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

by Steven Pressfield

  “I am not…” Alcibiades began, and, when his voice once more faltered, the heralds picked up that portion and relayed it as is.

  “I am not…”

  “…not the man I was…”

  “…not the man I was…”

  “…moments ago, mounting this platform.”

  Again the heralds flung the phrase up the amphitheater. At last Alcibiades found his voice and, gesturing his seconds to mount farther, resumed.

  “I had meant to cast myself in the role of savior. To present myself before you as one who brings with him, for your deliverance, alliance with that nation whose treasure and naval might will bring the victory which, unaided, you have thus far been unable to achieve. I had planned to address you as a commander and to wring from you a pledge of fidelity for the effort we must now make. But the sight of you…” Again his voice failed. “…the sight of you, my countrymen, breaks my heart. I am struck through with shame. It is not you who must pledge, but I. Not you who must serve, but I. That Athens which exiled me…”

  Once more he must re-collect himself, a hand upon the platform stanchion, to recapture his self-command.

  “That Athens which exiled me…that Athens I no longer recall.

  You are my Athens. You and this.” He gestured to the fleet and the sea and sky. “To you and to this I pledge my allegiance.”

  A cheer that was half sob and half cry of approbation ascended from the centered ranks to the outer peripheries. Intended or not, Alcibiades had set in words that grief and affliction that the men, too, felt for their nation, which to them as to their recalled leader seemed remote as Oceanus and dissevered not just from these, her sons, but from her own misplaced and misremembered soul.

  “If I have offended the gods, and I have, before you I entreat now their pardon. By their clemency, and to you who have honored me with your faith, I vow that no constraint of heaven or earth, nor the armies of hell itself, will stay me from spending for you and for our country all I possess. My blood, my life, all that I am and own, I pledge to you.”

  He stepped back and receded into the press of officers upon the platform.

  The amphitheater rang with fire and approbation.

  Thrasybulus now spoke, followed by the generals Diomedon and Leon. Individuals among the nautai and infantry addressed the assembly as well. The blood of all was still up from the coup and countercoup which had racked Samos itself just days past, in mirrored requital of the overthrows of state at home. At Athens, all knew, the democracy had been deposed. Acts of terror and assassination had cowed the demos, and that government styling itself the Four Hundred stood in command of the Assembly and the people, having proscribed from political participation all but themselves. Rumors of outrages inflamed the fleet, of violations inflicted upon free citizens, lawless arrests and executions, properties confiscated, the constitution of Cleisthenes and Solon overturned. The men on Samos feared for their families at home and for the nation herself which these tyrants, fresh reports testified, plotted to sell out to the foe to drive a deal to save their own skins.

  Now in the flush of Alcibiades' reaccession, the men cried for action and blood. Sail on Athens! Butcher the autocrats! Restore the democracy!

  Men of the infantry began to pound their thighs and stamp their soles; sailors on the ships beat their decks and timbers; on the quays the marines' stomping feet made the harbor resound; and even the boys and women set up such a racket of yip-yipping ululation that none could be heard who sought to quell them. Two of the taxiarchs arose; the men cried them down. Diomedon boomed in his great voice and even Thrasybulus, though the men, who loved him, let him speak, could not stanch their frenzy.

  Infantrymen rose and advanced upon the stacked arms. A press swelled toward the ships, as if on the instant of embarkation. As one they clamored for Alcibiades. Lead us! Take us home!

  The folly of this course, self-apparent to the cooler heads of command, yet held such passionate appeal for the men that no commander could dissuade them or dared try. Now Alcibiades must confront this derangement, not out of a base of the men's trust earned over time, of shared victories and attained respect, but on the instant and on his own.

  “If we sail, men, we will easily overturn our enemies at home and establish a government obedient to our whims and gratifying to our vanity.”

  The men cheered and rallied. He signed for silence and bade them ring him in.

  “But what mischief will we have left behind here in the Aegean?

  Let us consider this, brothers, and if we find the course you champion wise, not another hour shall expire before we sail, you and I, to depose the usurpers.”

  More salutes and cries of acclamation.

  Alcibiades called the Assembly to order. This was the phrase he used, and it had the effect intended. He commanded each individual to impose upon his ungoverned heart that self-dominion which differentiates free men from slaves and recall himself to what he was-a man of reason, capable of reflection and deliberation. Now, he directed, let us as an exercise place ourselves in the position of our enemies.

  “Imagine we are Mindarus, Spartan commander at Miletus, learning of our resolve to sail for home. Recall, friends, that spies among us will report to him before nightfall all we debate here this day…”

  Coolly and rationally Alcibiades instructed the men on those opportunities the fleet's withdrawal would present to the foe and how the enemy must and would pounce upon them. He addressed his hearers not as a general his troops, but as an officer in counsel with brother officers or a statesman in discourse before the ekklesia.

  The Aegean undefended, the Spartans will seize the Hellespont, and with that cut off all grain for us and for Athens. The enemy holds Lampsacus and Cyzicus. Byzantium has revolted to him. He will overthrow Ionia and seize every strategic choke point on the straits. We must turn about from home at once, merely to preserve from starvation the very prize we have just won. And what will await us here on our return? Not an enemy as at present, on the sea where we hold advantage, but dug in on land, from which fortifications we must then dislodge him. He inquired of the men if they were ready to fight Spartans on land, on their own terms. And what base will we employ? The first place the enemy will seize will be Samos, the very stones and timbers upon which we now stand.

  Now he presented the most ruinous consequence of withdrawal: its effect upon the Persian. How will he, our benefactor upon whom all depends, respond to this unadvertised decampment? Will he perceive us as reliable allies in whom he may place trust? Tissaphernes will dump us, as an eagle an asp, and re-ally himself with Sparta. He must, if only from fear of their new power, no longer checked by us, that they may turn upon and overrun him.

  “Remember this, brothers. Athens is ours anytime we choose to take her. But Athens is not her bricks and stones, or even the land itself. We are Athens. This is Athens. The enemy lies there,” he proclaimed, gesturing to the east and south, the occupied cities of Ionia and the Lacedaemonian bastion at Miletus. ul came to fight Spartans and Peloponnesians, not my own countrymen. And by the gods, I will make you fight them too!”

  A murmur of self-chastisement swept the host, who at last perceived not only their own folly, in contrast to the sense of their new commander, but his dexterity in deflecting them from this course of calamity. Already in the first hour of his recall he had preserved the state. More so, the men now reckoned, he had displayed such iron temerity to face them down, single-handed, as no other would or could. One felt a sea change as the men came to themselves at last, perceiving the sureness of their principal's hand and the slenderness of the margin by which he had steered them from ruin.

  “But if your hearts remain set on this course, brothers, sail for home now. But look first there, to that arm of the breakwater the Samians call the Hook. For I will station my ship at its shoulder, and this I swear by Nike and Athena Protectress, that I will strike as thunder the first vessel that seeks to pass me outbound, and the next and the next after that,
until you slay me upon the site. He will sail for Athens, he that will, over my cold corpse.”

  Such a shout greeted this as eclipsed even the tumult that had preceded it. At once Thrasybulus stepped to the fore, dismissing the assembly, ordering the men to disperse to their duties and all trierarchs and squadron commanders to report to fleet command.

  This headquarters was situated in what had been the old Customs House, which filled now with the swarming officers, above four hundred counting ship's masters, infantry commanders, and captains of marines. The overflow, including Thrasybulus, Thrasyllus, Alcibiades, and the taxiarchs, settled after some confusion in the hall adjacent, employed formerly for storage of contraband and now serving as collection site for spare masts and sail, hull girdles and sundry hanging and wooden gear of the fleet.

  A number of commanders spoke, addressing the requirements of the hour. Protomachus set as paramount the need for cash; the men must be paid; they are demoralized and have been for months.

  Lysias professed the imperative for further training; Erasinides spoke to the ships and their seaworthiness. Others clamored to follow; it seemed the deficiencies of vessels and men must mount to infinity, each more pressing than the next. Alcibiades shifted upon his feet, a move so subtle as barely to merit notice. At once all hubbub stilled. The officers, gone silent as one, turned unprompted toward him who, though technically holding a third only of the tripartite command, the congress now acknowledged by its deferral as supreme commander.

  “I approve all you say, gentlemen. The fleet's needs are many and urgent. One, however, must take precedence. This item the men need before all, and we must get it for them without fail and without deferral.”

  Alcibiades drew up, as a poet or actor upon the stage, drawing by his silence his hearers more raptly to attend.

  “We must get the men a victory.”

  Book VI

  VICTORY AT SEA

  XXIX

  THE INTERSECTION OF NECESSITY AND FREE WILL

  Sidescreens up, it is no easy matter to sight over the prow of a hurtling man-of-war. Spray blasts over the forepeak; the catheads sling seas with each belly and bounce; the craft's gunwales ride so tight to the waterline, her trim so precarious, that the marine topside who rises even to move half a yard is pelted with oaths, as his displaced weight, even for that reckless instant, destabilizes the entire ship. The oarsmen's backs are to the target; they can't see either. The top-bankers' eyes dart to the marines on deck, athwartships through the step-down, to guess at impact.

  At Cyzicus Alcibiades' flagship was Antiope, taken over after Resolute went down off Teas. The top-bank oarsman beside me was an Acharnian called Charcoal, whom I knew from a chorus of the Lenaea when we were boys. A renowned gourmand, this fellow; he was instructing me on eels, the proper way to prepare them for the grill. The ship hurtled toward that stretch of shore called the Plantations, upon which two score Spartan triremes had been driven in flight, their seamen and marines, above eight thousand, hastening to jig the vessels into a rampart, as Antiope and two squadrons of sixteen bore down upon them. Such a delicacy must not be profaned with excess spice and seasoning, Charcoal proclaimed as he heaved on the beat; a simple basil and oil marinade will reveal the flesh's intrinsic sweetness. That was the word he used: intrinsic. We were among the breakers now.

  Marines braced on their knees topside, slinging the salt-sticky javelins raked from the surface following the sea fight. “I'll write it down for you,” Charcoal bawled, meaning the grilling instructions, when a Magnesian ironhead took him square at the base of the ear, driving through and out the sheath of the neck. His oar fell and so did he.

  There was a seawall shielding the planters' estates, and from atop this the defenders unleashed a fire of ungodly concentration as the ships drove onto the muck flat beneath. The foe hurled stones and javelins and the wicked double-edged darts the Boeotians call “nut-cutters” and the Spartans “hatpins.” I felt two rake the backs of my thighs and was seized with fury, diced by these utensils. A fist hauled me to my feet. “What are you doing-rat-holing?”

  It was Alcibiades.

  He rushed forward onto the prow, flanked by the others of our party, Timarchus, Macon, and Xenocles, whose office it was with me to protect him. Marines in armor rode both catheads and the wales at the cutwater, even the rams themselves. The trumpet blared “Back water!”; oarsmen set into the straps of their footboards and heaved forward on the beat. Marines were pouring over the prow and both gunwales. Alcibiades had sprung to the strand, shouting for grapnels.

  The Lacedaemonians were above us, supported by the Persian Pharnabazus' infantry and mobs of Magnesian mercenaries, whom one recognizes by their beards, jet as ink, which they wear parted and netted. Furious fire poured from the foe. We wore only felt caps; you had to, or you couldn't pick out the flung ash as it shrieked toward your man, to deflect it. The Athenians foundered, fighting uphill in the sand. Now the Spartans made their rush. The lines crashed along the length of the strand. I heard Macon at my shoulder screaming profanity. Where was Alcibiades?

  He had burst through on his own. We could see him, churning upslope into the no-man's-land between the Spartan rush and their beached ships. One cannot know the meaning of rage until he has served to protect such a man from his own fire for victory.

  Alcibiades wore no helmet and bore only his shield and a marine ax. He reached the first ship and sank a grapnel. Two of the foe fought to rip it free; he stove in the first's skull with his shield, hamstrung the second with his ax. He hammered the iron into the timbers of the enemy prow. We of the lifeguard must now emulate him. There is a terrible skill to defending the flung javelin, particularly when one must set his own flesh as shield before another. I have never cursed any as our commander; I spit at him and slung stones; so did the others. He never saw a thing.

  Three and a half years later, before Byzantium, I attended a nightlong drinking bout. Someone had put the query “How does one lead free men?” “By being better than they,” Alcibiades responded at once.

  The symposiasts laughed at this, even Thrasybulus and Theramenes, our generals.

  “By being better,” Alcibiades continued, “and thus commanding their emulation.” He was drunk, but on him it accounted nothing, save to liberate those holdings nearest to his heart. “When I was not yet twenty, I served in the infantry. Among my mates was Socrates the son of Sophroniscus. In a fight the enemy had routed us and were swarming upon our position. I was terrified and loading up to flee. Yet when I beheld him, my friend with gray in his beard, plant his feet on the earth and seat his shoulder within the great bowl of his shield, a species of eros, life-will, arose within me like a tide. I discovered myself compelled, absent all prudence, to stand beside him.

  “A commander's role is to model arete, excellence, before his men. One need not thrash them to greatness; only hold it out before them. They will be compelled by their own nature to emulate it.”

  Along the length of the strand Athenians bore cable and iron upon the foe. Alcibiades dragged the first ship off, and another and another. Mindarus' troops held as only the Spartan-commanded can, in the face of Athenian reinforcements under Theramenes and more, including cavalry, driven on by Thrasybulus, the Brick.

  Alcibiades fell three times, seeking the Spartan commander. At last Mindarus' own wounds took him down. When the enemy broke and fled, Alcibiades ravened upon their backs and every other followed, and when he dropped they dashed to his side and lifted him, in terror that some fatal dart had found their champion. But it was exhaustion only. And I, too, who had so few seasons past pledged to bear hell's bane to this man, could no longer recall his crimes, even my own brother's murder. All were eclipsed in that flame which he bore for our country and by which he conducted her to triumph.

  I cite a moment from the sea fight earlier that day, not to panegyrize him, for all testimony is superfluous in that cause, but as exemplar of this beast, this form of courage he evinced which one glimpses in a
lifetime as frequently as a griffin or a centaur.

  The sea trap had been sprung: Alcibiades' forty triremes emerging as he had planned out of the squall line had lured the enemy's sixty to pursue, thinking ours the whole of the Athenian force. These crews of Athens, the Samos fleet, were so good that when they fled, or even pretended, they maintained such order that the helmsmen must cry across to row more sloppily and make better feint of terror. Antiochus was Alcibiades' helmsman. At his signal the lines came-about employing the Samian anastrophe, or “countermarch,” where the ships do not put about simultaneously, making rearmost foremost, but wheel in sequence of line-ahead, as chariots round the turning post. Alcibiades ordered this, the more demanding maneuver, to unnerve the enemy, to let him know he had been suckered and must pay.

  Now Thrasybulus' triples fell on the Spartans from astern. From concealment behind the promontory they emerged in four columns of twelve, pulling, as the chanty goes, with every shaft including the skipper's wooden dick. They cut Mindarus off from the harbor.

  From the shoulder of the squall Theramenes' thirty-six materialized, blocking all flight to the north. Alcibiades was shouting for Mindarus' ensign and vowing a talent to the lookout who found it for him.

  The Spartans fled for the shore two thousand yards distant.

  Alcibiades' division pursued from the flank, picking a line to overhaul the foremost vessel. This was a squadron commander's and she, sighting Antiope's admiral's ensign, made to make it a fight. At two hundred yards the foe wheeled to port, executed a cutback around two of her own ships whose oars had fouled, and came back at us. Antiochus slipped her rush, passing with such swiftness across her bows that her helm, hard over seeking to strike, put her onto her sisters, each furiously backing water to clear. Antiochus holed two almost at leisure, but striking the third amidships as she fled, Antiope's ram became embedded; the momentum of the fleeing craft levered us against her flank-to-flank, snapping oars like kindling. As the ships crunched together, Spartan marines let fly with everything they had. Our men plunged for cover as the fusillade swept Antiope's deck. I heard a bellow of rage and glanced up. Alone and exposed stood Alcibiades amid the storm of steel, scouring the sea for his rival in flight. “Mindarus!” he cried. “Mindarus!”