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

by Steven Pressfield

  Telamon rode out to Road's Turn one day, bearing wine and parched barley, most welcome. I asked him what he would do, now the war was over. He laughed.

  War is never over.

  He had come to recruit me. To no specific employer; just back on the tramp. Surely I reckoned that my tenure on the land bore an expiry. Sooner or later, if only from her own want of allies, Sparta must lift her heel from Athens' throat. The democracy would revive. Such swallows as myself who had roosted under the conqueror's eave would find themselves back out in the storm. We would either be butchered in the street by our neighbors or called to execution by due process. My luck consisted in this, Telamon observed, that my kin were women and children. Its revenge sated upon me, the demos would leave these innocents alone.

  I regarded my mentor as he put his case. How youthful he looked! He had not aged a month, it seemed, down twenty-seven years of war. “Give us the secret of your immortality!”

  He would lecture me, I knew, on vices. Three he abhorred-fear, hope, and love of country. He abominated only one beyond these: contemplation of past or future. These were offenses against nature, Telamon maintained, as they bound one to aspiration, to a result whose issue was adjudicated by forces, above the earth and beneath, which mortals may neither alter nor apprehend.

  Alcibiades was guilty of these, my mate observed, and of another violation of heaven's law.

  Alcibiades perceived war as a means. In truth it was an end.

  Where our commander claimed to honor only Necessity, Telamon served a divinity more primordial.

  “Her name is Eris. Strife. All things are brought forth through Strife, my friend, even ourselves torn from our mothers' wombs.

  Look there to those hawks on the hunt; they serve her, as even these weeds at our feet, whose roots duel beneath the earth for each square fist of dirt.

  “Strife is life's oldest and most holy fundament. You tease me, my friend, that I have not aged. If this be true, it arises of obedience to her, this dame at once ancient as earth and youthful as the morrow's dawn.”

  I smiled. “Do you know how many times I have heard this sermon?”

  “Yet still you do not learn.”

  War waged for advantage yields only ruin. Yet one may not disown war, which abides as constant as the seasons and eternal as the tides.

  “What world is it you seek, Pommo, that is 'better' than this? Do you imagine like Alcibiades that you, or Athens, may elevate yourselves or anyone to some loftier sphere? This world is the only one that exists. Learn its laws and obey them. This is true philosophy.”

  Perhaps to him. Yet I was not ready to don the perennial soldier's kit and enlist, beyond hope, in Strife's battalions. I stayed.

  How my aunt despised me! We worked the lambing together, barefoot in aprons. “Don't credit yourself with preserving us. We would all be here just the same, absent your intercession.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  At table she had assumed the patriarchy, abdicated by myself, and employed this pulpit to decant at full strength for the innocents' edification love of freedom and enmity of tyranny. I knew how desperate her patriot's heart had grown when one day from her harangue arose the name Alcibiades. “By the Holy Twain, none remains but he, possessed of the bowels to resuscitate the state.”

  In the country markets one overheard kindred sentiments.

  Gravers inquired of merchants from the city, did Alcibiades yet live? Had we driven him, by our repudiation, apart from Athens' cause forever?

  To me this was madness. He had gone over to the Persian now.

  God knows what robes he swathed himself in and what fictions he wove to preserve his hide. Let Athens, like her waste and weary lands, set her own store to order. Let it rest! Let him!

  I trekked in to the port one day with my nephew and a vintner of the overhill farm. Cresting the track at Butadae, one could see the city walls, untouched and imposing as ever. Then you made the turn above the Academy, where the Carriage Road and the Northern Wall conjoined.

  There was nothing left of it.

  The quarter west of Melite had been leveled to the distance of a furlong. We passed Maroneia, the played-out silver mines, where these bricks and stones had been dumped. The rubble covered acres, deep enough to bury a fleet, which in the truest sense it had.

  When we passed the Legs themselves, the walls that had linked city to port, you could see from one side to the other, so utterly had the fortifications been obliterated. Far gone as I thought I was, this sight chilled my heart. My companion, the vintner, wept.

  My aunt Daphne died on the twenty-third of Boedromion, final day of the Mysteries.

  My son had come out, as on several prior occasions, run off from Eunice. I must restore him to her, but let him stay for now. He seconded me at the old dame's obsequies. We sang the Hymn for the Fallen, the first time in our family for a woman. She had earned it.

  Some days later a party of deputies from the city appeared at Road's Turn. I was coming in from the fields and saw them before they saw me. Should I run? What good would it do? They took me into town to an abandoned private home two blocks off the Sacred Way. Windows had been bricked, all furnishings removed. Where the hearth had stood, the stone squatted dark with blood.

  I was led into a back room. There were other men, armed, and a plank desk, behind which sat two, unknown to me, but by whose demeanor I recognized as agents of the Thirty.

  “Your name has come up on a list,” the taller asserted.

  “Which list?”

  He shrugged.

  The shorter passed two documents across, inquiring which I wished him to sign. The first was my death certificate, the second a warrant of Athenian citizenship for my son and daughter.

  “We have a job we want you to do.”

  Before any spoke, I knew what it was.

  “I call him friend,” I declared, “and the last hope of our country.”

  A sound came from the side door; I rounded toward it. Telamon filled the frame to the lintel, in his kit of war. I turned back to the agents.

  “That is why,” the taller spoke, “you must kill him.”

  Alcibiades had fled Thrace by sea to Phocaea, heading east into the Empire. That country is vast but roads are few; it is no chore to track a man once on his trail. From Smyrna one makes Sardis in two days; three more carry him to the Lydian city of Cydrara and another to Colossae and Anaua in Phrygia.

  Roadhouses, called “ordinaries,” terminate each trek. Every fifth day is an inn, where it is the custom of the country to layover two nights to rest one's stock. Other troopers gave report of him. He traveled with his mistress Timandra and a party of Mysian mercenaries, fewer than five, serving as bodyguards.

  Others hunted him as well. Darius of Persia had deceased that spring, succeeded on the throne by his son Artaxerxes. Alcibiades, aware that the Thirty at Athens were applying pressure to Lysander to procure their countryman's end, had approached the satrap Pharnabazus, against whom he had won many victories but to whom now he proposed friendship. He wished, Alcibiades did, to offer his services to the throne of Persia and had intelligence to impart concerning certain perils, namely Prince Cyrus, abetted by Lysander, who, no longer vexed by Athens, would turn about and make his own run for the Crown. Alcibiades could be of great use to the king in this campaign and, he assured Pharnabazus, advance the satrap's standing as well. Pharnabazus, dazzled by his new friend, provided an escort and sent him on to the Interior. It was then that envoys arrived from Sparta. These informed the Persian that if he wished to avoid incurring Lysander's wrath, not to say full-scale war, he would rethink the hospitality he had vouchsafed to the only man living who constituted a threat to Spartan hegemony in Greece. Pharnabazus did not need to hear music to know when to dance. He dispatched riders to overhaul and assassinate Alcibiades. Alcibiades evaded these, slaying several.

  His Mysians vanished and so did he.

  A second pursuit party was organized at Dascylium under Susami
thres and Magaeus, Pharnabazus' deputies and kinsmen. It was to this posse that Telamon and I became attached. This was at Callatebus. Endius accompanied this cohort, with two other Peers of Sparta, under orders of Lysander to confirm the kill.

  Reports put Alcibiades on the track to Celaenae. The party pushed to Muker and the Stone Mounds, beneath which the Phoenix is said to have deposited two eggs, to hatch on that day when the race of men tames its unpacific heart. Privateers scoured the trace. The price on Alcibiades' head, one told us, was ten thousand darics; another quoted a hundred thousand. Between Canae and Utresh are no towns, only a staging area, a coop, called the Tailings. At this site we encountered five brothers of the Odrysians, likewise in pursuit of Alcibiades. My horse had developed an abscess and was suffering terribly; one of these brothers possessed skill with the lancet; he performed the veterinary's service and would take no money. I spoke aside with him.

  Alcibiades had dishonored the brothers' sister; the maid had taken her life. Such an outrage is called in the Thracian tongue atame; it may be requited only by blood. The brothers claimed to have scoured the dozen overnights to the east; their prey, they swore, was behind us; we had overrun him. They would spur in that direction; their youngest in fact made off that night. Our guides informed us that no Odrysian may exact blood vengeance, inatame, absent his prince's permit, in this case Seuthes'.

  Alcibiades had rendered himself fugitive, thus, from Spartan, Athenian, Persian, and Thracian.

  Our party pressed on. A peculiar bond had evolved between myself and Endius, as on occasion when one journeys in company great distances by horse. Each rode daylong at the other's shoulder, neither speaking nor glancing in his companion's direction yet each attuned to the other's mood and preoccupation. In camp Endius kept to his mates of Lacedaemon, then with morning's trail fell in again upon my flank. “Will you indeed murder him, Polemidas?” he inquired one nooning, his first words all day.

  “Will you?”

  I give thanks to God such is not my charge.”

  Of that troop he and I alone seemed alive to the enormity in whose service we trekked. On another day he edged his mount alongside mine. “If you bolt ahead, or attempt to deal him warning, I shall kill you.”

  I inquired if he made this threat in his own name or that of Lacedaemon. To my wonder he began to weep. “By the gods, what a catastrophe!” And he spurred, in tears, away to the van.

  There is in Phrygia in the district of Melissa, where the Ephesus-Metropolis road bears east toward the central provinces, a place called Elaphobounos, Deer Hill, blessed by nature and the ordering hand of man. The prospect from the village, Antara, excellently contoured and cultivated, is among the most delightful in the world. Encamped at this site on an evening, my course came clear to me.

  I could not perform this slaughter. I would make off this night, informing none, including Telamon, that he escape implication.

  That which I could do for my children, I would, to carrying them with me on the tramp. I had set my resolve and even commenced transferring my goods from the pack stock to my own mount, when a great commotion arose across the valley.

  A compound was afire. Men of the estate rushed upon our site in terror. We saw the boy, youngest of the five Odrysian brothers, dismounting breathless. Their party had doubled back from the west, the tale burst from him, having picked up the prey's trail, and skirted our camp in the night to beat us to him. “Etoskit Alkibiad!” the youth cried, gesturing toward the flames. “Alcibiades is taken!”

  All sprang to their horses' backs. The party raced at a gallop, at terrific hazard to the animals and ourselves as the ground had been staked to receive vines and was pocked with trenches and voids.

  One saw a house. A farm cottage. The brothers had apparently encircled it in darkness and piled faggots against its walls. The place blazed like a tinderbox. No doubt the flames had driven the quarry forth from his bed to such exposed position as permitted the hunters to shoot him down without hazard to themselves. My heels beat the ribs of my mount. The party raced onto the site. You could not see Alcibiades (he was obscured by the wall of the forecourt) but only the brothers. Two were horseback, at the gate, pouring bowfire point-blank from their elevated vantage. The others, and their attendants, occupied positions atop and behind the wall; these slung javelins and darts. The brothers, even at this remove, stood so flush upon the conflagration that their garments and hair caught and smoked.

  I was first upon the court. The heat was monumental. My mount balked and pinwheeled; I sprang to earth.

  Now I saw Alcibiades. He was naked, save shield and runt xiphos sword. His back was charred like meat. Shafts and missile bolts made a stubble field of his shield. The woman Timandra sprawled flat at his heels, a carpet or some heavy garment over her, cloaking her from the flames.

  As our party roared upon the site, the brothers did not break off but intensified their attack, ejaculating in their savage tongue that the prize was theirs and they would slaughter any who sought to rob them of it. The Spartans and Persians overran them at once.

  Endius, Telamon, and I rushed to the gate. The holocaust howled, sucking the breath from our throats. The Spartan dashed in first, snatching up the woman and bearing her from the court.

  She clutched at her lover's limbs, crying something we could not hear. Telamon and I, elevating cloaks to our faces, ploughed in next.

  Alcibiades turned toward our sound, as if to attack, then dropped the way a dead man does, not breaking his fall with the strength of his arms, but pitching face-foremost. His shield crashed first and then he, forearm yet within its sheath, plunged upon it. His skull struck like a stone. I have never seen a man shot through with so many bolts.

  We hauled him from the inferno. I propped him upright on the far side of the wall. I had no doubt he was dead. My intent, deranged no doubt, was that these cowards not behold their prey stretched forth in the dust.

  He was alive and sought to rise.

  He cried Timandra's name, in such anguish as I have never heard.

  She responded in equal affliction, from Endius' arms bearing her clear. Alcibiades relented, reckoning her safe. His hand clutched me by the hair.

  “Who is it?” he shouted.

  He was blind. The flames had taken half his face. I called my name. He could not hear. I cried louder, at his ear. I was riven with such distress as words may never compass. Behind, the Thracians put up a clamor ungodly, claiming their prize. The cottage continued collapsing by sections. Again I shouted into his ear.

  This time he heard. His fist held me like a griffin's claw. “Who else?”

  I told him Endius and the Persians.

  A terrible groan escaped his breast. It was as if this was what he had expected and, expectation fulfilled, he recognized his fate. His grip clenched me fast.

  “The woman…she must not be left undefended in this country.”

  I swore I would protect her.

  His great shield, the same he had borne down thrice nine years since our first blooding beneath those cliffs called the Boilers, rested yet across his chest and shoulders. I had set it thus to cover his nakedness. He shifted now, straining against its weight. With what strength remained he declined the bronze, exposing the flesh of his neck and throat.

  “Now, my friend,” he said. “Take what you came for.”

  Polemides here elevated his glance and met my eyes. For a moment I thought he could not continue, nor was I at all certain I wished him to.

  Lysander had said of Alcibiades that in the end Necessity would bring him low. Perhaps she did, but it was my hand which drove the fatal blade. Nor did I slay a general or statesman, as history will memorialize him, but a man, hated by many and loved by more, myself not last among them. Set aside his feats and felonies. In this I honor him: that he drove the vessel of his soul to where sea and sky conjoin and contended there, without fear, as few before, save perhaps only your master, his first instructor.

  Who will sail so far again?
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  And I, who took upon himself such freight of self-condemnation for my acts of the Plague and after, discovered myself experiencing on Deer Mountain, to my wonder, no such grief or remorse. I did not act so much as enact. Do you reckon the distinction, my friend? I was Alcibiades' own arm, as I had been since that night of our youth upon the storm-bound strand, striking that blow which he himself called down. Who is guilty? I and he, and Athens and all Greece, who have fashioned our ruin with our own hands.

  Polemides finished. It was enough. No more need be narrated.

  Later, within his sea chest, I discovered this correspondence in Alcibiades' hand. It bore no salutation and was salted with misspellings, indicative of a preliminary draft-to whom one may only guess. By its date, the tenth of Hecatombaion, it may be the last he ever wrote.

  …my end, though it come at the hands of strangers, will have been purposed and paid for by my own countrymen. I am to them that which they esteem most and may endure least: their own likeness writ large. My virtues-ambition, audacity, emulation of heaven rather than prostration before it-are but their own, amplified.

  My vices are theirs as well. Those qualities which my constitution lacks-modesty, patience, self-effacement-they too despise, but whereas my nature has preserved me unfettered by these, theirs has not. They both fear and worship that brilliance to which my example summons them, but which they possess insufficient spirit to embrace. Athens, confronted by the fact of my existence, owns only these options: to emulate or eliminate. When I am gone, she will cry for me. But I will never come again. I am her last.

  She will produce no more as myself, however many hoist the jack and ensign.

  LII

  A MAGISTRACY OF MERCY

  I passed Socrates' final day [Grandfather continued] in his cell with the others. I was exhausted and dozed. I had this dream: Weary and wishing to attend our master with the clearheadedness he deserved, I hunted through the prison for a recess in which to catch a catnap. My search delivered me to the carpenter's loft. There, horizontal, spread the tympanon on which Polemides would this day meet his end. “Go ahead, sir.” The carpenter motioned me in. “Take a snooze.” I lay down and fell at once into a blissful slumber. I awoke with a start, however, to discover officers binding me to the instrument. My wrists and ankles were fettered beneath the cramp irons; the chain strangled me about the throat. “You've got the wrong man!” I shouted. But my cry was throttled by the iron. “I'm the wrong man! You've got the wrong man!”