Small craft swarmed, hailing the heroes. It seemed the entire city had taken holiday. The ships came parallel to the Choma now, where the trierarchs of the fleet for Syracuse had assembled so gravely before the apostoleis to receive the blessing and the Council’s order to launch. Such a mob now swarmed upon the mole as to hide it entire. Atalanta advanced to our starboard, obscuring the vantage. Amid the throng, glimpsed through the rigging of our squadronmate’s stern, ascended the figure of Euryptolemus, bald dome reflecting. With one hand this noble embraced himself, as if to fix his self-command; the other, with exuberant welcome, waved his straw sun hat.
“Can that be you, cousin?” Alcibiades spoke in a whisper, and, bending toward the apparition, permitted his arm to respond. Ahead rose the pediment of the Bendidium and, beneath, the raked beaching ground of Thracian Artemis. Kratiste and Alcippe already executed reversions in place, for the bumpers to capture their sterns. Garlanded ephebes manned the shoring blocks awaiting Antiope. A pinging metallic clatter began to assault the deck. The people were throwing money. Boys swarmed over the gunwales and scrapped with their mates for the showering coins.
Where the Northern Wall abuts the Carriage Road, that dolorous highway I had trekked alone years past, returning from Potidaea; there where the hovels of the damned had sprawled during the Plague; now this gauntlet of horror had metamorphosed into a boulevard of joy. Cavalry mounts awaited the commanders. Their hooves trod a carpet of lavender. Though the other generals rode in prominence, the mob paid no heed but rounded only to behold Alcibiades. Fathers pointed him out to sons, and women, elder dames as well as maidens, clutched at their bosoms and swooned.
He was borne to the Pnyx, where the hillsides overflowed with celebrants, roosting even in trees, like birds. There had been a ceremony on the way before the Eleusinium. Here at the hour of Alcibiades’ banishment, the King Archon had mounted before the multitude to ordain the striking of the expelled’s name from the katalogos of citizens and a stele of infamy erected, that the people never forget his perfidy and treason. Now advanced a new basileus, trembling, to present to this same man the reconstituted title to his holdings, within the city and his horse property at Erchiae, which had been confiscated at the time of his exile, and a suit of armor, the belated award of his prize of valor for Cyzicus. The stele had been broken apart, the archon pronounced, and cast into the sea.
Throughout these rites Alcibiades had maintained a bearing so stern and remote as to evoke in the people a species of dread. For the man before whom they now danced in supplication was no longer that princeling discharged so stonily beneath their whim but a war-scored commander at the head of such a fleet and army as at a word may seize the state and make dice of them all. The congregation searched the thunderheads of his brow, as children caught at mischief sound their headmaster as he grasps the rod. And when he suffered the multitude’s recantations with impatience and even disdain, handing off to aides the various encomia and bills of praise without even a glance, the crowd rustled in deepening trepidation.
In the square before the Amazoneum the triumphal wagons caught up with the procession, bearing the ensigns and warpeaks of the enemy, their rams, and the shields and armor of her generals. 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 gimcracks, 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 wareho
use. 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.