THE promontory of Cyzicus (Kapa Dagh) juts out from the Asiatic coast into the Sea of Marmora some seventy miles south-west of Constantinople. A mile of sand now joins it to the mainland. In the fifth century B.C. it was an island, and the bridge connection of the ancient city with the opposite shore was Alexander’s work later. Here in March 410 B.C. the three Athenian admirals, Alcibiades, Theramenes, and Thrasybulus, won a great double victory on sea and land over the opposing Peloponnesian, Syracusan, and Persian forces under Mindarus the Spartan and Pharnabazus the satrap.
Three ancient accounts of this battle survive, those of Xenophon, Diodorus (i.e. Ephorus), and Plutarch, the last being little but a blend of the others.{661} Ephorus and Xenophon do not agree together and the former’s is the completer story. Xenophon was a better soldier of fortune than he was a military historian. Thucydides’ untimely death was an irreparable blow to the understanding of the last seven years of the great war. There is little temptation to discourse at any length upon the fighting of these years.
Mindarus, so runs the one story, was exercising his fleet outside Cyzicus’ harbour on the morning following the Athenians’ arrival at Proconnesus. It was a day of mist and rain. The enemy fleet was upon him before he was aware. The rival and better account gives credit to Alcibiades rather than to the weather. The Spartan was lured out of harbour by sight of a squadron of only 40 ships under Alcibiades. The opportunity could not be neglected. With twice the number of warships Mindarus sallied out to the attack. When he had been enticed far enough from land, the two other Athenian squadrons of Theramenes and Thrasybulus (46 ships in all), hitherto lurking out of sight, slipped in between him and the coast and cut him off from the harbour. He fled to the mainland shore and the support there of the Persian army. The Athenians pursued, and, having disposed of the enemy’s fleet, landed troops to ensure the capture of the vessels. A fierce struggle on land followed in which at last they gained the day. The hostile infantry were routed. The Persian cavalry stopped any prolonged pursuit. Mindarus himself, “fighting heroically”, was slain. The entire Peloponnesian fleet was destroyed or captured. The battle is the more famous for that most “laconic” of all despatches from a seat of war which Mindarus’ secretary sent home to Sparta and the Athenians intercepted on the way. It consisted of just eleven words: “Ships gone. Mindarus dead. Men starving. Don’t know what to do.”{662}
The victory of Cyzicus ensured the Athenian reconquest of the Hellespont and their mastery of the sea for the next two years. Alcibiades immediately proceeded from one success to another. The Persians guarded their own coast. But Cyzicus was at once recaptured; Perinthus submitted; Selymbria made a money contribution to the Athenian war-chest. A toll-house was established on the Asiatic shore at Chrysopolis, exactly opposite Byzantium, the Scutari of today, and the name of the “Golden City” must be taken of good omen for the revenues now derived from all ships passing through the Bosporus, even though both Byzantium itself and Calchedon, just to the south of Chrysopolis, still defied the Athenians. Off the Ionian coast, however, where Thrasylus conducted some naval operations in the early summer of this year, the Athenians suffered a failure at Colophon and an actual defeat on land at Ephesus. Then Thrasylus rejoined Alcibiades at Sestos, and a victory won over Pharnabazus’ army at Abydos restored Athenian confidence and tie cheerfulness of the troops.
The battle at Cyzicus induced Sparta to propose peace to Athens. The ephor Endius himself brought her the offer of it on the terms of the status quo.{663} By this time already it seems that the Constitution of the Five Thousand had passed away and the old Democracy had been fully restored. At least a new demagogue arises in the person of one Cleophon, the “lyre-maker”, successor to Cleon, a man of Cleon’s stamp and forcefulness without his greater predecessor’s ability or greed, though, like Cleon, pre-eminently a financial expert.{664} Like Cleon too, Cleophonis target for the fury of the Comic dramatists of his day, Aristophanes himself leading the attack, and for the reprobation by many a modern writer, though Grote comes manfully ever and again to his defence.
His mother had Thracian blood in her veins and the son suffered many gibes at his low barbarian origin and uncouth speech:
“On the lips of that foreigner base,
Of Athens the bane and disgrace,
There is shrieking, his kinsman by race,
The garrulous swallow of Thrace.”{665}
(The swallow, like the nightingale, was always “a foreigner” in classical Greece.)
And the poet Plato devoted an entire comedy, now lost, to Cleophon’s discredit.
Presently the demagogue met a violent death.
“Almost all the objects of Comedy’s attacks found such an end and Comedy laughs at their fate.”{666}
So now in 410 B.C. at Athens there was heard “the shrill voice of the demagogue Cleophon denouncing death”{667} to those who wished for peace. The episcopal violence of Bishop Thirlwall is greater:
“Cleophon, one of the upstart demagogues who from time to time pushed themselves forward into a disgraceful notoriety and a pernicious influence.”
A Die-hard on a Glasgow Socialist could not be fiercer than is the handling of the Athenian “Radical” by the worthy Bishop.
Cleophon had his way. The people rejected Sparta’s offers and Endius went home. Had Alcibiades, the Spartan’s old acquaintance, or had Theramenes been then in Athens, the victory which they had won might have led to peace, or at least to further negotiations for better terms. But Grote has made good his defence of Cleophon on this occasion.{668} The storm-tossed ship seemed at last riding on the full tide of victory, and the terms proposed were inadequate, even if the request for peace were sincere. How could Athens agree to the loss of Euboea, to the Spartan grip of the Bosporus? The rejection of the peace-offer did her no immediate hurt. Only, as summer passed into winter and Sparta recovered Pylos, and moreover Megara regained Nisaea,{669} there must have been in Athens men who looked askance at Cleophon as he went swaggering through the streets. But Cleophon had just restored the daily pay of two obols for jurymen{670} (Cleon’s three obols was a sum out of reach of men’s dreams) and his position was impregnable.
So the war went on. Sparta in 409 B.C. seemed exhausted. In spite of all Pharnabazus’ efforts, Alcibiades in this year regained complete control of the Bosporus for his city, reducing Calchedon and Selymbria, and, after some weary months of siege, capturing Byzantium itself by betrayal in the winter of the year. The autonomy bestowed on Selymbria shows that he had learnt at least one lesson from the war.{671} It was but a fair recognition of his brilliant exploits and of this crowning mercy of Byzantium that in 408 B.C. the people at home elected him general, with Thrasybulus and Conon as his colleagues. This was an extraordinary election and conferred upon the three supreme powers of command. Later, at Alcibiades’ special request, Adeimantus and Aristocrates were associated with them.{672}
Then at last, after seven years’ absence, Alcibiades returned to his city. He had done this perhaps two years’ sooner had not the Democracy so soon displaced Theramenes’ “Middle-Party Constitution”. But besides there had been much work to do abroad. Now the work seemed well-nigh done. Athenian envoys under Pharnabazus’ escort were already travelling on the high road to Susa. Athens again was supreme upon the seas. All this was in the main due to the brilliant admiral. Yet, even so, it was with hesitation that he drew near to the city which had condemned him to death. His friends waved welcome and encouragement to him from the quays. The people had but newly honoured him. Taking his courage in both hands, Alcibiades landed at Peiraeus harbour on the 25th day of the Attic month Thargelion (about June 16), 408 B.C.
It chanced to be the day of the “Plynteria” ceremony, when the holy image of Athens’ Patron Goddess, Athena Polias, received its annual purification and the statue was covered over from the citizens’ eyes. This was a “dies nefastus” in the Attic calendar, when no business could be done. The city lacked the divine presence. On this day of all others Alcibiades came back home. The superstitious shook their heads and whispered. What omen could be more unlucky? Had not the goddess herself veiled her face against the revenant whose impiety had defiled her city?
At least it was a public holiday and the whole populace was in the streets. The historian Xenophon is rarely open to the merry gibe flung by Alan Breck against David Balfour. He is but seldom “a man of no small penetration”. At this point, however, he indulges himself in a long analysis of the diverse sentiments of the Athenians towards Alcibiades. There were many who expected that he would make himself tyrant, and were agreeably disappointed when their expectations failed. Plutarch adds that some urged this course upon him. Did his heart fail him? All such misread the man’s character from the first. He, like Roman Pompey, would indeed be “princeps reipublicae”, but the Republic should be a real one still.
Athenian mob-psychology requires no such weariful analysis. Alcibiades had returned in triumph, victor in many a hard-fought fight. He was acclaimed with an ovation of welcome, crowned with garlands, feted with enthusiastic rejoicings. No voice or hand was raised against him. Only a single sullen priest muttered words of doubtful import. His brethren bowed to the people’s demand and solemnly cancelled the curse once pronounced against the hero. By a masterstroke he won over even the sacerdotal heart, always the most stubborn, the most stupid, and therefore the most dangerous. It was Alcibiades who had profaned the Mysteries of Eleusis. It was Alcibiades who had sent the Spartan Agis to Decelea. For six melancholy years the sacred procession to Eleusis, shrine of the Mysteries, had not risked the passage of the Via Sacra. With maimed and hurried rites it had journeyed there and back by sea. But he who wounds can best heal the wound. Once again the procession marched by land and returned in safety, guarded by Alcibiades and his military precautions. The Spartan lion lurked sulkily in its lair and dared not spring.
Then the people elected Alcibiades general with supreme power. They gave him an authority bestowed on one man only in earlier years, and that man was Pericles. At head of a new fleet of 100 ships Alcibiades sailed away in late October, never to see his city again.{673}
Extravagant hopes waited on his departure. Chios and all Ionia must surely be taken at a blow. The people had given him command. They had given him a fleet, 1500 hoplites, 150 cavalry. They had not given him the wherewithal to pay the men of his command. Cleophon had seen to this. “The juryman gulps all that money down.”{674}
During Alcibiades’ stay at Athens, the whole condition of affairs at the theatre of war in the east had suffered a grave change. An impetuous young prince, the great king’s own son, Cyrus, had come to Sardis and taken over the Persian command from the vacillating Tissaphernes. And as the new Spartan admiral there had reached Ephesus one who, trained in the hard school of poverty, was a soldier to the finger-tips. Between this Lysander, a man in the very vigour of his age, and Prince Cyrus there sprang up the warmest of affections. The whole of the prince’s wealth was placed unreservedly at the Spartan’s service. A new Spartan fleet sprang into being, almost as it might seem at the waving of an enchanter’s wand. On its crews high pay and ample food were lavished.{675} Challenge for the supremacy of the seas became once again a possibility. The work of Cyzicus must once again be done.
In the early spring of 407 B.C. Alcibiades moved his fleet to Notium.{676} Six miles away along the coast Lysander lay snugly ensconced in the harbour of Ephesus with a fleet of 90 ships. In vain the Athenian offered him battle. Lysander was too wise to be enticed out to fight. What he could best do he did, and many a hireling in Alcibiades’ fleet deserted on the promise of higher and regular pay and ample food. The Athenian admiral was in sore straits for the money wherewith to pay even his lower wage. Money he must have. Only by plunder along the coast could he obtain supplies, unless friendly cities (if any such remained) made voluntary or enforced contributions. This was work of a nature requiring his own presence. It could not be entrusted to a subordinate. Alcibiades was compelled to divide his fleet. Part of it he left at Notium to keep careful watch over Lysander’s movements. With the rest he himself sailed north on his quest for supplies in the first instance, and also to meet with Thrasybulus at Phocaea to concert with this general plans for the future.
In this, Alcibiades made only one blunder, but it was an unfortunate one. He left the ships at Notium in a perfectly safe situation, but he entrusted the command in his absence to a man who seized the opportunity for the most wilful disobedience to orders. Antiochus the pilot, whom he selected, had long been known to him. Popular gossip ascribed their friendship and therefore this appointment to an incident long ago at Athens, when the then youthful Alcibiades let a pet quail escape from under his cloak as he scattered money broadcast in the crowd, and Antiochus had been the lucky man who captured the scared bird and restored it to the sorrowing owner.{677} In actual fact, this Antiochus was known to his admiral as a skilful seaman as well as a bluff hearty mariner who loved his glass and his joke. Alcibiades had no colleague of higher rank with him at Notium. He laid the most positive orders on Antiochus to offer no provocation to Lysander during his own absence. In that absence Antiochus with a couple of ships came sailing by the harbour mouth at Ephesus insulting Lysander by gesture as grossly as he could devise. Van Tromp’s broom at the masthead was warranted by one lucky Dutch victory.{678} Antiochus’ folly had no such recent justification. The Spartan rushed out upon the rash braggart. Ships hurried up on both sides and the issue of a scrambling fight was a Spartan victory. Antiochus managed to lose, one account says 15, another 22 ships, and retired with the survivors to Samos. Lysander erected a trophy of triumph at Notium.
On tidings of this contretemps Alcibiades came hurrying back. He found Lysander safe as usual at Ephesus. Again the Athenian offered battle. Again the Spartan refused it. The defeat had not deprived Alcibiades of his admitted superiority at sea.
But the news of the reverse sped home, and the admiral’s many enemies, plucking up heart, denounced his carelessness. Then came other news. Alcibiades had withdrawn again to Samos and thence had sailed to plunder the land of the men of Cyme. Men at home were rather puzzled about Cyme. Was it still a friendly city of the Empire? Those who held this view accused Alcibiades hotly of estranging a faithful and unoffending subject. Those who knew the fact, namely that Cyme had recently rebelled against Athens, asked bitterly why he had failed to take and sack the miserable little town. Had the king bribed him? Alcibiades had no apologists to rebut this dilemma. No man urged on his behalf that they themselves should have supplied him adequately. All were ready to sympathise with his grumbling sailors. All were disappointed with the course of the campaign:
“They grew impatient”, Plutarch truly says; “they never took into account the smallness of his supplies, that he was bound to go in search of money and provisions for his men.”
A man with a bitter lying tongue reached Athens from the fleet, railing at his general for drunkenness, debauchery, with a thousand and one scandalous tales of deep drinking, boon companions, ribaldry, courtesans, bribery—Heaven knows what besides.
So the Athenian people came to their last and their most fatal decision. They deprived Alcibiades of his command, sending out Conon to take his place. And, the time for the spring elections being at hand, they elected a board of ten generals, the majority of whom were his political enemies. Neither Theramenes nor Thrasybulus nor, of course, he himself, was elected to the Board. The ten were Conon, Diomedon, Leon, Pericles (the great statesman’s son), Erasinides, Aristocrates, Archestratus, Protomachus, Aristogenes, and Thrasylus. They were re-elected next year as well.
Conon arrived and took over the command. Alcibiades knew better than to go back home. He retired for safety to a castle of his own in Thrace named Pactyes, near Bisanthe on the northern coast of the Sea of Marmora.
Now, upon this, the last opportunity, Grote discharges his most Olympian lightnings upon the head of Alcibiades, always the particular object of his aversion, and sympathetically excuses the action by his cherished Athenian democracy which older writers found occasion to deplore. Never does the English historian surpass the magnificence of this his stately invective:{679}
“The disgraceful plunder of Kyme....He (Alcibiades) had no character to fall back upon; or rather he had a character worse than none, such as to render the most criminal imputations of treason not intrinsically improbable....He had had his trial; he had been found wanting....Besides the absence of grand successes, he had farther been negligent and reckless in his primary duties—he had exposed the Athenian arms to defeat by his disgraceful selection of an unworthy lieutenant—he had violated the territory and property of an allied dependency, at a moment when Athens had a paramount interest in cultivating by every means the attachment of her remaining allies....His proceedings at Kyme...richly deserved judicial animadversion....(Yet) the Athenians simply voted that he should be dismissed from his command....After his visit (to Athens) the impulses of a character essentially dissolute and insolent broke loose from that restraint under which they had before been partially controlled.”
No German can rise to these heights. Grote still is indispensable.
The Englishman’s anger that Alcibiades escaped actual trial and, of course, execution, recalls the disappointment of the mild and virtuous Polybius when once this historian sacrificed his much self-advertised impartiality to his political enthusiasms. Aristomachus, tyrant of Argos, had delivered up his city to the young hero king of Sparta, Cleomenes the Third, then at war with the Achaean League. In earlier peaceful days the tyrant had been President of the League. Presently the clever old Aratus, Polybius’ own much-respected leader, managed to lay hands on Aristomachus. “He should have been haled round the Peloponnese and tortured in every city”, the furious Polybius writes. Instead of which, he was just “quietly drowned” at Cenchreae by Aratus’ merciful orders.
Alcibiades deserved neither “judicial animadversion” nor dismissal. Grote, blinded by his dislike, has for once neglected the clear evidence from Thucydides that Cyme had revolted.{680} He has swallowed tainted evidence, that of Ephorus of Cyme, whose local patriotism has turned his rebel city into the outraged victim of Alcibiades’ plundering.{681} In very fact, the admiral in want of supplies justly selected Cyme as the object of his raid. As for Antiochus, the man was, as has been said, a good seaman on Plutarch’s express evidence, and, if a subordinate flatly disobeys orders, it is usually the subordinate whose further employment is out of the question.
But Alcibiades’ political enemies at home were too numerous and too bitter. Party spirit was cause of Athens’ downfall—so runs Thucydides’ own considered judgment. The last dismissal of the one great captain left to Athens was the triumph of that spirit. She goes quickly enough now towards her doom:
“Too late”, writes Plutarch, “the Athenians acknowledged their blindness and their errors, and looked upon their second anger against Alcibiades as the greatest of these errors. For he had been cast off for no wrong-doing of his. In wrath against a subordinate for losing a few ships disgracefully, still more disgracefully they themselves had robbed the city of their greatest and most war-like general.”{682}
“At a time when the greatest perils befell the city”,
said a later orator at Athens, speaking of the Ionian War,
“never once did the enemy set up a trophy over you when Alcibiades was in command.”{683}
At end of the play, no doubt, “Pardon’s the word for all.” When the whole long-tragedy of Alcibiades and his city is ended and the curtain falls, which of the two has the greater need for forgiveness at the judgment seat of history?
Conon, taking over the command from Alcibiades at Samos, promptly reorganised the fleet, weeding out the unruly and insubordinate of the sailors, and reducing its numbers to 70 vessels, on whose crews and efficiency he hoped to be able to rely. He then devoted his energies to somewhat ineffective raiding up and down the Ionian coast. Lysander for his part did nothing to prevent this, contenting himself with the capture of Teos in Conon’s absence. The year 407 B.C. came quietly to its end.
The new year saw a change of admirals on the Spartan side, as was required by their law. Yet Lysander might have been continued in a real command under a titular chief (a method followed later) had he not incurred the dislike of the then king of Sparta, Pausanias, who had succeeded his father Pleistoanax in 408 B.C. Pausanias secured the appointment as admiral, in Lysander’s place, of one Callicratidas, a younger man and a brave and able Spartan. To Lysander’s disgust and Prince Cyrus’ chagrin, Callicratidas arrived at Ephesus in the spring of 406 B.C. and assumed the command.
The new admiral is selected by Grote for hero-worship. The English writer’s praise of him is fervent and perhaps a trifle exaggerated, as the German Busolt says.{685} He was undoubtedly a man of noble sentiment, filled with a passion of anger against the dalliance with Persia, and inspired with a generous feeling of Panhellenic sympathy. He came out to fight and to finish the wasting fratricidal war. To him it was the height of ignominy that Hellenes should hang about a Persian grandee’s vestibule, cap in hand, seeking for the doles to enable them to destroy their brethren. And in the moment of victory he, like others, even an Astyochus and a Strombichides in practice before him (a fact not noticed by Grote) and philosophers and kings after him,{686} stoutly declared that Greek should not enslave Greek. When, later in the year, he took Methymna on Lesbos and his allies demanded the sale of the prisoners, Callicratidas peremptorily refused.
“No one”, exults Grote, “who has not familiarised himself with the details of Grecian warfare can feel the full grandeur and sublimity of his proceeding—which stands, so far as I know, unparalleled in Grecian history. It is not merely that the prisoners were spared and set free: as to that point, analogous cases may be found, though not very frequent. It is that this particular act of generosity was performed in the name and for the recommendation of Panhellenic brotherhood and Panhellenic independence of the foreigner.”
Such “Quixotism” was unlikely to be popular either with his allies, with his men, with Lysander, or with the ephors at home. Conon might not copy it. “It is dangerous to play with coals of fire”.{687}
“Reciprocity of dealing is absolutely essential to constant moral observance....But some one must begin by setting such examples, and the man who does begin—having a position which gives reasonable chance that others will follow—is the hero....In his career, so sadly and prematurely closed, there was at least this circumstance to be envied, that the capture of Methymna afforded him the opportunity, which he greedily seized as if he had known that it would be the last, of putting in act and evidence the full aspirations of his magnanimous soul.”{688}
Grote’s enthusiasm is infectious. It has also led him to state that Callicratidas set “all” his prisoners of Methymna free, whereas in fact he released the citizen captives but sold “the Athenian garrison.” It must be supposed, with the charitable Busolt, that this garrison “must therefore have consisted of non-Hellenic mercenaries”.{689}
Such a man on his arrival was confronted with a mass of difficulties. Lysander handed over the command at Ephesus with an empty vaunt, properly rebuked by his successor. “As lord of the seas and victor in battle I give you the ships,” Lysander boasted.
“Sail then from Ephesus, keep Samos on your left hand, and give me the ships at Miletus,” replied the other. “Then I will admit your ‘lord of the seas’.”
Between Ephesus and Miletus there lay the Athenian fleet at Samos, only to be shirked by a long détour on a course outside this island.
Lysander, refusing to return to Sparta, remained sulking in the district, and Lysander’s influence was paramount in every city, thanks to the oligarchic “clubs” of his adherents which he had called into being in them. Prince Cyrus flouted and insulted Callicratidas, and refused him money. Lysander co-operated to starve the fleet, ostentatiously sending back to Cyrus the large unspent funds which he had been given by the Prince. But Callicratidas faced all difficulties, and by the sheer force of his personality turned unconcealed hostility into unwilling admiration. Thanks to his vigour, his eloquence, and his military successes the stream of contributions alike from Greek ally and from Persian began, first to trickle, then to flow amply once again. He increased the number of his ships step by step until at last there lay in Miletus harbour, to which port he had removed from Ephesus, the enormous squadron of 170 triremes. Then he sent to Conon at Samos one of the pithy sayings characteristic of the man: “He would stop Conon’s adultery with the sea.”{690}
At the end of May Callicratidas sailed from Miletus with his whole fleet for Lesbos. Putting in at Chios on the way, to get money for his men, he arrived at Methymna on the north coast of Lesbos and took the town by storm. Conon, who had but his 70 ships, came behind him from Samos, dogging his enemy cautiously. As the Athenian lay in the channel between Lesbos and the mainland off Hecatonnesi, “The hundred islands”, he saw Callicratidas’ whole fleet bearing down upon him from the north. Escape to distant Samos was impossible. Conon made at top speed for the shelter of Mitylene harbour. At the very harbour mouth he was caught, brought to battle, and lost 30 ships. The other 40 were pulled up on shore under the city wall and saved. Then Callicratidas blockaded Conon in Mitylene both by sea and land. The city was not provisioned for a siege.
Conon’s colleague, Diomedon, rushed wildly to the rescue from Samos with a dozen ships. Callicratidas snapped them up as they approached Mitylene by the southern channel. Diomedon made good his own escape, but left behind him ten more ships to be added to the Spartan’s list of prizes.
Meanwhile in Athens the long hot summer days were passing lazily by. There was no news from the fleet. The triumphant Democratic faction in the city had no qualms of conscience nor any anxiety for the future. The generals of the preceding year had been lately re-elected. Then there came staggering into Peiraeus harbour a solitary vessel, with Erasinides, one of their generals, aboard. At time of the mid-day meal, when the enemy were thinking of other things, Conon in Mitylene had sent out two blockade-runners. One none the less was taken. Erasinides made good his escape and brought to Athens the news of Conon’s desperate plight.
The city bestirred itself in earnest.
Within thirty days a fleet of 110 ships, many of them old and past all reasonable service, was launched, and splendidly equipped. Officers, marines, pilots, oarsmen, amounted to a total of 20,000 men. There were not citizens enough. Aliens and slaves in numbers were set on shipboard, the latter promised freedom on end of the campaign. This promise was redeemed. For money the temples were stripped of all their treasures. Gold and silver statues were melted into coin. This was Athens’ first gold coinage.{691} Of the ten generals, Conon and Leon were in Mitylene and Archestratus had been killed.{692} The rest, with a new general, Lysias (who replaced Archestratus), eight in all, took the fleet out. Theramenes and Thrasybulus, men of tried naval skill and hitherto so often generals, now out of favour with the victorious rival party, sailed as mere captains, “trierarchs” each of a single ship. There were left in Athens a handful of cavalry, some greybeards and youngsters to guard the walls, civil magistrates, councillors, priests, women and children. The entire manhood of the city answered to the call. Conon must be saved.
The fleet reached Samos. Here some 40 to 50 allied ships were added to their number. Still they were outnumbered by the enemy, many of whose ships had been newly built at Rhodes, Chios, and elsewhere. Then Callicratidas made his one fatal error. Unwilling to let Conon out from Mitylene harbour, even for a short while, possibly also thinking it wisest not to be caught between two fires (yet Conon’s 40 were unlikely to pursue or, if so, to reach the scene in time), as soon as he heard news of the approach of the relieving ships, the Spartan divided his great fleet. He left 50 ships with Eteonicus, his second in command, to carry on the blockade of Mitylene. He himself with 120 sailed south to Malea promontory, expecting the approach of the eight Athenian admirals with their 150 ships (or more), and resolute to intercept them.
It was the evening of an August day when Callicratidas put in to Malea. Eight miles away across the water the flare of many lights presently shone through the dark. The Athenians had already arrived and were in moorings at three small islands off the mainland, called Arginusae Islands. Quietly, near midnight, the Spartan gave orders to his men to embark. He would try a night surprise A violent thunder-storm broke over their heads, and the orders were of necessity cancelled.
The next morning dawned on a lumpy sea and a strong wind blowing down from the north. The Athenians at Arginusae saw the whole enemy line bearing down upon them. They were not caught unawares, but put out to meet the attack in good order, their left wing leading. The Peloponnesian fleet came on in single line, covering a front perhaps of some eight miles. The Athenian outnumbered the enemy by some 35 or 40 ships. Never had two such large Hellenic fleets clashed together in battle. Nearly 280 ships and 50,000 men engaged in this the most desperate and stubborn of all the naval engagements of the great war.
The tale is told that at sight of the great numbers of the enemy Callicratidas’ own pilot, a Megarian named Hermon, urged him to retire and not join battle. “Sparta”, the admiral replied, “will be ordered none the worse for my death. To flee is the disgrace.” The Roman Cicero moralises coldly over this incident:
“Many”, he writes, “have been found ready to sacrifice not only their wealth but also their lives to their country, men who would not endure the loss of even one morsel of their glory, no, not though the State’s welfare required it. Such a man was Callicratidas.”{693}
The eight Athenian admirals chose a battle formation of a novel, indeed a unique kind. They met the attack in a double line of ships. Each wing consisted of four squadrons of 15 Athenian ships apiece, each under an admiral, arranged in double line, two squadrons in line in the front, two behind them as supports. There were thus 60 ships on either wing. The centre was more weakly held by the remaining ships, Samians, allies, and Athenians, also arranged in two lines, with a front line of 20 ships. The whole Athenian front therefore numbered 80 vessels as against the enemy’s single line of 120. It might therefore seem that Callicratidas overlapped the Athenians by a mile on both wings. This view has been recently held. There is, however, no hint in the ancient accounts that the Peloponnesians actually attacked the flank of the Athenian line either on north or south. The English Admiral in his story of the battle accounts for this quite simply:
“The allied overlap was nearly two miles”, he writes, “which means that upwards of thirty of their ships delivered their charge ‘in the air’ and were for a certain time not in the fight. That interval was probably not short, since ordinary men under such circumstances usually wait for orders.”
And he is reminded of the Franco-Spanish van at Trafalgar, and of the French ships to leeward at the Battle of the Nile.
Both Xenophon and Diodorus give us a version of this fight. The former’s brief tale carries the greater weight. Xenophon makes no mention of an overlap at all. Diodorus explains that the Athenians included the islands in their battle front (hence there was no overlap)! His long verbose account, derived from Ephorus, is rightly dismissed as a “rhetorically-dressed, generally worthless, imaginative effort”.{694} It is an attractive suggestion that there was no overlap because the Athenian front line was strung out at a greater distance from ship to ship than obtained in the opposite line, inasmuch as the ships of the second line were stationed, not each behind its “front rank man” (as in English army drill) but behind the gaps between the vessels of their front line. For the whole reason for the double line had been the Athenian admirals’ dread lest the enemy should use their better ships and superior speed (how great a change from Phormio’s day!) to break their line and so ram them from behind. The double line was devised to prevent this. It best prevented this if the rear rank ships guarded the gaps between the front rank ships. Such a formation, however, might well space the ships of both lines out more widely than had there been but a single line required to present an unbroken front to an attacking enemy.
In this order the two fleets joined battle. It seems that the great strength on both Athenian wings was meant for offensive action and not defensively, and that their weaker centre was slightly withheld.
“The tactical skill of the Athenians in the battle was of a high order,” writes the English admiral admiringly.{695}
At least the Athenian centre lost not a single ship in all the prolonged fighting. Presently, as was natural, order and cohesion went by the board, and little groups of ships clustered together engaged in furious battle. Of tactical manœuvring there was henceforth none on either side. Then after some hours’ conflict the Athenian right wing began to drive the opposing left wing back. At this crisis Callicratidas, who with his small purely Spartan contingent of 10 ships had posted himself on his right wing, standing in the prow of his flagship, when this crashed into an enemy, was hurled overboard. So he met his end. His whole fleet broke up and fled, some to Chios, the most to Phocaea.
Losses were heavy. The Athenians lost 25 ships, of which 13 had gone at once to the bottom, and 12 lay disabled wrecks, tossing in the waves, slowly sinking. There were 2000 men aboard them. The enemy lost more than 70, three-fifths of their entire fleet. As an instrument of war, the Peloponnesian navy for the time being had ceased to exist.
The victory and the death of the enemy admiral, Grote laments, “were signal misfortunes to Athens herself”. Had Callicratidas survived and won the day, Athens must have sued for peace, and the noble Spartan would have dictated tolerable, nay generous terms. Panhellenic sentiment must have triumphed, and all “the better feelings of the Grecian mind” have received their stimulus. But the control was to pass into the hands of the “worthless, but able, Lysander” again:
“The defeat and death of Kallikratidas was thus even more deplorable as a loss to Athens and Greece than to Sparta herself. To his lofty character and patriotism, even in so short a career, we vainly seek a parallel.”{696}
Hardly otherwise was it a “signal misfortune” to victors as well as to vanquished when, in the very hour of final triumph, Abraham Lincoln fell to the assassin’s bullet and an Andrew Johnson took his place to dictate the settlement to the heroic prostrate Southern States.
When the enemy fleet broke up and fled, the eight admirals withdrew to Arginusae Islands and held a hurried Council of War. There was the enemy squadron blocking Mitylene, in ignorance surely of the issue of the battle. One urged that the whole fleet should make its way north to catch and destroy it unawares. Another pointed out seawards, over the grey tossing waves. There were drowning men, their own men, he urged, awaiting rescue. This was the primary duty of the fleet. Thrasybulus interposed. Surely there were ships enough for both tasks, he argued. So it was decided. The two subordinates, Theramenes and Thrasybulus, were given 47 ships and bidden go rescue the drowning on the dozen wrecks. With the rest, the bulk of the fleet, the eight admirals would shortly proceed to Mitylene. Meanwhile a rest was what they needed. The wind blew steadily. The two captains reported their task impossible. The admirals agreed. The wrecks sank. Next day it would be time enough to sail for Mitylene. The whole fleet took its ease.
There were men on the other side who recked little enough of the gale when their comrades’ safety was at stake. That same afternoon a small cutter fought its way to Eteonicus against the northerly wind with the news of Callicratidas’ defeat. The Spartan listened quietly. There was time to trick Conon yet and make good his own escape. At Eteonicus’ bidding the cutter stole away southwards unseen from the shore. A little later, Conon on land heard that a boat was reaching the enemy at the harbour mouth. Its crew were crowned with garlands. Shouts of triumph floated across the water. “Callicratidas has conquered in the sea-fight. Every Athenian ship is sunk.” Eteonicus was seen making his sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Gods. The hours sped on. The mariners of the blockading squadron took their evening meal. Quietly the traders with the fleet obeyed orders and stowed all their goods aboard the attendant transport vessels. As dusk fell, every ship slipped its cable and ran before the gale close under shore round Malea. So they all came safe back to Chios. The Spartan Eteonicus himself was with the troops on land. Flames burst out through the darkness. He had set the camp of the beleaguerers on fire, and marched every man of them unmolested back to Methymna.
The astonished Conon woke to find the enemy gone. When the wind dropped, he launched his 40 ships and put to sea. At sea he met the baffled Athenian squadron from Arginusae and told his tale. Together they all returned to Mitylene. Then all sailed back to Samos again, vainly demonstrating against Chios on the way. And there the victor admirals sent their despatches home.
Athens was in a ferment. There had been a great victory. But what a fearsome loss of life! Ugly rumours spread, of men drowning before their comrades’ very eyes. The public despatches and private letters from the generals confirmed the story. “Not that any one was in the least to blame,” the kindly generals wrote. “The storm had prevented the task of rescue with which, it so happened, the trierarchs, among them Theramenes and Thrasybulus, had actually been entrusted.” Perhaps this was the fact, men muttered, but at least the people would hear the story by word of mouth. Let all eight generals at once come home! For the purpose they were relieved of their command, and two others, Adeimantus and Philocles, were sent out to join Conon in their place.
Six obeyed the imperative summons. Two, distrustful and sagacious, disobeyed. Aristogenes and Protomachus had not made their colleagues’ task of exculpation the easier by their disobedience. If it were conscience made cowards of the two—had the six clear consciences?
The ship arrived at Athens. Erasinides was arrested at once on a charge of peculation. The five made their report to the Council “concerning the sea-fight and the fury of the storm”. The Council ordered their arrest as well.
Theramenes of all men stood forward in the full Assembly of the people. The generals must give account, he cried. They did not rescue the shipwrecked!
The generals under arrest told their story to the people. They brought forward pilots and many others of the fleet to bear witness to the violence of the storm. Theirs seemed a quite convincing defence. No one was to blame. A simple vote of the people, and they would be released. But by this time it was late and too dark to count hands in the vote. The matter was adjourned to the next Assembly.
On a sudden the story takes a grim turn.
Next day there befell the festival of the Apaturia, the Athenian annual commemoration of the family, which lasted three October days. Every day of the three days the streets were full of men clad in black garments and with shaven heads. Athens rang with mourning and lamentation. Were there not fathers and kinsmen enough already of the thousands slain or drowned at Arginusae that Theramenes, of all men, must provide many mock mourners to add hypocritically to the excitement and the woe? Men told this tale against him. It passes all reasonable belief.{698}
Men’s indignation waxed ever hotter, whether Theramenes fanned the flames or no. After the festival the adjourned Assembly met. A certain Callixenus had carried in Council a proposal now laid before the people, to decide the accusation against the generals en bloc by a single vote. “Have the generals done hurt by failing to rescue the victors in the sea-fight—aye or no?” Penalty on conviction—death! A sailor sprang up in the middle of the seething crowd. He had floated to safety, he shouted, on a meal barrel. His drowning comrades had cried to him to tell the people—let him come alive to shore—that the generals did not rescue those heroes who had served their country.{699}
Euryptolemus and others sought to intervene. They laid formal indictment against Callixenus for illegality. His proposal was dead against the law, they urged, which gave every man right to a trial individually.{700}
This was the fact. A huge shout arose.
“Shall any man prevent the people doing what it pleases? Shame, shame upon him!”
“Put these objectors with the generals and vote upon the lot,” howled the mob.
Pale and scared, the legalists withdrew their indictment. The presidents of the Assembly, special officials, were divided in their mind. Some declared they would refuse to allow Callixenus’ motion to be put to the vote. He sprang up.
“I denounce these too,” he cried. The people applauded.
“Prosecute them, prosecute them,” they yelled.
The presidents bowed before the storm, all save one man alone. By chance of the lot there was among the presidents, probably indeed the chief of them, a certain Socrates that day. Stoutly, against all vociferations and threats, the old philosopher refused to allow the question. His protest was disregarded. His colleagues put the question in Callixenus’ form.
Having gained their point, the people quieted down and allowed the generals’ advocate, Euryptolemus, to make a long impassioned oration on their behalf. Once again he urged the legal right of each man to a separate trial. On the main question he demanded the acquittal of all. For a moment the people wavered. A majority voted for the procedure of the separate trial. An objection was at once raised to the vote on some obscure point of law. A second vote was taken. This time Callixenus won the day. One single vote should decide on all the accused together. The vote was taken. The eight generals were condemned. The six then in the people’s grasp were put to death at once.
Modern Greece executes its unsuccessful generals, following many an ancient precedent. Ancient Athens enjoys the doubtful distinction of being the only free state to put its victorious generals to death.
This, told briefly, is the famous story of “the condemnation of the generals after Arginusae”. To its consideration Grote devotes no fewer than thirty pages.{701} In these the great advocate pleads almost passionately on behalf of the Athenian people, striving in a masterpiece of argument to palliate the offence of their illegal action—which cannot be denied—urging in excuse the reasonableness of their wild excitement and bitter agitation. And in the background, both of the story and of the argument, there moves darkly one sinister figure—that of Theramenes.
Just two questions arise, the first, the justice of the condemnation, the second, the motive of Theramenes.
The first turns on a question of fact. Was the storm too furious to allow the rescue? If this were in fact the case, then no one was to blame. If it were not the case, then a mist of doubt begins to cloud the story of the orders given the trierarchs. What of the ultimate responsibility of the higher command? Were the orders given at all? Were they given too late? Was it not so urgent a matter that the generals ought to have seen to it themselves, and with every available vessel? Did they not shirk a grave responsibility and, when disaster therefore befell, look round for scapegoats? Good-naturedly enough they would try to do their best for the scapegoats of their choice. But if the people must have victims, they themselves would shift the blame to others. Was it any wonder that the others retaliated so fiercely?
For a moment the “previous question” entices us back to it. Was the storm too furious to allow the rescue? There is the most surprising unanimity in the answer “yes” given in the ancient record to this question. It is made by all the Athenian actors in the drama. It is corroborated by those who wrote the story of it. The violence of the gale is maintained by the generals themselves,{702} by their witnesses,{703} by their counsel Euryptolemus,{704} by their accuser Theramenes.{705} It is credited by both Xenophon{706} and Diodorus.{707} No one in the whole ancient record denies it. Only—be it remembered—the Athenian people themselves, by their vote, showed that they rejected the excuse. It is true that they too soon afterwards repented, arresting Callixenus and four of his associates on the charge of “deceiving the people”. In due course of time Callixenus came to a miserable end. “Abhorred by all, he perished of starvation.”{708}
Yet an uncomfortable suspicion remains about this gale. It has been fully and admirably voiced by Grote.{709} Leaving aside his eloquent appeal to “the habits and feelings of the English Navy” when drowning comrades are in question—
“It must have been a frightful storm indeed which would force an English admiral even to go back to his moorings leaving these men so exposed”—
there is real reason for wonder how the wind and waves off Arginusae can have been so terrifying when, but a bare 14 miles away, a little cutter can run merrily to and fro, and when what Xenophon calls “a fair wind”{710} that same evening carries every kind of vessel under Eteonicus’ command comfortably to Chios near to the very scene of the battle which had ended but a few hours earlier. Does not Diodorus give the real reason for the drowning of the shipwrecked, when to the storm he adds the remark that their comrades “were tired and did not want to do rescue work”?{711} Assent must be given to Grote’s conclusion:
“The storm was not such as would have deterred any Grecian seaman animated by an earnest and courageous sense of duty.”
And it seems that the repentance of the people was rather for the illegality than for the supposed injustice of the final sentence. It was Theramenes who had sedulously and openly inflamed their wrath and indignation. But neither by accusation nor by arrest was Theramenes involved in the punishment inflicted on Callixenus and his associates.
What then was Theramenes’ motive? It seems agreed that all concerned might at one point have escaped scot free, had it not been for his insistence. Doubtless he, with Thrasybulus and the other trierarchs, was uncomfortably involved in the fate of the drowned, and the generals were responsible for dragging their names so prominently forward. He accused them to save his own life, said his enemy Critias bluntly a few years later,{712} and this is the only mention of his motive in all the ancient record. Fear, therefore, and the desire to retaliate must have spurred him on. But Thrasybulus and the others were equally involved. Why have they disappeared so unaccountably from the story? Why was Theramenes the only man who, when the dog was dozing off to sleep again, rudely kicked it up into wakeful fury?
A few months later, Aristophanes put on the stage the most amusing of his comedies, the Frogs. In it the poet makes two famous mentions of Theramenes. In the first, the Chorus sings:
“This is the part of a dexterous clever
Man with his wits about him ever,
One who has travelled the world to see;
Always to shift, and to keep through all
Close to the sunny side of the wall;
Not like a pictured block to be,
Standing always in one position;
Nay, but to veer, with expedition,
And ever to catch the favouring breeze,
This is the part of a shrewd tactician,
This is to be a Theramenes.”{713}
In the second, the poet Euripides is gibing at old-fashioned Aeschylus:
“Look at his pupils, look at mine: and there the contrast view.
Uncouth Megaenetus is his, and rough Phormisius too;
Great long-beard-lance-and-trumpet-men, flesh-tearers with the pine:
But natty smart Theramenes, and Cleitophon are mine.”
The God Dionysus interrupts him:
“Theramenes? A clever man and wonderfully sly:
Immerse him in a flood of ills, he’ll soon be high and dry;
‘A Kian with a kappa, sir, not Chian with a chi.’”{714}
That is, he can wriggle with acrobatic agility out of any “tight place”. The Greek pun is a simple one, just a play on two words pronounced alike in the “Cockney” dialect of the streets, though doubtless distinguished carefully by precisians. Even as a Londoner reading aloud Stevenson’s wonderful poem calls “whaup” “warp” (mispronouncing both words). “Is this your work, Theramenes?” “No, no! ‘Twas another fellow of the same-sounding name.”
“See here—a cruel dirk! Who did the deed? A Scot, methinks.
A Scot, nae doot, my Lord: but not A. Scott,
Your very humble sairvant!{715}
Theramenes the “Kothornos”, i.e. the Buskin (the actor’s sandal which fitted, or misfitted, either foot), such was his nickname in the streets, said Critias, his bitter enemy, scornfully.{716} Theramenes the “Trimmer”, such remains the nickname today of one whom Thucydides calls simply “a good speaker and a sagacious man”,{717} of one who in revolutionary times pursued consistently a difficult Constitutional policy, the rule of the “moderate men”, which is always liable to attack and overthrow from both sides,{718} a policy which wins praise from historian, philosopher, and poet alike.{719}
“Of three ranks in the State, the midmost ‘tis
Preserveth her, guarding such order as the State
Ordains.”
Of this “Moderate Party” Alcibiades and Theramenes were the leaders. If the latter in 406 B.C. wriggled with ingenuity out of a grave personal peril, his persistency in accusing the generals was not due to his fear alone. There lay at the back of it a more important political motive—the recall of Alcibiades himself.
For this was in truth the one great political question of all these months, as it was Athens’ last hope of victory. The dullard historians of the period fail to realise it. Once again it is Aristophanes who brings the truth into the clear light of day. In Athens’ streets men went about arguing and wrangling concerning the fugitive in his lonely Thracian castle. Shall he even now be recalled, at the eleventh hour?
It was at the Lenaean Festival in the February of the year 405 B.C. that Aristophanes produced the Frogs, three months after the execution of the generals. In this comedy, the two poets in the Underworld, Aeschylus and Euripides, compete for their recall to life and to Athens. One last test, that of their political sagacity, is proposed to them by the judge, the God Dionysus. By their answer to one question they stand or fall. And the question of questions is: “What do you think of Alcibiades?”
“DIONYSUS. Now then, whichever of you two shall best
Advise the city, he shall come with me.
And first of Alcibiades, let each
Say what he thinks; the city travails sore.
EURIPIDES. What does she think herself about him?
DIONYSUS. She loves and hates and longs to have him back. But give me your advice about the man.
EURIPIDES. I loathe a townsman who is slow to aid,
And swift to hurt, his town; who ways and means
Finds for himself, but finds not for the State.
DIONYSUS. Poseidon, but that’s smart! (To AESCHYLUS)
And what say you?
AESCHYLUS. ‘Twere best to rear no lion in the State:
But having reared, ‘tis best to humour him.
DIONYSUS. By Zeus the Saviour, still I can’t decide.
One is so clever, and so clear the other.
But once again. Let each in turn declare
What plan of safety for the State ye’ve got.
EURIPIDES. I know and I can tell you.
DIONYSUS. Tell away.
EURIPIDES. When things, mistrusted now, shall trusted be, And trusted things mistrusted.
DIONYSUS. I don’t quite comprehend. Be clear, and not so clever.
EURIPIDES. If we mistrust those citizens of ours
Whom now we trust, and those employ whom now
We don’t employ, the city will be saved.
If on our present tack we fail, we surely
Shall find salvation in the opposite course.
DIONYSUS. Good, O Palamedes I Good, you genius you. Now, you.
AESCHYLUS. But tell me whom the city uses. The good and useful?
DIONYSUS. What are you dreaming of? She hates and loathes them.
AESCHYLUS. Does she love the bad?
DIONYSUS. Not love them, no: she uses them perforce.
AESCHYLUS. How can one save a city such as this?”
* * * * *
But, Aeschylus concludes, the citizens will be saved
“When they shall count the enemy’s soil their own,
And theirs the enemy’s: when they know that ships
Are their true wealth, their so-called wealth delusion.”{720}
“Athens’ only wealth her ships”: a true and sombre conclusion a few months before her last fleet was taken by the enemy.
Thus in the Frogs, Aristophanes’ happiest Comedy, both poets hint broadly that it is best to recall Alcibiades, and “to change the Government”. It cannot be doubted that this was the dramatist’s own view. His attitude to Alcibiades throughout his career is an interesting study. There is no other Athenian politician whom he does not handle with the greatest frankness. Throughout all his many plays the poet shows a curious reserve when Alcibiades is his theme. And now at the very end there is this most cautious riddling in the Frogs. Aristophanes knew that the ground on which he was treading was most dangerous, that he was likely to find himself playing with fiery passions,
“Periculosae plenum opus aleae
Tractas et incedis per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso.”
Wary he must be. But his play, to win the coveted prize, must be topical and up-to-date. “Shall Alcibiades be recalled?” This theme must bring the Comedy to its end.
It was to promote this recall that Theramenes had struck, on his friend’s behalf, his deadly blow at the generals of Arginusae a few months earlier. These were the nominees of the democratic party which had expelled the great admiral and triumphed in his downfall. They were his political foes. Could they be but removed with disgrace from the stage, was it not empty for the return of the victim of their in-justice?
Theramenes on his own behalf, on Alcibiades’ behalf, on his City’s behalf, struck his deadliest and most fatal blow at the military chiefs of the rival party. He had won this the first round of the final political struggle in free Athens.
Adeimantus, one of his own party, friend, perhaps kinsman, of Alcibiades was now elected general.
Theramenes had won the second round.
He himself was elected general for 405 B.C. Final victory seemed within his grasp.
The opposite party rallied. Every newly elected general had to pass his “scrutiny” before the election was finally confirmed. Theramenes was rejected on his scrutiny.{721} The democratic party carried the elections. On the Board of ten Generals elected to carry on the war in 405 B.C. Adeimantus only was Alcibiades’ adherent. Theramenes’ final despairing effort had failed. Alcibiades, “the most excellent and valiant of all the generals,” as Plutarch calls him, was not recalled.{722}
Cleophon’s position remained unbroken and his influence with the people supreme.
After the battle of Arginusae Sparta sent once more to Athens, offering the same terms of peace as she had proposed after the battle of Cyzicus. Cleophon came rolling drunk and wearing a breastplate into the Assembly, and the offer was with contumely rejected. The radical leaders at Athens were always optimists during the war. But on this occasion both the demagogue and the people were mad. Sparta had infinite resources behind her. Athens had none. Grote was driven to deny the truth of the tale of the peace embassy. It was a mere blunder, he urged, on part of a poor scholiast who, misreading a passage in a lost work by Aristotle, mixed up the battles of Cyzicus and Arginusae. Since Grote’s death the lost work has been recovered. The tale stands fast, the demagogue condemned. No Grote reappears to champion a truly desperate cause.{723} “Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat.”
Sparta bestirred herself with grim energy. Lysander must take command again. Prince Cyrus and the Greek cities in Asia sent begging for his appointment. The law of Sparta forbade it. One Aracus, recently an ephor, was appointed Admiral, with Lysander as his “secretary”. Aracus knew his duty. His “secretary” was to have the undisputed handling of the ships. The radical people of Athens, in their frenzy, deride the law rather than obey it, and threaten its champions. The conservative government of Sparta, in its need, tricks the law rather than amend it. The former lose, the latter gain at once, by the same disregard for law. Reverence for law is a Roman virtue.
In the spring of 405 B.C. Lysander with 35 ships arrived at Ephesus, and there mustered his forces. From Chios Eteonicus brought to him a fleet of 100 ships. Prince Cyrus lavished gold upon him before going up to King Darius, then dying at Susa, in hopes of the succession. More ships came to Lysander from Rhodes and other cities, and many more were hastily built for him at Antandrus. It was with an enormous fleet of 200 vessels and with a full war chest besides that at last he put out to sea. Twenty-eight Vice-Admirals, a pet soothsayer, and Callicratidas’ own pilot Hermon sailed under his command.{724}
The Athenians meanwhile had not been idle. Adeimantus came home asking for reinforcements. They despatched back with him more generals to Conon at Samos with such further ships as they could collect. They further armed the generals with a new decree, that all prisoners taken after battle should at once have their right hands cut off. By its brutality Cleophon almost leaves his master Cleon in the lurch. Adeimantus had opposed the decree in vain. Grote cannot bring himself to credit the tale (which indeed has variants).{725} Yet Philocles (one of the new generals appointed upon the recall of the victors of Arginusae), who may have been the actual author of the decree, thought poorly of its mercy. Capturing a Corinthian and an Andrian ship, he had every living soul on board the two vessels hurled down from a rocky cliff to perish in the waves beneath. And Philocles was an Athenian. Truly the war in its last stages had “assumed the brutal character of an Annihilation-War”, as the German puts it.{726}
The Athenians’ fleet, 180 ships strong, sailed out from Samos, searching for Lysander. A decisive battle was imperatively in their interests, and at once. Reserve funds they had none. Lysander was not so anxious to fight. Prince Cyrus had implored him to be cautious, and to wait until he himself could bring up the Phoenician fleet to join the Spartan.
Sailing south to Rhodes, Lysander eluded the Athenians. These, splitting up into small squadrons, ranged plundering up and down the Ionian coast. Then Lysander on a sudden made a dash for the Hellespont, and reached Abydos harbour, meeting no enemy on the voyage. From Abydos he moved 18 miles upstream to Lampsacus, and took the town at once by storm. He enjoyed now all the resources of a rich city and of the countryside behind it to maintain him so long as he pleased. And the harbour mouth could be guarded securely against any possible attack.
Conon and his colleagues reassembled their 180 ships and followed in pursuit. From Chios they sailed to Elaeus, from Elaeus to Sestos, and then, in a fatal moment, from Sestos to the open beach of “Goat’s River”, Aegospotami, which was situated a bare two miles across the water from Lampsacus. Here there was neither village, nor food, nor shelter, nor security. Yet surely they could entice Lysander out to fight. With what other purpose could he have voyaged so far north, so far from any hope of reinforcement by the Phoenician fleet?
Four days passed by. Every morning at daybreak the Athenian ships bore down in line of battle upon Lampsacus. Every morning they saw the enemy’s fleet in perfect order waiting for them motionless and ready. Every morning slowly crept on to noon. The Athenians dared not attack, prow to prow, the embattled Spartan line. Every morning the sailors clamoured for their mid-day meal, and the ships went back to their own shore. Every morning a few of Lysander’s speediest ships followed them in observation. Every morning the crews landed for their meal, and went roaming the bare countryside for fuel and food, scattering the more widely in their quest as day followed day. Lysander’s scouting ships returned to Lampsacus. The enemy had disembarked, they reported. Then, but not till then, the Spartan sent his crews ashore.
It was the afternoon of the fourth day when a solitary horseman came riding down from the hills into the Athenian camp on shore. It was Alcibiades, coming hot haste from his Thracian home. Ten years earlier he, victim of bitter injustice, like Coriolanus, his great Roman counterpart, had cried:
“I will fight
Against my cankered country with the spleen
Of all the under fiends.”
Now he came to save her in her last and greatest peril, that of commanders careless, boastful, incompetent, face to face with a watchful, wary, and brilliant foe. Who knew Lysander so well as did Alcibiades, for so many a long month of late in command against him?
The Athenian generals gave him audience. “Let them withdraw again to Sestos,” he implored them. “There they had a harbour and a city. Thence they could fight whenever they might please. He too would raise the natives of the countryside, the Thracian tribes and their chieftains, in their support. To let their seamen go roaming on the shore, with a Lysander across the strait two miles away—this was the extreme of peril.”
Tydeus, one of the generals of Cleophon’s choice, answered with a sneer. “Pray, are you general,” he enquired, “or are we?” Alcibiades rode away.
The fifth day dawned.
Out sallied the Athenian ships once more as the sun rose, and hovered off Lampsacus’ harbour mouth. The silent enemy line was ranged once more in disciplined order against them. Back for the fifth time to Goat’s River the Athenians went, dogged by Lysander’s following scouts. Ever more scornful of the cowardly foe, for the fifth time the sailors poured out of their vessels to the land. Only Conon kept his own crew aboard and those of seven other vessels with him. And the crew of the famous “flagship”, the Paralus, also still stayed by their oars.
They saw Lysander’s scouts rowing homeward, as on all previous days. They did not see the flashing of a shield from these, when they had reached mid-channel.
At the signal, thousands of oars crashed in the quiet water. The whole of Lysander’s waiting line rushed forward as one ship upon their helpless prey. In vain Conon gave the call to instant action. In some of the Athenian vessels they had manned two banks of oars, in others one, but many were still empty when the foe fell upon them. Of fighting there was none. Conon and his tiny squadron escaped and fled far over the sundering seas to Cyprus in the distant south. Many a long year passed before he saw again his native country. The flagship sped back to Athens with the news. Athens’ last navy was destroyed.
“In one single hour Lysander had brought the longest of wars to an end.”{727}
Some 20 Athenian ships in all escaped. The 160 were captured. A large number of sailors fled overland to Sestos and neighbouring towns. Those who were taken prisoners, as were all the generals except Conon, could expect small mercy from a Lysander. They found none. To the number of at least 3000, the Athenians among them were all put to death in cold blood at Lampsacus. Adeimantus only was spared, because he had opposed the recent barbarous decree of the Athenian people. With the natural instinct, whether of an Athenian or of a Parisian mob, to cry “nous sommes trahis”, his fellow-countrymen accused Adeimantus of betraying the fleet. The only treachery, as the story of the disaster very clearly shows, was the incompetence of all the generals alike. But Adeimantus was of the rival “Moderate” party, and Adeimantus alone had been given his life by Lysander. What better scapegoat could be found?{728}
Philocles died bravely enough. Lysander taunted him. What penalty, the Spartan asked him, could he assign himself who had given such counsel concerning Hellenes to his fellow-citizens?
“Where there is no judge”, the Athenian retorted, “there is no accuser. Lysander was conqueror. Let him do as, had he been conquered, he would have been done by.” Philocles bathed and clad himself in a fair bright robe, and was the first to offer his throat to the executioner.{729}
Lysander had no need for haste. With all deliberation he sailed for the Peiraeus, capturing town after town on the way. Every city in the Empire was lost to Athens, save Samos only, which clung desperately to her loyalty. Every garrison elsewhere was promised life and at once surrendered. The Athenians were ordered to return to Athens. The more crowded the city was, the more rapidly famine would do its work. Byzantium, Calchedon, Sestos, all the Thracian towns, Mitylene, submitted. In the late autumn Lysander’s fleet sailed into the Saronic Gulf. The Athenian inhabitants of Aegina were expelled and the few Aeginetan refugees who had escaped their enemies’ cruelty were restored to their homes.{730} Melos and Scione presently received the like recompense for their sufferings at Athens’ hands. Two Spartan armies under the Kings Pausanias and Agis marched up to the walls of Athens and encamped in the Academy. Lysander straitly blockaded the Peiraeus. The city began to hunger.
Still for a while there was no thought of surrender.
Winter drew on. The Spartan armies returned home. The blockade by sea continued. Men died of famine in the streets daily. They sent to Agis (now back at Decelea) pleading to be admitted to alliance with Sparta.
“They would surrender the whole Empire if they might keep Peiraeus and their walls.”
The matter was not for him to decide, the king replied. “Let them send envoys to Sparta.” At Sellasia near the Laconian frontier the envoys were stopped.
“Go back”—so the ephors sent them word—”If you need peace, be more wisely counselled when you come again.”
The envoys returned with news of the rebuff. Archestratus urged acceptance of the enemy’s demand. He was thrown into prison. A decree of Cleophon’s manufacture forbade any proposal about the walls.
Theramenes asked to be sent to Lysander. He would at least discover, so he urged, what Sparta’s intentions really were. His citizens bade him go. It was early January when he left the stricken city. It was full April before he returned. Lysander had detained him all these months, he said, and had finally told him that only the ephors could answer his enquiries. Theramenes has been bitterly blamed for his long delay, a voluntary delay in fact. For, all the while, men were dying of starvation in his city. It can only be urged that he must be left to judge how long time was necessary to bring the people to their senses. When he left, Archestratus was in prison. When he returned, at last the people were prepared to bow to the inevitable. Meanwhile there was one less mouth to feed in Athens and—plenty to eat elsewhere for a visitor on friendly terms with Lysander. Theramenes was not an Adrian Van der Werf, heroic burgomaster of Leyden.{731}
Theramenes on his return at once was sent, head of an embassy of ten, to Sparta. “They had come as plenipotentiaries,” so they sent word to the ephors. The latter therefore consented to give them audience. They carried back to Athens Sparta’s final terms, offered Athens in spite of Corinth’s and Thebes’ demand that the city should be utterly destroyed. The Long Walls and the Peiraeus fortifications were to be razed to the ground. All ships, save a dozen only, were to be surrendered. All exiles were to be restored. All foreign policy was to be of Sparta’s dictation. On these terms Athens might have peace.
The survivors of the raging famine thronged in anguish round Theramenes and his fellow-envoys when they re-entered the city. Had they brought back any terms? Next day the people heard their news. Theramenes urged submission. Some few opposed.
“Dare you deliver up to Spartans the walls built by Themistocles, defiant of Spartan wishes?” a fervid youngster cried.
“Boy”, the old statesman answered, “I do nought contrary to Themistocles. He raised these walls to save the citizens. We, to save them, shall cast them down.”{732}
All such opposition was shattered on the rock of fact. A vast majority voted for the acceptance of the terms.
“After these things Lysander sailed into the Peiraeus, and the exiles returned, and men began with great eagerness to raze the walls to the sound of merry piping, thinking that that day was the beginning of liberty for Hellas.”{733}
It was the sixteenth day of the month Munychion, about the 25th of April, in the year 404 B.C., when Athens capitulated. The great war was ended. It had lasted 27 years.