History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗

to an

altar; and they were thus parted without his being struck. Meanwhile

the fort built by Tissaphernes in Miletus was surprised and taken by

the Milesians, and the garrison in it turned out—an act which met

with the approval of the rest of the allies, and in particular of the

Syracusans, but which found no favour with Lichas, who said moreover

that the Milesians and the rest in the King’s country ought to show

a reasonable submission to Tissaphernes and to pay him court, until

the war should be happily settled. The Milesians were angry with him

for this and for other things of the kind, and upon his afterwards

dying of sickness, would not allow him to be buried where the

Lacedaemonians with the army desired.

 

The discontent of the army with Astyochus and Tissaphernes had

reached this pitch, when Mindarus arrived from Lacedaemon to succeed

Astyochus as admiral, and assumed the command. Astyochus now set

sail for home; and Tissaphernes sent with him one of his confidants,

Gaulites, a Carian, who spoke the two languages, to complain of the

Milesians for the affair of the fort, and at the same time to defend

himself against the Milesians, who were, as he was aware, on their way

to Sparta chiefly to denounce his conduct, and had with them

Hermocrates, who was to accuse Tissaphernes of joining with Alcibiades

to ruin the Peloponnesian cause and of playing a double game. Indeed

Hermocrates had always been at enmity with him about the pay not being

restored in full; and eventually when he was banished from Syracuse,

and new commanders—Potamis, Myscon, and Demarchus—had come out to

Miletus to the ships of the Syracusans, Tissaphernes, pressed harder

than ever upon him in his exile, and among other charges against him

accused him of having once asked him for money, and then given himself

out as his enemy because he failed to obtain it.

 

While Astyochus and the Milesians and Hermocrates made sail for

Lacedaemon, Alcibiades had now crossed back from Tissaphernes to

Samos. After his return the envoys of the Four Hundred sent, as has

been mentioned above, to pacify and explain matters to the forces at

Samos, arrived from Delos; and an assembly was held in which they

attempted to speak. The soldiers at first would not hear them, and

cried out to put to death the subverters of the democracy, but at

last, after some difficulty, calmed down and gave them a hearing. Upon

this the envoys proceeded to inform them that the recent change had

been made to save the city, and not to ruin it or to deliver it over

to the enemy, for they had already had an opportunity of doing this

when he invaded the country during their government; that all the Five

Thousand would have their proper share in the government; and that

their hearers’ relatives had neither outrage, as Chaereas had

slanderously reported, nor other ill treatment to complain of, but

were all in undisturbed enjoyment of their property just as they had

left them. Besides these they made a number of other statements

which had no better success with their angry auditors; and amid a host

of different opinions the one which found most favour was that of

sailing to Piraeus. Now it was that Alcibiades for the first time

did the state a service, and one of the most signal kind. For when the

Athenians at Samos were bent upon sailing against their countrymen, in

which case Ionia and the Hellespont would most certainly at once

have passed into possession of the enemy, Alcibiades it was who

prevented them. At that moment, when no other man would have been able

to hold back the multitude, he put a stop to the intended

expedition, and rebuked and turned aside the resentment felt, on

personal grounds, against the envoys; he dismissed them with an answer

from himself, to the effect that he did not object to the government

of the Five Thousand, but insisted that the Four Hundred should be

deposed and the Council of Five Hundred reinstated in power: meanwhile

any retrenchments for economy, by which pay might be better found

for the armament, met with his entire approval. Generally, he bade

them hold out and show a bold face to the enemy, since if the city

were saved there was good hope that the two parties might some day

be reconciled, whereas if either were once destroyed, that at Samos,

or that at Athens, there would no longer be any one to be reconciled

to. Meanwhile arrived envoys from the Argives, with offers of

support to the Athenian commons at Samos: these were thanked by

Alcibiades, and dismissed with a request to come when called upon. The

Argives were accompanied by the crew of the Paralus, whom we left

placed in a troopship by the Four Hundred with orders to cruise

round Euboea, and who being employed to carry to Lacedaemon some

Athenian envoys sent by the Four Hundred—Laespodias, Aristophon, and

Melesias—as they sailed by Argos laid hands upon the envoys, and

delivering them over to the Argives as the chief subverters of the

democracy, themselves, instead of returning to Athens, took the Argive

envoys on board, and came to Samos in the galley which had been

confided to them.

 

The same summer at the time that the return of Alcibiades coupled

with the general conduct of Tissaphernes had carried to its height the

discontent of the Peloponnesians, who no longer entertained any

doubt of his having joined the Athenians, Tissaphernes wishing, it

would seem, to clear himself to them of these charges, prepared to

go after the Phoenician fleet to Aspendus, and invited Lichas to go

with him; saying that he would appoint Tamos as his lieutenant to

provide pay for the armament during his own absence. Accounts

differ, and it is not easy to ascertain with what intention he went to

Aspendus, and did not bring the fleet after all. That one hundred

and forty-seven Phoenician ships came as far as Aspendus is certain;

but why they did not come on has been variously accounted for. Some

think that he went away in pursuance of his plan of wasting the

Peloponnesian resources, since at any rate Tamos, his lieutenant,

far from being any better, proved a worse paymaster than himself:

others that he brought the Phoenicians to Aspendus to exact money from

them for their discharge, having never intended to employ them: others

again that it was in view of the outcry against him at Lacedaemon,

in order that it might be said that he was not in fault, but that

the ships were really manned and that he had certainly gone to fetch

them. To myself it seems only too evident that he did not bring up the

fleet because he wished to wear out and paralyse the Hellenic

forces, that is, to waste their strength by the time lost during his

journey to Aspendus, and to keep them evenly balanced by not

throwing his weight into either scale. Had he wished to finish the

war, he could have done so, assuming of course that he made his

appearance in a way which left no room for doubt; as by bringing up

the fleet he would in all probability have given the victory to the

Lacedaemonians, whose navy, even as it was, faced the Athenian more as

an equal than as an inferior. But what convicts him most clearly, is

the excuse which he put forward for not bringing the ships. He said

that the number assembled was less than the King had ordered; but

surely it would only have enhanced his credit if he spent little of

the King’s money and effected the same end at less cost. In any

case, whatever was his intention, Tissaphernes went to Aspendus and

saw the Phoenicians; and the Peloponnesians at his desire sent a

Lacedaemonian called Philip with two galleys to fetch the fleet.

 

Alcibiades finding that Tissaphernes had gone to Aspendus, himself

sailed thither with thirteen ships, promising to do a great and

certain service to the Athenians at Samos, as he would either bring

the Phoenician fleet to the Athenians, or at all events prevent its

joining the Peloponnesians. In all probability he had long known

that Tissaphernes never meant to bring the fleet at all, and wished to

compromise him as much as possible in the eyes of the Peloponnesians

through his apparent friendship for himself and the Athenians, and

thus in a manner to oblige him to join their side.

 

While Alcibiades weighed anchor and sailed eastward straight for

Phaselis and Caunus, the envoys sent by the Four Hundred to Samos

arrived at Athens. Upon their delivering the message from

Alcibiades, telling them to hold out and to show a firm front to the

enemy, and saying that he had great hopes of reconciling them with the

army and of overcoming the Peloponnesians, the majority of the members

of the oligarchy, who were already discontented and only too much

inclined to be quit of the business in any safe way that they could,

were at once greatly strengthened in their resolve. These now banded

together and strongly criticized the administration, their leaders

being some of the principal generals and men in office under the

oligarchy, such as Theramenes, son of Hagnon, Aristocrates, son of

Scellias, and others; who, although among the most prominent members

of the government (being afraid, as they said, of the army at Samos,

and most especially of Alcibiades, and also lest the envoys whom

they had sent to Lacedaemon might do the state some harm without the

authority of the people), without insisting on objections to the

excessive concentration of power in a few hands, yet urged that the

Five Thousand must be shown to exist not merely in name but in

reality, and the constitution placed upon a fairer basis. But this was

merely their political cry; most of them being driven by private

ambition into the line of conduct so surely fatal to oligarchies

that arise out of democracies. For all at once pretend to be not

only equals but each the chief and master of his fellows; while

under a democracy a disappointed candidate accepts his defeat more

easily, because he has not the humiliation of being beaten by his

equals. But what most clearly encouraged the malcontents was the power

of Alcibiades at Samos, and their own disbelief in the stability of

the oligarchy; and it was now a race between them as to which should

first become the leader of the commons.

 

Meanwhile the leaders and members of the Four Hundred most opposed

to a democratic form of government—Phrynichus who had had the

quarrel with Alcibiades during his command at Samos, Aristarchus the

bitter and inveterate enemy of the commons, and Pisander and

Antiphon and others of the chiefs who already as soon as they

entered upon power, and again when the army at Samos seceded from them

and declared for a democracy, had sent envoys from their own body to

Lacedaemon and made every effort for peace, and had built the wall

in Eetionia—now redoubled their exertions when their envoys returned

from Samos, and they saw not only the people but their own most

trusted associates turning against them. Alarmed at the state of

things at Athens as at Samos, they now sent off in haste Antiphon

and Phrynichus and ten others with injunctions to make peace with

Lacedaemon upon any terms, no matter what, that should be at all

tolerable. Meanwhile they pushed on more actively than ever with the

wall in Eetionia. Now the meaning of this wall, according to

Theramenes and his supporters, was not so much to keep out the army of

Samos, in case of its trying to force its way into Piraeus, as to be

able to let in, at pleasure, the fleet and army