The Road to Sardis

by Stephanie Plowman

  ‘But at least you can tell me this—if you feel he’s going to be so unpopular because of the play, can’t you stop him writing it?’

  ‘Stop him? He has to write it. Something—god or demon—is driving him on.’

  But then Grandfather started marshalling us in tones strongly reminiscent of my drill instructor, and there was no more chance of private conversation.

  We reached the Assembly just before the formalities began. In due course Nicias was invited to give his opinion on the speediest means of equipping the ships, and to tell citizens whatever else he thought might be needed. Well, he did his best, started by saying we shouldn’t be considering ways and means, but whether the expedition should sail at all. If we must send forces overseas, they should be sent to Thrace.

  The suggestion about Thrace was fatal. I have shortened Nicias’ speech a great deal, of course, giving only the salient points, so that with all the rambling cut out, it reads a great deal better than it actually sounded; also, you do not have that unbearably flat and irritating voice inflicted on you, He pronounced ‘Thrace’ in a particularly whining way, so much so that after this speech of his, it became a joke—you’d say, ‘Go to Thra-a-ace!’ instead of ‘Go to Hell!’ and you’d always get a laugh.

  It was, typically, Alcibiades who started this particular joke. Nicias was grinding on, reminding us that since we were just enjoying the benefits of our recovery from war and plague, we should use these benefits . . .

  ‘In Thra-a-ace,’ mimicked Alcibiades in a voice loud enough to be heard throughout the Assembly It was cruelly exact. Everybody rocked with laughter, even Grandfather.

  Nicias’ body jerked as if he had been stung; his yellowish face went a dark, mottled red, and, quite simply, he lost his head. In a kind of high-pitched scream, he shouted his incoherent rage and hatred. ‘Trying to keep up his rackety way of life at the cost of his country—he’s squandered his own fortune, so what will he do to the City’s?’ And then, almost in tears—‘It’s a matter of importance, nothing for young men to decide or start upon.’

  The uproar was tremendous. Alcibiades laughing in Nicias’ face, the President for the day tugging at his mantle, trying to call him to order and decorum, but by this time Nicias was quite beside himself, and went on shouting, as far as we could hear, that the City was threatened by the greatest danger in her history.

  By this time the President was nearly wrenching his arm off, and bellowing like a bull. Either pain or the blaring voice penetrated, and Nicias was silent for a moment, staring stupidly about him. Then, in his usual flat, cracked voice, he said formally, ‘Mr President, if you wish to show yourself a good citizen, you’ll put to the vote the whole question I’ve raised.’

  It seemed incredible to me that this yellow-faced, peevish-looking man with the whining voice that fretted the nerves, had gained the great influence that undoubtedly was his. I suppose he appealed to all the ‘respectable’ elements of society—he was rich, and so he would not favour any policy threatening property or steady income. He was also pious, and this was infinitely reassuring.

  But this was one of the occasions when the respectable element wasn’t having it all its own way. Speaker after speaker got up to commend the Sicilian project. The infection by this time had spread to all ages and all classes. All were convinced the expedition would be invincible. Men with grey in their beards said boisterously the question was not whether the expedition would prove a success, but how soon. People of Alcibiades’ age talked largely of being ‘cooped up’ in Athens. Poorer people as well as the traders saw in the idea a heaven-sent chance of getting rich quickly. Rowers, it had been proposed, would get far more than the usual rate of pay; already people were discussing what should be done with the tribute gained from the rich Sicilian cities. And finally, after his cronies had carefully built up an atmosphere for him, Alcibiades himself spoke.

  Anyone being told years later exactly what he said on this occasion, may well ask in amazement, ‘How did he get away with it?’ for he really made no attempt to meet the points raised by Nicias. But you would ask this only if you had never known Alcibiades. Nicias had the good arguments, a wretched voice, a distinctly uncharming physical appearance; Alcibiades, having a magnificent voice and splendid looks did not have to bother with arguments.

  What exactly did he say?

  That he deserved to command because of what he had done in the Olympics. By entering seven teams—a number never entered before by any person—which came first, second and fourth, and taking good care that it was all done in great style, he had entirely confounded those who thought Athens was ruined by the war; indeed, he had made such a magnificent impression that people now thought us to be more powerful than we actually were. The same applied to his general style of living. At this there was a growl from Grandfather, ‘So because he has a silk bedspread, they’re shivering in their shoes in Sparta?’

  And then he fell to baiting the wretched Nicias, playing on his hatred of being left out in the cold. Nicias felt he was too young, he said; Nicias himself was no longer young, but was notorious for his luck. Let Athens, therefore, make use both of his own youth and Nicias’ luck, and elect them both.

  And then Nicias himself was beside my uncle, twitching at his mantle.

  ‘I did my best, Demosthenes!’ he said. ‘What can I do now?’

  My uncle’s reply was immediate. ‘Refuse the command,’ and there was an inarticulate growl of agreement from Grandfather. Nicias’s reaction, however, was one of horror.

  ‘What!’ he said. ‘And let that young rake go off in sole command of the expedition?’

  ‘Forgive the plain speaking, but the situation’s desperate. The people know you love power; if you relinquished it now, this would come like a douche of cold water to them. Will you do it?’

  But Nicias only kept saying that this would leave a clear field for Alcibiades.

  ‘Then for God’s sake, take yourself off, man!’ exploded Grandfather, who until this moment, had been heroically restraining his impatience. ‘Coming and trying to mutter and plot with my son—can’t you ever be straightforward?’

  ‘It’s fatal to be crude in politics,’ retorted Nicias, adding spitefully, ‘That’s why no one ever listens to you.’

  ‘They’re not exactly flapping their ears to hear you at present, are they?’ demanded Grandfather rudely.

  ‘They may,’ said Nicias. ‘Alcibiades hasn’t won yet.’

  He left us, made his way to the platform.

  ‘Is he going to refuse the command?’ I whispered excitedly.

  Grandfather gave me a disgusted look. ‘Use your head, boy!’ he groaned. ‘No, he’s going to be clever, he’s going to outwit Alcibiades, he thinks.’

  So the cracked voice of Nicias was heard again, and his tactics were soon obvious. He meant to chill his hearers’ blood by emphasising the enormous difficulties of the expedition, after which he calculated the Assembly would conclude the enterprise was not worth the effort; he therefore demanded an enormous force of a hundred triremes, soldiers and supplies, five thousand heavy infantry, archers, slingers—oh, yes, and grain and bakers—which made my family promptly conclude as one man that he’d cornered the market in wheat and barley. He was promptly voted them.

  Grandfather looked without pity at his dropped jaw, his face grey with consternation, and said, ‘Now he realises he’s given Alcibiades the biggest expedition ever to sail from Greece.’

  I regret that he was unkind enough to push through the excited crowd and say as much to Nicias, as the Assembly broke up. Nicias looked at him with acute dislike, and said, ‘Alcibiades doesn’t have sole command, you know.’

  ‘If that expedition sails, he’ll be in charge all right.’

  Nicias glared, said in a somewhat oracular voice that the expedition had not sailed yet, and that there was many a slip between cup and lip, peered suddenly over Grandfather’s shoulder, flushed and made his escape. There was an amused laugh.

 
‘Our first planning session with that old fire-eating fool, Lamachus, should be interesting,’ drawled Alcibiades.

  Grandfather was now in excellent trim.

  ‘Yes,’ he said briskly. ‘It should certainly be something worth remembering, with you expounding your strategy of genius—conquering Sparta by way of Sicily. And a hell of a lot of good Syracuse will be to us, if the Spartans are sitting down in Decelea, say!’

  Alcibiades said, ‘You old gentlemen get so excited, don’t you? But you, Demosthenes, don’t you think we’ll take Syracuse?’

  ‘I think you’ve every chance of taking it unless you act like madmen,’ said my uncle, ‘but I don’t see how you can hold it, with those long lines of communication.’

  ‘Oh, holding it doesn’t matter,’ said Alcibiades airily. ‘Let’s simply conquer it and hold it for a little while—our wonderful blazing success will resound through Greece, and Sparta’ll lose all her allies.’

  Then his blue eyes burning bright, were on me. ‘I’m sorry last night wasn’t gayer,’ he said. ‘Tonight, however, I’m throwing a real party to celebrate what’s been settled today. I’ll tell the doorkeeper to keep a special lookout for you.’

  ‘He needn’t waste his time,’ I said gently. ‘You see, there wouldn’t be any point in my coming—I’ve nothing to celebrate.’

  Callistratus and I went out to the farm at Marathon that afternoon, seeking the soothing company of horses.

  The Acropolis was growing misty, the dying sun glowed red on the top of the Maiden’s spear as we regained the City, but if dusk was falling as we made our way through the quiet streets, one street in Athens, at least, was anything but dark and quiet. Anyone passing Alcibiades’ house who was neither deaf nor blind would know a celebration of no uncertain kind was going on there; the wonder was we had not heard the singing out at Marathon. It was not the kind of singing one would expect; even though the celebrants were so tipsy that the words were blurred and indistinct, the tunes and rhythms were unmistakable.

  I said to Callistratus, as we turned the corner, ‘They’re singing hymns, aren’t they?’

  He replied tersely that he would hate to know the precise variations that were being blared out.

  Next morning, however, all Athens buzzed with the story; as far as we could make out, it had occurred to my elated cousin and his followers that it would be extraordinarily amusing to parody a few religious ceremonies, and they had ended up with a mock celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries, at which point, said my uncle, the party ceased to be funny.

  But even this scandal did not stop people talking about Syracuse. The infatuation had spread so far that you found little groups everywhere, in the street or down at the seashore, drawing sketch-maps in dust or sand to show the shape of Sicily, the position of the cities—all wildly inaccurate, but significant, and horribly dangerous. And the fever went on growing, even though the production of Euripides’ play made the most thick-witted Syracusan fanatic pause for a moment. But only for a moment.

  19

  ‘The long ships lie waiting’

  The theatre is, of course, in the sunniest spot in the City, and so one is extremely grateful that the Dionysia is celebrated in the Spring—if the plays had been performed in the summer, I don’t know whether even my devotion to Euripides could have kept me chained to a red-hot rock for hours on end.

  For the first time I opened my eyes on the first morning of the Festival without pleasurable excitement—indeed, I awoke in a state of most miserable apprehension, for today I should see performed the tragedy Euripides believed would make him so unpopular that he had cut himself off from all his friends so that they should not be involved in the hatred he felt he must incur. I had not slept much, thinking of this, and so, of course, when I eventually dozed off into a nightmarish slumber, I was in danger of oversleeping. But Callistratus roused me, just as the first cocks were crowing; in the small square of the window behind his tall figure the sky was a dark grey, barely light enough for me to see he was already wearing his ivy-leaf garland.

  ‘I’m going ahead to the theatre,’ he said. ‘Make my apologies to your grandfather.’

  ‘Is anything wrong?’

  ‘No, it’s simply that I know something about the play, and it’ll take all my nerve to sit through it; normal conversation on the way to the theatre would be beyond me.’

  ‘If Grandfather’ll excuse me, may I come straight away to join you?’

  ‘If you like,’ and he was gone.

  When I waylaid Grandfather as he emerged from his bedroom, he took my request very quietly, and after his usual minute inspection of my appearance to ensure that the grandson of Alcisthenes did not disgrace Alcisthenes, he sent me off with instructions to keep seats for himself and my uncle.

  The sun shot up into the eastern sky as I hurried through the empty streets, and, by the time I rounded the south-eastern slope of the Acropolis, was high enough to have coaxed from slumber a small lizard which basked cheerfully if impiously in the priest’s chair. And there was Callistratus, sitting quite alone, chin in hand; his face was all moving gold in the sunlight, but his eyes were very dark, and the old blind, remote look of twelve years before had returned to them.

  I went noiselessly across, and sat down at some distance from him. He moved his head a little to watch my approach, but said nothing; I would not go and sit next to him until the first chattering groups began to throng the theatre, then I moved up and sat on his right as a soldier should do, and in this way shielded him from them. He had been staring over to the mass of Aegaleus and Fames, and beyond that, of course, in his mind to Cithaeron, where once Plataea had stood. He was thinking, I believe, of his mother and sister. Grandfather, when he came up with my uncle a good hour later, took one look at the withdrawn face, and sat down at his left hand without greeting him; I myself had not spoken all the time I had been there.

  So we sat, a little group curiously isolated in that crowded, chattering place, even Grandfather absolutely silent save for one outburst provoked by the arrival of Alcibiades, who, to the accompaniment of wild cheering, took his special place of honour, reserved in the front row for Olympic winners.

  ‘Ah,’ said Grandfather, and I think as he spoke quietly to himself he was remembering a dead son who had also won the chariot race, ‘this time next year the poets will have thinner audiences, depend upon it. Row after row of empty seats then—for good, perhaps, and all due to that fellow. Festive garlands, but precious few festive faces.’

  After that even the spectacle of the ambassadors from Segesta being ushered to places reserved for distinguished visitors, and also getting rounds of cheers, for they after all would foot the bill for our triumphant progress, brought no reaction from him. Not so much as a grunt came from him when my uncle, seeing Socrates coming in late, signalled to him that there was a place by us. Socrates had scarcely scrambled up the steps before the herald’s voice was sounding.

  The lizard had long since vanished; the priest of Dionysus was standing, moving forward to perform the sacrifice. We too were standing, Callistratus rigid beside me; despite the mildness of the day, my hands were like ice; I thought, ‘It must be like this before a battle.’ I found I was staring out to sea, out to the old harbour of Phaleron where, such was the extent of the Expedition, they were fitting out some of the ships for Syracuse.

  The herald’s voice again ‘. . . Euripides, son of Mnesarchus, presents his tragedy . . .’

  As we sat again, I found I was gripping on to the seat, thinking, ‘It’s bound to be a good play, at least.’

  It was: it was his greatest play—but I can never bear to read it again. Yet it should have been the play to re-read a hundred times, glorying in each reading—glorying, for by it the soul of Athens was saved, even at the eleventh hour. But eyes were blind, ears were deaf, and though twice in the bleak future Euripides would save Athenians, if men had only heeded him in those weeks before the Expedition sailed, so much and many more would have won thro
ugh to salvation, and the lights would not have gone out one after the other, leaving for us who remained only the dark.

  Let me summon up my courage and recall that bright spring day when my cousin sat in a seat of honour, coolly smiling, and above him, row upon row, sat restless men and boys to whom Syracuse meant only glory and adventure, so much so that, God pity and pardon us all, when Hecuba cried, ‘It is the ships that stir upon the shore’, they cheered.

  Three years later, a boy in Sicily said nervously to me, ‘If they were feeling like that, why did they sit there and let the play run on?’ The answer was simple—they were not really listening at first, they were either gazing adoringly down at my cousin, or clean out of the theatre altogether, to Phaleron. Already their minds were in Sicily, not here in Athens, far less centuries back outside ruined Troy. For Callistratus had not been quite as accurate as usual; the play was not about the Trojan War, it was about the aftermath of war, what happens after the surrender of a city. Like Melos. Or Plataea.

  It is the hour before dawn, and the great shapes of Gods brood over ruined Troy, as in the previous autumn they had assuredly brooded over a shattered small island. We in our little withdrawn group saw Poseidon abandoning the fallen city, as Gods must do, and he spoke of unburied dead, bloodstained sanctuaries, and as my heart whispered Melos . . . Plataea . . . with a sudden shock I saw a helmeted shape appear beside him, the Maiden herself, our own Goddess, as indeed she had been the champion of the Greeks at Troy. But she was no longer their Goddess; those who had enjoyed her special protection had done unholy things, and in terrible wrath she had turned against them, planned their punishment, and now asked the help of the Sea God. For this fleet there would be a homecoming that arrived at no home.

  I had told myself I would not look at my cousin as he lounged there, flushed and triumphant, but as the Maiden spoke of the insolence and impiety of her favourites that caused her now to resolve on their destruction, I stole a look at him, and out of the corner of my eye I saw that Socrates too was staring down at him with a kind of wistful intentness. And Alcibiades was not smiling now, the flush on his face was the flush of rage as Poseidon’s closing words came to us with all the beautiful clarity of the actor’s trained voice: