Tides of War, a Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War

by Steven Pressfield

  Alcibiades endeavored to induce Socrates to resume his dissertation on that subject which my arrival had interrupted, but before he could, the actor Alcaeus returned the topic to the shamed women of Potidaea.

  “Let us not employ lightly, gentlemen, the word 'degradation.'

  War is degradation. Its object is the ultimate degradation-death.

  These women have not been slain. Their bruises of the flesh will heal.”

  “You surprise me, my excellent friend,” Alcibiades replied. “As an actor you of all people should know that death takes many and far more evil forms than the physical. Isn't that what tragedy is all about? Consider Oedipus, Clytemnestra, Medea. Their wounds would heal as well. Yet were they not ruined utterly from within?”

  Mantitheus spoke. “If you ask me, it is not these women who suffer true debasement, but their fathers and brothers who permit them to be used in this hateful manner. These men possess options.

  They could starve. They could fight and die. In truth these young women are heroes. Consider that when a man risks all in defense of his country, he is crowned for valor. Are not these girls the same?

  Are they not sacrificing their most cherished possessions, their maidenhood and name of virtue, to succor their beleaguered countrymen? What if, come spring, their confederates the Spartans at last get off their asses and trek here to their aid? What if it is ourselves who are routed? By the gods, the Potidaeans should erect statues to these brave girls! In fact, taken in this light, our young gentleman here” [he indicated myself] “is not delivering these noble lasses from shame, but denying them their shot at immortality.”

  Laughter and choruses of “Again, again” greeted this, accompanied by raps of wine bowl bottoms upon the wooden crates and trunks which served as tables for the banquet.

  “But wait,” Alcibiades broke in, “I see our friend Socrates smiling. He is about to speak. In all conscience we must warn our comrade Polemides, or perhaps as Odysseus approaching the Isle of the Sirens stopper his ears with wax. For once exposed to the sweet discourse of our friend, he will find himself enslaved forever, as are we all.”

  “You make sport of me as usual, Alcibiades,” the man Socrates declared. “Must I endure such abuse, gentlemen, coming from this fellow who of all ignores my counsel, attending only to his own pursuit of popularity?”

  Socrates the son of Sophroniscus sat across from me. Of all assembled, his appearance was far the least prepossessing. He was stocky, thick-lipped and pug-nosed, already at forty quite bald, and his cloak, blood-besmirched yet from a skirmish earlier in the month, was of a cloth coarse and pecunious as a Spartan's.

  The men began chaffing him about an incident of several days prior. Apparently Socrates, standing outside in the bitter cold, had been seized midmorning with some enigma or perplexity. There he remained, in open sandals on the ice, pondering the issue daylong to the marvel of all who beheld him, themselves shivering indoors with their feet swathed in fleeces. The soldiers peeked out at intervals; there Socrates remained. It was not until nightfall that, his puzzlement resolved, he abandoned his self-imposed post and decamped to the fire for supper. Led by Alcibiades, the party demanded now to hear what riddle had with such tenacity occupied their friend's mind.

  “We were speaking of degradation,” Socrates began. “Of what does this consist? Is it not that apprehension of an individual according to a solitary quality, to the exclusion of all the manifold facets of his soul and being, then using him or her thereby? In the case of these unhappy women, that quality is their flesh and its utility in gratifying our own base desires. We dismiss all else that renders them human, descended of the gods.

  “Note further, gentlemen, that this single quality by which we convict these women and sentence them to exile from humanity is one over which they themselves possess no authority, a quality thrust upon them willy-nilly at birth. This is the antithesis of freedom, is it not? It is the use one makes of a slave. We treat even our dogs and horses better, granting to them their subtleties and contradictions of character and esteeming or contemning them thereby.”

  Socrates drew up and inquired of the company if any found fault with his meditation thus far. He was endorsed by all and exhorted to continue.

  “And yet we who consider ourselves free men often act in this manner not only toward others but toward ourselves as well. We account and define our persons by qualities gifted to or deprived us at birth, to the exclusion of those earned or acquired thereafter, brought into being by enterprise and will. This to my mind is an evil greater than degradation. It is self-degradation. “

  He glanced subtly toward Alcibiades. Our master of revels clearly discerned this look and returned it, amused and intrigued, and not without irony.

  Socrates resumed. “Pondering this state of self-slavery, I began to puzzle: what precisely are the qualities which make men free?”

  “Our will, as you said,” put in Acumenus the physician.

  “And the force to exercise it,” added Mantitheus.

  “My thoughts precisely, gentlemen. You are running along with me, and even outpacing my poor ruminations. But what is free will? We must agree that nothing that does not possess free will may be called free. And that which is unfree is degraded; that is, diminished to a state lesser than that intended by the gods.”

  “I think I see where this is going,” Alcibiades put in with a smile.

  “I feel chastisement coming, gentlemen, of myself and us all.”

  “Shall I break off?” Socrates inquired. “Perhaps our master of revels is fatigued, worn out from heroism and the adulation of his peers.”

  The company urged their comrade to recommence.

  “I was observing the young soldiers of the camp. Conformity to the norm is their overmastering impetus, is it not? Each unprompted wears his curls like every other, drapes his hem to the same length, and strides about and even postures in the identical attitude. Inclusion in the hierarchy is all; exclusion the paramount fear.”

  “This doesn't sound much like freedom,” volunteered Acumenus.

  “It sounds like democracy,” put in Euryptolemus with a laugh.

  “Would you agree, gentlemen, that these youths, tyrannized by the good opinion of their peers, do not possess freedom?”

  All concurred.

  “In fact they are slaves, are they not? They act not by the dictates of their own hearts, but to please others. There are two words for this. Demagoguery. And fashion.” The company responded with whistles and cheers. “To whose dictates you, Socrates, are mercifully immune,” declared Alcibiades.

  “No doubt with my poor cloak and sword-barbered beard I am perceived throughout the camp as a figure of fun. Yet I maintain that, unfettered by the constraints of the mode, I am the most free of men.”

  Socrates expanded his metaphor to include the Assembly at Athens. “Does there exist beneath heaven a spectacle more debased than that of a demagogue orating before the masses? Each syllable screeches of shamelessness, and why? Because we discern, hearing this vile wretch pimp himself to the multitude, that his speech springs not from the true conviction of his soul, but is crafted cunningly to truckle to the whim of the mob. He seeks his own advancement by their favor and will say anything, however wicked or infamous, to promote his stature in their eyes. In other words the politician is the supreme slave.”

  Alcibiades was thoroughly enjoying this give-and-get. “In other words you would declare of me, my friend, that by pursuing politics I act the pimp and panderer, seeking to advance my station among my peers, and that by so doing, I neglect my nobler self in favor of my baser.”

  “Is that what I would say?”

  “Ah, but here I have you, Socrates! For what if a man seeks not to follow his peers, but to lead them? What if his speech proceeds not from the falsehoods of the flatterer, but from the truest precincts of his heart? Is that not the definition of a man of the polis, a politician? One who acts not for himself, but for his city?”

&nb
sp; The conversation ran on with lively animation for most of the evening. I confess I did not, or could not, follow much of its twists and turns. At last, however, the discourse seemed to condense about one issue that the company had been debating before my arrival: could a man in a democracy be described as

  “indispensable,” and if so would this man merit dispensation beyond that of his lesser contemporaries?

  Socrates took up his post on the side of the laws, which, however imperfect, he professed, command that all men stand equal before them. Alcibiades declared this preposterous and with a laugh claimed that his friend did not, and could not, believe it. “In fact I nominate you beyond all, sir, as indispensable. I would sacrifice battalions to preserve your life, and so would every man at this table.”

  A chorus of “Again, again!” seconded this.

  “Nor do I speak from affection only,” the younger man continued, “but for the advantage of the state. For she needs you, Socrates, as her physician, to the tendance of her soul. Bereft of you, what shall become of her?”

  The older man could not contain a laugh. “You disappoint me, my friend, for I had hoped to discover love rather than politics sheltering beneath that devotion you so passionately proclaim. Yet let us not pass over this issue lightly, gentlemen, for at its heart lies matter which compels our most rigorous examination:

  “Which takes precedence, do we believe, man or law? To set a man above the law is to negate law entire, for if the laws do not apply equally to all, they apply to none. To install one man upon such a promontory founds that flight of steps by which another may later ascend. In fact I suspect, don't you, brothers, that when our companion nominates myself as indispensable, his intent is to establish that precedent by which he may next anoint himself.”

  Alcibiades, laughing, declared himself indeed indispensable.

  “Were not Themistocles, Miltiades, Pericles indispensable? The state would lie in ruins without them. And let us not forget Solon, who gave us those laws in whose defense our friend stands with such steadfastness. Do not misunderstand me. I seek not to overturn law, but to adhere to it. To declare men 'equal' would be absurd if it were not evil. In truth that argument which seeks to calumniate one man as 'above the law' is false on its face, for that man, if he be Themistocles or Cimon, conforms by his actions to a higher law, whose name is Necessity. To impede in the name of

  'equality' the indispensable man is the folly of one ignorant of the workings of this god, who antedates Zeus and Cronos and Earth herself and stands everlastingly as their, and our, lawgiver and progenitor.”

  More laughter and rapping of wine bowls. Socrates was about to respond when a commotion interrupted from without. An overturned brazier had set the adjoining shelter alight; now all poured forth to assist in its extinguishment. The salon broke up. I found myself beside Alcibiades. He motioned to his groom to fetch horses. “Come, Pommo, I'll escort you back to your camp.”

  I secured the password of the changing watch and we set out into the cold. “Well,” Alcibiades inquired when we had cleared the first line of pickets, “what did you think of him, our Professor Baldpate?”

  I replied that I could not quite make the man out. Sophists, I knew, grew rich from their fees. Yet Socrates, garbed as he was in homespun, appeared more like…

  “A beggar?” Alcibiades laughed. “That is because he scorns to profit from that which he pursues out of love. He would pay if he could; he considers himself not a teacher but a student. And I will tell you something else. My crown of valor…did you notice this night that I never set it, as one decorated ought, upon my head?

  This is because the prize rightly belongs to him, to our own coarsecloth master of discourse.”

  Alcibiades related that at the height of the battle for which he had been honored he had fallen, wounded and cut off, assailed on all sides by the enemy. “Socrates alone came to my defense, dashing from safety to shelter me beneath his shield, until our comrades could rally and return with reinforcements. I argued vehemently that the prize belonged to him, but he convinced the generals to award it to me, no doubt seeking to school my heart to aspire to forms of glory nobler than those of politics.”

  We traversed the remainder of the crossing in silence. Beyond the battlements of the besieged city one discerned cookfire smoke.

  “Do you mark that smell, Pommo?”

  It was horseflesh.

  “They're cooking their cavalry,” Alcibiades observed. “By spring they will be done for, and they know it.”

  At the foresters' camp Alcibiades made a show of his arrival, without words putting it clear to all that I stood in his esteem, and any who crossed me must deal with him. Sure enough, within ten days my commander received orders rotating him back to Athens, his replacement an officer with instructions to leave me free to run my platoon as I wished.

  I dismounted now and handed the reins back up to my friend.

  “What will you do with the rest of your evening?” he inquired.

  I would write a letter to my sister. “And you? Will you return to continue your discussions of philosophy?”

  He laughed. “What else?”

  I watched him depart, trailing the companion horse. His track in the snow bore him back, however, not along the picket line toward Aspasia Three, but in ascent upon the slope called Asclepium to that cabin of spruce wherein awaited the lady Cleonice, she of the violet eyes.

  Book II:

  THE LONG WALLS

  VI

  A YOUNG MAN'S SPORT

  Thus [Grandfather resumed] concluded my initial interview with the assassin Polemides. I left him and made haste to Socrates.

  It occurred to me crossing the Iron Court, which conjoined the wings of the prison, that mention of this evening thirty years past might summon a smile from our friend. In addition I was curious.

  Did Socrates recollect the young soldier called Pommo? I decided against this, however, not wishing to further burden one with so much already upon his mind. Also I imagined the crush of friends and followers would prevent me from securing a moment apart with our master.

  When I arrived at his cell, however, I discovered him alone. The mode of his execution had been established that day by the Eleven Administrators of Justice: he must take hemlock. Though this method mercifully spared the flesh from mutilation, its pronouncement this day, bringing home as it did the imminence of our master's end, had cast his friends into such a state that Socrates had been constrained to banish them, only to secure an interval of peace. Of this the warder informed me on my approach.

  I anticipated a similar dismissal and was relieved to see Socrates rising, motioning me warmly within. “So, Jason, are you coming from your other client?”

  He knew all about Polemides. Indeed he recalled the youth, he confirmed, not alone from that evening of the siege but from subsequent service with the infantry, and by report from Alcibiades' days of triumph in the East, in which Polemides had served as captain of marines. Our master remarked upon the conjunction of these two defendants, the philosopher sentenced for schooling Alcibiades and the assassin awaiting trial for slaying him. “It would seem that a jury possessed of consistency must, having convicted the one, acquit the other. This bodes well,” he observed, “for your client Polemides.”

  At that time Socrates' summers had passed seventy, yet he appeared save his beard gone white and the noble amplitude of his girth much as Polemides described during the siege of Potidaea.

  His limbs stood hale and sturdy, his carriage vigorous and purposeful; it required scant imagination to picture the veteran snatching up shield and armor to advance once again into the fray.

  Not surprisingly the philosopher evinced curiosity about his fellow inmate and even advanced counsel upon how best to defend him. “It is too late to file a countersuit, a paragraphe, declaring his indictment unlawful, which of course it is. Perhaps a dike pseudomartyriou, a suit for false witness, which may be invoked up to the moment of the jury's vote.” He lau
ghed. “You see, my own ordeal has rendered me something of a jailhouse lawyer.”

  We discussed the Amnesty, in place since the restoration of the democracy, which exempted all citizens from prosecution for crimes committed theretofore. “Polemides' enemies have gotten around this cleverly, Socrates, by charging him with 'wrongdoing.'

  That rakes a lot of mud, and, as he admits, there is more than enough with which to tar him.” I narrated an abridged version of Polemides' story, what he had told me thus far.

  “I knew several of his family,” Socrates remarked when this chronicle concluded. “His father, Nicolaus, was a man of exceptional integrity, who perished in attendance upon the stricken during the Plague. And I enjoyed a cordial if chaste acquaintance with his great-aunt Daphne, who effectively ran the Board of Naval Governors through her second and third husbands. She was the first of the aristocratic dames, in her widowhood, to conduct her affairs entirely on her own, with no male as kyrios or guardian, and not even a servant about the house.”

  Our master expressed concern for Polemides' comfort. “The heat is stifling on that side of the court, I hear. Please, Jason, take him this fruit, and that wine; I may imbibe no more, as they say it spoils the savor of hemlock.”

  When the others returned with the evening, some measure of amusement was wrung from the coincident confinement of the murderer and the philosopher. Crito, Socrates' wealthiest and most devoted follower, spoke. In the days prior to our master's trial, he had hired detectives and set about acquiring intelligence of the philosopher's accusers, seeking to bring to light their private crimes and thus discredit them and their indictments. It occurred to me now that I might do the same for Polemides.

  I had then in my employ a married couple of middle years, Myron and Lado. They were incorrigible snoops, both, who delighted in nothing more than digging up dirt on the high and mighty. I decided to set these bloodhounds to work. What had become of Polemides' family? What motivated his accusers? Had someone put them up to this, and if so, who? What covert agenda did they seek to promote?