Book 8
Accordingly, an assembly was held, in which Alcibiades complained with much lamentation of his personal misfortune in being exiled; he also spoke at length on matters of state, inspiring in them no slight hopes regarding the future, and went on to magnify to excess his own influence with Tissaphernes. His object was that those who were in control of the oligarchy at home should fear him and that the political clubs which conspired against him should more surely be broken up; also that the army at Samos should hold him in greater honour and feel a greater degree of confidence themselves; and finally that the enemy should be filled with all possible suspicions of Tissaphernes and so deprived of their present hopes. Accordingly, Alcibiades in a spirit of boasting went on and made these great promises:
that Tissaphernes had solemnly pledged to him that, if he could but trust the Athenians, so long as he had anything left of his own they should not lack subsistence, no, not even if in the end he had to sell his own bed; and that he would bring the Phoenician ships, which were already at Aspendus, and deliver them to the Athenians and not to the Peloponnesians; but, he had added, he could place confidence in the Athenians only on condition that he, Alcibiades, should be restored in safety and become surety to him.
As they heard these and many other promises, they not only elected Alcibiades general without delay, to act with the generals already in office, but also entrusted to him all their affairs; and there was not a man of them that would have exchanged for anything his present hopes both of his own safety and of having revenge upon the Four Hundred, and they were ready at that moment both to despise their present enemies on the strength of the words they had heard and to sail to the attack of Peiraeus.
But Alcibiades roundly objected to their leaving behind them their nearer enemies and sailing against the Peiraeus, though many insisted upon that course; his first business, he said, since he had been elected general, would be to sail to Tissaphernes and arrange with him the conduct of the war.
So after this assembly he at once went away to Tissaphernes, in order that he might be thought to be in communication with him about everything; at the same time he wished to be held in greater honour by him and to show him that he had now been elected general and was therefore in a position to do him either good or evil. And thus it fell out that Alcibiades was merely using Tissaphernes to frighten the Athenians and the Athenians to frighten Tissaphernes.
When the Peloponnesians at Miletus heard of the recall of Alcibiades, although they were before this distrustful of Tissaphernes, they were now filled with a still greater suspicion of him.
For they had had this experience of him, that after they had refused to go out against the Athenians and fight when these made their advance against Miletus, Tissaphernes became far more slack in the matter of giving them their pay and thus intensified the hatred in which even before these events he was held by them on account of Alcibiades.
So the soldiers would gather in groups, as had been their wont—and not the soldiery only, but also some of the others, who were men of consideration—and would cast up their accounts with one another, proving that they had never yet received their pay in full, but that what was given was short and even that not paid regularly; and they declared that unless they were either to have a decisive battle or get away to some place where they could get subsistence the crews would desert the ships; and for all this, they held, Astyochus was to blame, because he bore with Tissaphernes' whims for the sake of his private gain.
While they were thus reckoning up their grievances the following disturbance occurred in connection with Astyochus.
It seems that the Syracusan and Thurian sailors, in proportion as the majority of them were allowed most freedom, were to that degree also the most bold and importunate in demanding their pay from him. But he answered them somewhat haughtily and made threats; and against Dorieus, who was supporting the plea of his own seamen, he even raised his stick.Which he carried according to the custom of Spartan generals.
When the mass of the troops saw this, in sailor fashion they cried out in rage and rushed at Astyochus with the intention of stoning him; he, however, saw this in time and took refuge at an altar. But he was not actually stoned, and they were separated.
The Milesians, furthermore, took the fort of Tissaphernes that had been built in Miletus, falling upon it unawares, and drove out the garrison that was in it. These doings were approved by the allies in general, and especially by the Syracusans.
Lichas,Who had been so firm before in his demands (8.43.3) and his protests (ch. lii.). however, was not pleased with them and said that the Milesians and other inhabitants of the King's country ought even to slave for Tissaphernes in a reasonable way and to court his favour until they should bring the war to a successful conclusion. But the Milesians were angry with him for these and similar sayings; and when he afterwards fell sick and died they did not suffer him to be buried where the Lacedaemonians who were present wished to lay him.
While the relations between the soldiers and Astyochus and Tissaphernes were in such discord, Mindarus came from Lacedaemon to succeed Astyochus as admiral and took over the command; and Astyochus sailed home.
But Tissaphernes sent with him as envoy one of his retinue, Gaulites, a bilingual Carian, to lay accusation against the Milesians for taking his fort and at the same time to make a defence of himself, since he knew that the Milesians were on their way to Sparta chiefly to denounce him, and that with them went Hermocrates, who was intending to show that Tissaphernes, together with Alcibiades, was ruining the cause of the Peloponnesians and pursuing a two-faced policy.
Tissaphernes had always been at enmity with Hermocrates in connection with the payment of the wages;cf. 8.75.3. and more recently, when Hermocrates had been banished from Syracuse and another set of generals had come to Miletus to take command of the Syracusan fleetcf. Xen. Hell. 1.1.27 ff.—and they were Potamis, Myscon and Demarchus—Tissaphernes set upon Hermocrates, now that he was an exile, much more violently than ever, charging against him, among other things, that he had once asked him for money, and because he did not obtain it had shown him enmity.
Astyochus, then, together with the Milesians and Hermocrates, sailed away to Lacedaemon; Alcibiades, on the other hand, had already left Tissaphernes and crossed over again to Samos.
And the envoys who had been sent by the Four Hundred, at the time above mentioned,cf. 8.72.1. to appease the soldiers at Samos and explain matters, now arrived from Delos when Alcibiades was already there; and at a meeting of the assembly they attempted to speak.
But the soldiers were at first unwilling to hear them, and with shouts threatened to kill the subverters of the democracy; afterwards, however, when with difficulty they had quieted down, they heard them.
The envoys announced that the revolution had been made, not for the destruction of the state, but for its preservation, not in order that Athens might be betrayed to the enemy (for that could have been done at the time of the Lacedaemonian invasion, when the revolutionists were already in power); they stated, moreover, that all the Five Thousand would participate in the government in their turn; furthermore, their relatives were neither being insulted, as Chaereas was slanderously saying, nor suffering any ill, but remained in their homes, each in possession of his own property.
But though they said all this and more, the soldiers were none the more inclined to give heed to them, but were angry, and one after another offered various suggestions, but particularly that they should sail against the Peiraeus. And Alcibiades seems then in an eminent degree, and more than anyone else, to have benefited the state; for when the Athenians at Samos were bent upon sailing against their own people—and if they had the enemy would most certainly have been masters of Ionia and the Hellespont—it was he who prevented it.
And in that critical moment no other man would have been able to restrain the crowd, but he stopped them from sailing, and reproaching those who were on their own private account angry at the envoys, he caused them to desist.
And he sent the envoys away with this answer from himself: he did not object to the Five Thousand ruling, but bade them depose the Four Hundred and set up the senate as it had been before—the body of Five Hundred;
and if there had been any curtailment with a view to economy, so that the soldiers in the field might have better maintenance, he quite approved of that. As for the rest, he bade them not yield a step to the enemy;
for so long as the city was saved there was great hope of a reconciliation among themselves, but if once one party or the other should go to the ground, whether the one at Samos or that at Athens, there would be no one left to be reconciled with. Envoys from the Argives also came to Samos with offers of assistance to the Athenian democracy there; but Alcibiades dismissed them with words of commendation, telling them to come when summoned.
Now the Argives had come with the crew of the Paralus, who at the time above mentionedcf. 8.74.2. had been sent out in the troop-ship with instructions to cruise round Euboea and to convey to Lacedaemon the three Athenian envoys from the Four Hundred, Laespodias, Aristophon and Melesias. But when they had got as far as Argos on their voyage, the crew had seized the envoys and delivered them to the Argives, on the ground that they were among those who had been chiefly instrumental in overthrowing the democracy. They themselves, however, did not go back to Athens thereafter, but came from Argos to Samos, bringing with them the envoys in their trireme.
During the same summer, at the very moment when, for various other reasons and especially because of the recall of Alcibiades, the Peloponnesians were vexed with Tissaphernes, feeling that he was now openly favouring the Athenians, he, wishing, as it seemed, to clear himself in their eyes of these calumnies, prepared to go to Aspendus after the Phoenician ships, and bade Lichas accompany him; but as regards the army he would appoint Tamos in his place, so as to ensure supplies during his own absence. But the story is told in different ways, and it is not easy to be certain what motive he had for going to Aspendus, and why, after going, he did not bring back the ships.
For that the Phoenician ships, one hundred and forty-seven in number, came as far as Aspendus is certain;
but the reason why they did not finish the journey is variously conjectured. Some say that his purpose was to accomplish by his absence what he actually designed—to exhaust by delay the resources of the Peloponnesians (at any rate supplies were furnished no better, but even worse than before, by Tamos, to whom this duty had been assigned); others say that it was with the idea of bringing the Phoenician ships as far as Aspendus and then exacting money from them for their discharge (for in any case he was not intending to make any use of them); and still others say that it was because lie was being denounced at Lacedaemon, and wanted the report to go out that he was not acting wrongly but, as everybody could see, had gone for the ships and these were really manned for service.
To me, however, it seems perfectly clear that it was with the purpose of wearing out the resources of the Hellenes and keeping matters in suspense that he did not bring the fleet—of exhausting them while he was making the journey to Aspendus and delaying there, and also of equalizing them, that he might make neither side stronger by joining it. For if he had indeed wished it, he could, it seems plain, by appearing on the scene have brought the war to a definite conclusion; for by bringing his fleet he would in all probability have given the victory to the Lacedaemonians, who, in fact, even as it was were confronting the Athenians with a fleet that fully matched theirs and was not inferior to it.
But that which convicted him most clearly was the excuse he gave for not bringing the ships, when he said that they were not so many as the King had ordered to be collected; but he, on the contrary, would surely have won all the more gratitude in such a case, by saving a great deal of the King's money and obtaining the same results with smaller outlay.
At any rate, whatever his intentions, Tissaphernes went to Aspendus and conferred with the Phoenicians; and the Peloponnesians by his orders sent Philippus, a Lacedaemonian, with two triremes to bring the ships back.
But Alcibiades, when he learned that Tissaphernes as well was on his way to Aspendus, sailed thither himself with thirteen ships, promising the army at Samos a sure and great benefit; for he would either secure the ships himself for the Athenians, or else at any rate prevent their joining the Peloponnesians. It is likely that he had long been aware of the purpose of Tissaphernes —that he had no intention of bringing the ships— and wished to prejudice him as much as possible in the eyes of the Peloponnesians on the score of his friendship for himself and the Athenians, that so he might be under greater compulsion to join the Athenian side. So he put to sea, laying his course eastward, straight toward Phaselis and Caunus.
When the envoys sent by the Four Hundred arrived at Athens on their return from Samos and reported what Alcibiades had said— urging them to hold out and make no concessions to the enemy, and saying that he had great hopes both of reconciling the army to the people at home and of prevailing over the Peloponnesians—most of those who shared in the oligarchy,Referring, not only to the Four Hundred, but especially to the rest of the citizens who, in 8.69.2, are designated as οἱ ἐν τῇ ξυνωμοσίᾳ. who were even before this in distress, and would have been glad to be safely rid of the business in any way, were far more encouraged.
And they were already beginning to form groups and criticize the state of affairs, having as their leaders some of the very men who were members of the oligarchy and held office, such as Theramenes son of Hagnon, Aristocrates son of Scelias, and others. These had been among the foremost of those who had taken an active part in the revolution, but being afraid in real earnest, as they said, of the army at Samos and of Alcibiades, as well as of those who were sending envoys to Lacedaemon, who they thought might, by acting without the sanction of the greater number, work some harm to the city, they did not indeed openly profess that they wanted to avoid reducing the government to an extreme oligarchy, but maintained that they ought to appoint the Five Thousand in fact and not merely in name, and to establish the government on the basis of a greater equality.
Now this phrase of theirs was a mere political catchword, and in their personal ambitions most of them eagerly pursued the sort of methods by which an oligarchy formed out of a democracy is most sure to come to ruin; for all demand forthwith, not equality, but each that he shall be quite the first himself; whereas under a democracy an election is held and every man acquiesces more readily in the result because he feels that those to whom he owes his defeatie. the majority. are not his equals.ie. in an oligarchy all are of the same class, and the promotion of one is a slight upon the rest; but in a democracy the defeated candidate may claim that the electors were ignorant or prejudiced, that he was not beaten on his merits, and so pass the matter over.
But what most evidently encouraged these men was the fact that Alcibiades' position at Samos was so strong, and their opinion that the power of the oligarchy would not last long. Each one, therefore, strove to become the foremost leader of the people himself.
But those of the Four Hundred who were most opposed to such a course—the leading spirits like Phrynichus, who had been general at Samos and had then quarrelled with Alcibiades,cf. chs. xlviii., l. and Aristarchus, a man who had been conspicuously and for the longest time opposed to the democracy, and Peisander,cf. chs. xlix., liii. Antiphon,cf. ch. lxviii. l. and other men of the greatest influence—before this time, that is, as soon as they were established in power and then when the army at Samos had revolted from them in favour of a democratic form of government, had been sending ambassadors of their own to Lacedaemoncf. 8.71.3; 8.86.9. and making earnest efforts to come to an understanding, and had also been constructing their fort in the place called Eetioneia; and now far more than ever, when their ambassadors returned from Samos, did they bestir themselves, seeing that not only the majority of the people but also men of their own party who had before been esteemed trustworthy were changing their views.
So they despatched Antiphon, Phrynichus, and ten others in all haste, since they were alarmed by the situation both at home and at Samos, enjoining upon them to effect a reconciliation with the Lacedaemonians on any terms that would be at all tolerable.
And they set to work with greater zeal than ever building their fort at Eetioneia.See map at end. And the purpose of this fort was, as Theramenes and his adherents said, not that they might prevent the Samian fleet from entering the Peiraeus in case they should attempt to force their way in, but rather that they might admit the enemy whenever they wished with both his army and fleet. For Eetioneia is a mole extending out from the Peiraeus, and immediately beside it is the entrance to the harbour.