his orders executed to the letter, all might have gone well. But the place of a Spartan king is with the Spartan troops and in the position of the greatest danger. In his absence—who are the Spartans that Boeotians shall obey them without question?
Agis displayed a strategical ability, a fertility of resource, a willingness to take risks, which are rare in Greek history. His tools broke in his hands. He has learnt his lesson. Henceforward he must go straight for his foe. Can he, by tactical skill, accomplish what his strategical genius has not been permitted, by disobedience or stupidity, to perform?
Soon after Agis had withdrawn his armies from the district, there arrived at Argos 1300 Athenian troops (1000 foot and 300 horse) under command of the two generals Laches and Nicostratus. These were old intimates of Nicias and associated with him in his “peace policy”. Alcibiades accompanied the force, but as an “envoy” and not in any military capacity. It was he who harangued the Argive Assembly, and, with difficulty, persuaded the people to denounce their truce with Sparta, thanks to vigorous backing by representatives from Mantinea and Elis. The Allies then marched on Orchomenus and compelled the surrender of the town. This was most useful. For it secured both their communications with Elis and the west, and it guarded the rear of any force operating to the south in Arcadia. It also gravely hampered any co-operation between the Spartans and their allies of the Isthmus cities or beyond.
Then the Allied army marched on Tegea, to the vast displeasure of the men of Elis. These had hoped to use the entire army for their own local purposes against Lepreon. Such would have been the very height of military folly, as a glance at the map will show. But the 3000 men of Elis marched away homewards in a sulk. The remainder of the Allies, so much the weaker, proceeded to Mantinea.