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

by Steven Pressfield

  In the crush it would take hours to reach the High City where these trophies would be dedicated to the goddess, so here, by gesture, since his voice could not carry above the tumult,

  Alcibiades bade these prizes be set down. This siting was unpremeditated; it so chanced, however, that this cargo of glory found its rest beneath the great marble of Antiope, namesake of his flagship, whose facing bears these verses to Theseus: And he with gifts returning

  Did to those come,

  Whose hatred first had

  Cast him from his home.

  At the Museum, beneath the statue of Victory, his sons and the sons of his kinsmen were presented to him, in their white ephebic robes, bearing willow wands and crowned with myrtle. This sight surely, the people anticipated, must make the darkness of his bearing relent. Yet the opposite obtained. For the sight of these whose childhood had flown unwitnessed by him, for his exile had endured now eight years, only amplified the estrangement of his heart and the bereavement he felt of those absent and lost. His immediate family, all long dead: mother, father, and wife, infant daughters, brother and sisters fallen to plague and war, elders wasted by age in his absence. Now, following, were presented those of his extended clan, babes unborn when last he saw the city, maidens now brides with infants of their own, and beardless lads waxed to manhood; most he could neither nominate nor recognize so that, as the herald tolled each name, the publication seemed to wring his heart, as those beholding, face to face, voked neither nurture nor embrace.

  The daughter of his cousin Euryptolemus was directed forward, a bride of sixteen, bearing her infant son, she garlanded with yew and rowan as rendering the Kore, her babe in violet for Athena.

  Advancing before the multitude, the girl, unnerved, could not recall her stanzas of welcome and, faltering, flushed and began to weep. Alcibiades, taking her elbow to uphold her, was overcome himself and could no longer contain the tears.

  At once the dams of all hearts burst, as each, whelmed itself, induced capitulation in its neighbor, till none may withstand that which swelled, possessing all. For the people, who had either feared Alcibiades' ambition or dreaded his vengeance-in other words, had confined their concerns to self-interest-now beheld upon their prince's face, as he supported the sobbing girl, that grief he had borne in isolation all these years apart from them he loved.

  They forgot the evils he had brought and remembered only the good. And recognizing that this moment constituted that pinnacle of reconciliation at which city and son stood at last reunited, all concern for their own slipped their hearts, supplanted by compassion for him and joy at their mutual deliverance at his hands. By acclamation the Assembly appointed him strategos autokrator, supreme commander on land and sea, and awarded a golden crown.

  He spoke while yet weeping. “When I was a boy in Pericles' house, I would steal with my mates on Assembly days into those peuke trees there, upon the pnyx' postern brow, and attend all day to the discourse and disputation, till my chums had grown bleary and begged me to depart with them to play; yet I alone remained upon my perch, attending the argument and debate. Even then, before I possessed command to articulate it, I felt the city's power, as if she were some great lioness or beast of legend. I marveled at the enterprise of so many individual men, of such disparate and conflicting ambitions, and the engine of it all, the city, which by sublime alchemy yoked all to all and produced a whole greater than her parts, whose essence was neither wealth nor force of arms nor architectural or artistic brilliance, though all these she brought forth in abundance, but some quality of spirit, intangible, whose essence was audacity, intrepidity, and enterprise.

  “That Athens which exiled me was not the Athens I loved, but another, failing of her nerve, dread-stricken before the exposition of her own greatness and banished from herself by that dread, as she in turn banished me. This Athens I hated and set all my energies to bring low.

  “I was wrong. I have worked grave harm to her, this city I love.

  There stand no few here this day whose sons and brothers have lost their lives because of actions advanced or undertaken by me. I am guilty. Nothing may be said to exonerate me, unless it be that some dark destiny has dogged me and my family, and that this star, driving me apart from Athens and Athens from me, has reduced us both by its sinister designs. Let that bark take upon itself our transgressions, mine and yours, and bear them away upon the seas of heaven.”

  Such a cry acclaimed this phrase, and such pounding of feet and hands, as to make the square tremble and the very columns of the sanctuary seem to quake. The people cried his name again and again.

  “My enemies for years have sought to sow fear of me in your hearts, my countrymen, claiming that my object is rule over you.

  No fabrication could be more malign. I have never sought anything, my friends, but to merit your praise and to bear to you those blessings as would induce you to grant me honor. Yet that expression is imprecise. For my conception has never construed the city as a passive vessel into which I, her benefactor, decanted blessings. Such a course would be not only insolent but infamous.

  Rather I wished, as an officer advancing into battle at the head of his men, to serve as flame and inspiration to her, to call forth, by my belief in her, her birth and rebirth, altering with Necessity's command, but always advancing toward that which is most herself, that engine of glory which she was and is and must be, and that exemplar of freedom and enterprise to which all the world looks in awe and envy.”

  Deafening acclamation made him hold long moments.

  “Citizens of Athens, you have tendered me such surfeit of honors as no man may alone requite. Therefore let me summon reinforcements.” He motioned his fellow commanders forward, who had attended thus far in silence upon both hands. “With pride I present to you, your sons whose feats of arms have brought about this hour of glory. Let me call their names and may your eyes feast upon their victorious manhood. Absent Thrasybulus, but present: Theramenes, Thrasyllus, Conon, Adeimantus, Erasinides, Thymochares, Leon, Diomedon, Pericles.”

  Each in turn stepped forward and, elevating an arm or executing a bow in salute, elicited such cascades of citation as seemed must never end.

  “These stand before you not alone for their own marks but in the stead of thousands yet on station overseas before whose might, we may state at last and acclaim its truth, the enemy has been swept from the seas.”

  The roar of acclamation which greeted this eclipsed all which had preceded it. Alcibiades waited until the tumult had subsided.

  “But let us not overextol the moment. Our enemies occupy half the states of our empire. Their Persian-provided treasury is ten times ours, nor is their fighting spirit attenuated but by our victories over them recharged and reinspirited. But now and at last, my friends, Athens possesses the will and cohesion to withstand them and prevail. Let us only be ourselves and we cannot fail.”

  Such a clamor now arose that the very tiles on the roofs began to clatter and spill. Someone shouted, “Let him see his home!” and at once the tide engulfed the platform, catching up the party and sweeping it toward Scambonidae, to Alcibiades' former estate, restored now by motion of the Assembly and refurbished in anticipation of his return. The scale of the swell choked the square, prodigious as it was, and the gates, capacious enough even for the great procession of the Panathenaea, could not contain the crush and jammed up in a merry mob.

  At the peak of this jubilation, a citizen of about sixty years emerged and shouted toward Alcibiades: “Where are those of Syracuse, thou treasonous villain!” Angry cries commanded the elder to break off.

  “Their ghosts are not present to cheer thee, godless renegade!”

  At once the old man's form was swallowed by the mob. All that could be seen was the pack's rising and plunging fists, then their feet assaulting him, defenseless, on the earth. I turned to reckon Alcibiades' response but could not glimpse him, other figures intervening, but Euryptolemus' countenance rose proximate beside me. Upon his features
I beheld such an expression of woe and foreboding as to blight the sun itself upon a cloudless noon.

  XXXV

  BEYOND THE REACH OF ENVY

  Five days later the prytaneis called the Assembly. Much business had been prepared by the Council, as to the treasury, nearly bankrupt; reassessment of tribute from the empire; renewal of the eisphora, the war tax; imposts from the straits; plus business of the fleet and army, decorations of valor, courts-martial and charges of dereliction and peculation, and the further prosecution of the war. The docket was jammed, yet none would speak. The Assembly only buzzed until Alcibiades appeared, and when he did, the people addressed him with such unction and adulation that no business could be transacted, as each time a bill or measure would be put forward, someone would interrupt with a motion of acclaim.

  Nor did the derangement abate the day following or the session after, for each time an issue would be set forward by the epistates, the presiding officer, all heads would swivel to Alcibiades, awaiting his remark or that of his companions. None would cry yea till they saw him vote affirmative, or nay till they glimpsed him frown.

  The Assembly had become paralyzed, its deliberative function rendered impotent by the luster of its most celebrated member.

  Nor did this aberration confine itself to public debate. Those private individuals as Euryptolemus and Pericles who were perceived as possessing influence with Alcibiades found themselves besieged, not alone by fawning petitioners but simply by friends and associates offering congratulations and proffering their services.

  The Assembly consisted only of partisans of Alcibiades. There was no opposition. Even as he beseeched the college to voice dissent without fear, yet individuals seemed to rise only to second that which his votaries had moved or, anticipating such motions as they believed would find favor, bring only these forward. When Alcibiades absented himself, seeking to encourage debate, the assembly simply got up and went home. What was the point of being there if Alcibiades wasn't? When he vacated for dinner, the people did too. He couldn't get up to piss without a coalition reaching beneath their robes, competing to relieve themselves at his elbow.

  His triumph of Eleusis followed. That holy procession in honor of the Mysteries whose passage by land had been broken off for fear these years of Spartan siege and been compelled to make its way ingloriously by sea, Alcibiades now restored to splendor, his cavalry and infantry escorting the novices and initiates along their twelve-mile trace, while enemy armor tracked the pilgrimage at a distance, powerless to intervene. I was there and saw the faces of the women as they pressed about their savior, tears sheeting, calling upon the Two Goddesses, whose wronging at his hands had been the genesis of all this evil, to behold his strong arm shielding them and bearing them honor. So that it seemed now he possessed all favor, not alone of men but of heaven.

  One presumed the madness would abate, but it didn't. Crowds pressed about him everywhere, in such numbers as to make Samos and Olympia look like children's games. Once passing along that alley called Little Speedway, by which one may approach the Round Chamber from the rear, his party was overwhelmed by such throngs as to wedge against the wall of the lane Diotimus, Adeimantus, and their wives, who happened to be with them, with such force as to make the ladies cry out in terror of suffocation.

  The marines in escort must shoulder through the shuttered front of a private home, effusing apologies for the invasion, while the diplomats and their wives fled through the rear egress, leaving the housewomen staring dumbstruck at Alcibiades, upon a bench in the court, his face in his hands, unstrung by the hysteria of the press.

  We chased importunists from latrines, rooftops, the tombs of his ancestors. Idolaters came in the night, serenading. Petitions and poems were flung over his wall, wrapped about stones and blocks of wood, descending at times in such a downpour that the servants must evacuate all breakables and children play indoors, so as not to get beaned by these projectiles of adoration. Vendors hawked images of him on plates and eggcups, bossed onto medallions, woven into headbands and dust rags, pennants and paper kites. Ikons called “luck-catchers” were purveyed on every corner, little mast-and-mainsail geegaws with nu and alpha for Victory and Alcibiades. Models of Antiope sold for an obol.

  Everywhere the guileless hearts of the commons erected shrines of devotion; through the doorways of their flats one glimpsed the sill of gim-cracks, laid out like an altar to a demigod.

  Delegations presented themselves to him from brotherhoods and tribal councils, cults of heroes and ancestors, veterans' associations, craftsmen's guilds, and fellowships of resident aliens; all-female groups, all-elder and all-youth, some applying for redress of some grievance, others declaring their allegiance, still others appearing to present him with the supreme honor of their sect, some preposterous bauble which the marines must label and heave in a box and cart to the warehouse. But mostly they came for no reason at all, just to be there and see him. In fact it was a point of honor to come for no reason, spontaneously and unannounced, as any calendared agenda smacked of covetousness or self-interest. Therefore they came; the joiners at dawn, the Sons of Danae at the market hour, then the Curators of the Naval Yards and the potters and on and on, serving up the same confection of bombast, abjection, and self-congratulation. Critias, who would himself be tyrant one day, even set such sentiment to verse.

  From my proposal did that edict come, Which from your tedious exile brought you home.

  The public vote at first was moved by me, And my voice put the seal to the decree.

  Nowhere could be discovered any who had voted against him or served on a jury that condemned him. These must have vacated to Hyperborea or hell. Nor could the delegations' encomiasts complete their panegyrics, as cries of “Autokrator, autokrator!” interrupted, ascending ad lib from the throng. They wanted Alcibiades master of the state, subject to no constitutional curbs, and in the evening more sober fraternities would second these sentiments, of the Knights' class and the Hoplites', the men of the fleet and the tradesmen's guilds, and plead with him to put himself beyond the reach of envy. Each coterie warned of the fickleness of the demos. “They” would turn on him, “their” devotion would prove unsteadfast. When that hour came, these partisans of obeisance admonished, Alcibiades' purchase on authority must be absolute. Nothing less was at stake than the survival of the nation.

  On the twelfth evening, the most earnest and influential company yet convened at the home of Callias the son of Hipponicus. Critias himself was its spokesman. If Alcibiades assented, he declared, he would the following morning place the motion before the people. It would be enacted by acclamation. At last the city would stand beyond its own self-devastating pendulations of passion. The war could be prosecuted and won.

  Alcibiades made no response. Euryptolemus spoke for him. “But, Critias,” he observed, in a tone flat with understatement, “such a motion would be contrary to law.”

  “With all respect, my friend. The demos makes the law, and what it says is the law.”

  Still Alcibiades did not speak.

  “Let me be sure I understand you,” Euryptolemus continued to Critias. “Are we to agree that this same demos which banished and condemned my cousin unconstitutionally may now, with symmetrical lawlessness, anoint him dictator?”

  “The people acted in madness then,” declared Critias with emphasis. “They act with reason now.”

  XXXVI

  A DISREFRACTING GLASS

  Alcibiades spurned Critias' summons, as you know, citing the poet's admonishment that

  Tyranny is a splendid roost but there is no step down from it and when report of this self-regulation reached the people, his popularity soared to yet more unprecedented heights.

  Nor did his enemies wait long to find means to exploit this. It was a sight of pungent irony to observe such miscegenated bedfellows as Cleophon, Anytus, Cephisophon, and Myrtilus, the zealots of the oligarchs, leaping into wedlock with the radical democrats, not only stepping forth in concert but adv
ocating those policies most likely to find favor in Alcibiades' quarter; in other words, to become his most ardent and obeisant toadies, their strategy being, as the comic poets later elucidated, to

  “over-Alcibiadize” the people until he lodged in their craw and they spat him out.

  No one perceived this peril more keenly than Alcibiades himself.

  He drew about him now those companions of youth and war-Euryptolemus and Adeimantus, Aristocrates, Diotimus, and Mantitheus-whom he felt loved him for himself and did not perceive him, in the phrase of the poet Agathon, through the disrefracting glass of their own hope and terror. I as well found myself drawn more closely into his confidence.

  He entrusted me with assignments of increasing import and subtlety. I was sent to address groups of the bereaved of Sicily, to serve on the committee seeking a site for the memorial. I officiated at sacrifices, represented the fleet marine force at official occasions, entertained prospective allies, and attempted to suborn or intimidate potential foes. I found these chores excruciating and begged to be released. He wished to know my objection.

  “They acclaim me not for myself, but for some imagined

  'Polemides,' and address themselves to me as if I were he.”

  He laughed. “Now you're a politician.”

  Until that time I had managed to keep clear of political connivance. This now became impossible. Life was politics. A man encountered may not be greeted as mate or fellow, but must be assessed as partisan or adversary and dealt with by this criterion alone: what can he do for our side, this day, not later, while he simultaneously took our measure, and in the same coin. One no longer talked but negotiated, spoke not but represented. The deal was everything; one breathed only to close. Yet such proved elusive as smoke. For many could say no but only one yes, and without yes you had nothing. The worth of each man rose or fell as a ram in the livestock market, according to that currency which is neither coin nor khous but influence. I never smiled so much or meant it less, nor met such friends to whom I was nothing. In all things, perception superseded substance. One may not demand accountability of others, or give his own pledge to any undertaking, however trivial, but always options must be kept open till the last instant, at which point all bets were off and if you'd given your word to a friend, you now broke it at the orders of another friend and leapt as fast as you could upon the main chance. At dawn I stood garlanded, sacrificing to the gods; by night I cut deals with stooges and back-stabbers. This was not my style. I detested it.