Tides of War

  This was how my second wife was introduced to me, or me to her to put it exactly. She was the daughter of our Samian host of that evening, by name Aurore, whom I loved at once and with all my heart, though her time as my bride was barely a year before heaven took her, such has been my fortune. I never learned what Alcibiades told her father of me, or how it was communicated. But upon the instant of this gentleman’s welcoming Mantitheus and myself at his threshold, it was as if I were a prince anointed.

  This was how Alcibiades made up his transgression, do you see? It was the malformation of his destiny, and our own, that he must make up so many.

  Timandra could not change him, but she took him in hand. They did not share the same room on the straits; she would not abide it, absent marriage, nor would she consent to such union, though he appealed for it strenuously. He must come to her bed and return to his own, unless she permitted. Nor did she install her lodgings adjacent his, to spy on him, but in the opposite wing, and as offices as well as quarters. She had means of her own which she managed, but her primary vocation upon entering his domain was to facilitate his practice, not of affairs of war, which were and must be his, but of matters of his well-being and efficient functioning.

  Once, ambassadors of the Persians, Mithridates and Arnapes, called upon Alcibiades at his villa on Dog’s Head Point and, being welcomed by Timandra in flawless Aramaic, took her for either the general’s interpreter or his lover and brushed past her, seeking his offices. She had the marines jerk them up at swordpoint, and when the envoys expressed outrage and demanded her credentials, she told them:

  “Gentlemen, it has been my observation among those whom men call great, that these may be addressed in only two ways—either to serve or to contest. In neither of these estates may the great man discover one to whom he may in safety unburden his heart. This is the service I afford our commander, and you, who have had abundant acquaintance of the great, may judge its worth.” She smiled. “Yet I have acted in overhaste to detain you thereby by force. Consider yourselves free, gentlemen, to pass as you wish.”

  The envoys tendered that obeisance the Persians call ayana, proper to a prince or minister. “Summon us when you wish, lady, but please accept, until we find more material means of expressing it, our regrets at this infraction.”

  From girlhood this Timandra had been pursued by suitors, offering, through her mother the courtesan Phrasicleia, worlds and universes to possess her, much as men had courted Alcibiades in his youth. Perhaps this was a bond between them, an understanding. One would say, observing them in public, that they conducted themselves as chastely as brother and sister; yet it was clear that each was passionately devoted to the other.

  Timandra domesticated Alcibiades, if such a word may be applied, and lent order to the often chaotic practice of his genius, managed as it was entirely in his head. But the sword of her advent had an under-edge, which was that the apparition of this female, wielding such influence at the epicenter of a coalition of war, contributed to an atmosphere about Alcibiades that smacked of royalty. What was she anyway? A queen? An imperial gatekeeper?

  Yet it must be said that someone had to shield him from the siege of distraction which drew him apart from the business of the fleet. For Thrasybulus and Theramenes, though of equal rank, never experienced such inundation of celebrity. They may walk abroad unmolested by the throngs of petitioners, supplicants, and rank-fuckers whose importunities tormented their counterpart without cease.

  But to return to my embassy to Endius. It took a month to reach Athens by the required route; by then the Spartan mission was gone, repudiated by Cleonymus and the demagogues. I set off at once to overhaul them, but they had crossed the Isthmus; I must enter the Peloponnese on my own, at last catching up at the border fort of Karyai.

  Endius listened gravely to my recitation of Alcibiades’ message, rejoining nothing. Next dawn Forehand appeared, bearing a message for Alcibiades in Endius’ hand, whose dispatch, the squire stated in distress, was an act of either extraordinary devotion or plain recklessness. Fearing for his master should the letter be intercepted, Forehand refused to depart. I broke the seal. I myself destroyed the letter, committing its contents to memory, to shield this Peer of Lacedaemon whom I had always respected but for whom, till that day, I had felt scant affection.

  Endius to Alcibiades, greetings.

  I dispatch these contents, my friend, knowing that their discovery may purchase my death. You are right; I may not contest the wisdom of the course you propose. I cannot help however. Not that our party has been overthrown; its agenda holds sway. But I myself have been displaced. Lysander now dominates. I can no longer control him.

  Hear what I tell you. Lysander has made himself mentor to young Agesilaus, King Agis’ brother, who will himself be king. Through the youngster he has made Agis his patron, who hates you and you know why. Agis will welcome your head or your liver, but no other part.

  Lysander intrigues tirelessly for appointment as fleet admiral. He believes he can handle the Persian, unlike our other navarchs who could neither dissimulate their contempt for the barbarian nor their despising of themselves for groveling for his gold.

  You know this yourself of Lysander’s character. To him a lie and the truth are one; he employs which will effect his ends. Justice in his view is a topic of the salon, personal pride a luxury the warrior may not afford. He despises as fools those of our country who will not bend the knee to the Persian, as he himself has before Agis and others, each prostration advancing himself and his influence. Lysander is by no means evil but by all means effective. He sees human nature for what it is, unlike yourself, who cannot resist sounding it for that which it may become. For what you must brave in him, you may reprove only yourself, as he has studied in your academy and disremembered nothing. All Spartan commanders are as children beside him, as they understand the fight and nothing more. Lysander understands the rest. He grasps the workings of the Athenian democracy, specifically the fickleness of the demos. He believes you capable of vanquishing all, save your own countrymen. They will destroy you, he contends, as every other of excellence before you. In other words, he does not fear you. He wants a fight. He believes he can win.

  Lysander possesses all your virtues of war and diplomacy and one other. He is cruel. He will order assassination, torture, and murder wholesale, which are but tools to him, as perjury, bribery, subornation. He will not scruple to apply terror even to his own allies. Like Polycrates the tyrant, he believes his friends will be more grateful when he gives back what he has taken than if he had never taken it at all. Victory is his solitary standard.

  Lastly, he believes he knows you. He understands your character. He has studied you, all the time you were in our country, knowing one day he would face you. Do not expect a fair fight. He will demur and dilate, absent all pride as a warrior, then appear from nowhere and overwhelm you.

  It will come as cold comfort but I believe the course you outline, of Greek alliance against Persia, is one Lysander himself would champion were it politic at the moment.

  I offer this page from his brief: do not undervalue cruelty or the employment of main force. Your style is to eschew coercion, which to you demeans coercer and coerced and backfires in the long run. But, my friend, everything backfires in the long run.

  Be of stringent care. You may have met your match in this fellow.

  The war for the Hellespont continued; Alcibiades’ victories mounted. Lysander failed, for that year and the next, to achieve his posting as fleet admiral.

  As for myself, I served at sea with the younger Pericles and in shore units, primarily under Thrasybulus. I paid court, by post and in person when action bore me south to Samos, to my heart’s joy, Aurore. With time, acquaintance deepened as well with her father and brothers, for whom I came to feel such fondness and regard as I had known before only with Lion and my own father.

  I returned to Alcibiades’ squadrons in time for the capitulation of Byzantium. This was the sternest
fighting of the Hellespontine War, against frontline Spartan troops, Peers and perioikoi of Selassia and Pellana, reinforced by Arcadian mercenaries and Boeotian heavy infantry of the Cadmus regiment, the same who had hurled us back on Epipolae. At one point a thousand Thracian cavalry under Bisanthes made a rush upon the Spartans, whose numbers had been cut to below four hundred, fighting before the walls all night. The Spartans carved them up, horse and all.

  When at last the enemy gave way, overwhelmed by our numbers and the desertion of their Byzantine allies, it took all of Alcibiades’ force, in person and shield in hand, to hold the Thracian princes from butchering them to the last man. He had to order our troops to drive the Spartans into the sea, as if to drown them, before the blood-mad tribesmen, who fear water more than you or I fear hell, would give back.

  Our ships may not be beached that night, but ride to anchor, bearing the enemy dead and wounded. I assisted a physician of the foe, whom my tongue in error addressed as “Simon” more than once.

  The strait lay choked in the morning, with smoking timbers and bodies drifting in the eddies where the outbound current abuts the in. Alcibiades ordered the channel swept and bonfires lighted on both shores, Byzantium on the European, Chalcedon the Asian. Athens held them both now and with them the Hellespont.

  At last Alcibiades commanded the Aegean.

  At last he may go home.

  Book VII

  FEEDING THE MONSTER

  XXXIII

  THE BLESSINGS OF PEACE

  I must insert this chapter on my own, my grandson, as it bears powerfully upon our client’s fate, though he himself elected not to confide these matters as part of his history, deeming them too personal. They concern the Samian maiden Aurore daughter of Telecles, a privileged introduction to whom, you recall, was Alcibiades’ way of requiting to our client his own indiscretion with Eunice.

  Polemides took the girl to wife.

  This was close after Byzantium, in the flush of victory, and before Alcibiades’ return to Athens. As with the bride of his youth, Phoebe, Polemides passed over this matter with reticence. That which I gleaned came from the testimony of others and, largely, correspondence discovered thereafter in Polemides’ chest.

  Here, a formal decree from the archon’s office at Athens, granting Athenian citizenship to the bride Aurore (as all Samians were accorded, several years later, for their steadfast service to our cause). Another parcel, from his great-aunt Daphne at Athens, contained apparently a golden hair clip, once Polemides’ mother’s, as a wedding gift for his bride.

  In this letter to his aunt Polemides recounts incidents of the wedding, describing with pride his new father-and brothers-in-law, both officers of the fleet, with whom already he feels a bond as friends as well as kinsmen.

  …lastly, my dear, I wish you could have seen her who has, heaven alone knows why, consented to be my wife. A match for me twice over in intellect, possessed of a beauty both chaste and passionate, and of such strength of character as to make my own pride as a warrior seem like a boy’s idle conceit. I experience in her presence such hopes as I have not permitted my heart to entertain since the passing of my own Phoebe, that is, the wish for children, life at home, a family. I thought I would never feel these again; to you only, and her, may I own such a confidence. To bring innocents into a world as this seemed not only irresponsible but wicked. Yet with but a glance at this dear girl’s face, before I had heard her voice or spoken to her a word, such despair as I have borne so long fell away as if it had never existed. Hope is indeed eternal, as the poets say.

  From station with the fleet, to his bride at Samos:

  …before you, it seemed the next milestone I would cross would be my own death, which I anticipated at any moment, marveling that it had not found me sooner. All I thought and did arose from this resolution, simply to be a good soldier till the end. I was an old man, dead already. Now with the miracle of your apparition, I am young again. Even my crimes are washed clean. I am reborn in your love and the simple prospect of a life with you, apart from war.

  Aurore becomes pregnant. This from her to him with the fleet:

  It’s a good thing you can’t see me, my love. I’m porky as a piglet. Haven’t seen my toes in a month. I waddle about, clutching at walls to keep from toppling. Father has moved my bed downstairs, fearing my clumsiness. I gobble desserts and double portions. What fun! All about wish to be pregnant too, even the little girls, with pillows on their bellies. The whole farm has caught the contagion. My joy—our joy—has spilled over onto them…

  Another from the young bride:

  …where are you, my love? It tortures me, not to know where your ship sails, though, if I knew, my torment would be equally excruciating. You must preserve yourself! Be a coward. If they make you fight, run away! I know you won’t, but I wish it. Please be careful. Don’t volunteer for anything!

  From the same letter:

  …you must now remark your life as mine, for if you fall, I perish with you.

  And this:

  Grant women rule and this war would end tomorrow. Madness! Why, when all good things flow from peace, must men seek war?

  Again from her:

  …life seemed so complicated to me. I felt like a beast who rushes this way and that within its cage, yet discovers only more bars and walls. At once with you, my love, all is simple. Just to live, and love, and be loved by you! Who needs heaven, when we have such joy now?

  Polemides responds:

  It daunts me, my love, that I must now prove worthy of you. How shall I ever?

  He takes steps to dissever himself from Eunice. He signs over half his pay to her and her children, makes application for citizenship for her and them, citing his years of service and the hardships Eunice and the children have borne at his side. He arranges transport for them to Athens and applies to his uncles and elder kinsmen to look to their care until his return.

  This from his bride:

  …I have learned from my father and brothers that a man’s conduct at war may not be accounted by the measures of peace, certainly not one as yourself whose youth and manhood have been spent in service far from home and constant peril of his life. That existence which you have made before we met is yours; I may not judge it. I wish only that I might help, if that were possible without causing by our happiness unhappiness in those we wish to aid. Know that those children of the woman Eunice, yours or not, will receive support from our resources, my own and ours, yours and mine, and my father’s.

  Polemides dreams of reestablishing his father’s farm, Road’s Turn, at Acharnae, and settling there with his bride and child. Peace, or victory which will drive the Spartans from Attica, is everything to him now. He writes his aunt, seeking to bring her, too, back to the land, and to those crofters who served during his father’s term. He even prices seed and orders, at a bargain, an iron ploughshare from a merchantman’s inventory at Methymna. He ships this implement aboard the freighter Eudia, whose passage homeward is escorted by the fleet of Alcibiades, with Polemides again aboard the flagship Antiope, as her supreme commander returns to Athens in glory.

  XXXIV

  STRATEGOS AUTOKRATOR

  Alcibiades had wished to return at break of winter, but elections at Athens were delayed; he must abide abroad, raiding the Spartan shipyards at Gytheium and killing time at other such offices. At last reports came. They could not have been better. Alcibiades had been elected again to the Board of Generals; as was Thrasybulus, who had brought him home from Persia; Adeimantus, his mate and fellow exile; and Aristocrates, who had championed his recall before the Assembly. The other generals were either neutrals or men of independent virtue. Cleophon, leader of the radical democrats and Alcibiades’ most bitter foe, had been supplanted, replaced by Archedemus, a thug but an amenable one, and a solicitor of Critias, Socrates’ close friend.

  Thrasyllus was at Athens already with the main of the fleet, whose crews would back their commander in anything. Yet still Alcibiades, whose senten
ce of death had not yet been rescinded, harbored apprehensions of the people’s disposition. It was his cousin Euryptolemus’ device, communicated by post from Athens, that the warships’ arrival, only a flag squadron of twenty, be preceded by grain galleys (twenty-seven waited at Samos then, with another fourteen due out of the Pontus) and that these be known vessels of prominent houses, particularly those who had suffered most from Spartan depredations, and laden for the city, to recall to her that bounty set at her table by the son she had scorned. This was only good manners, Euro’s letter noted, as one would be rude to appear for a feast empty-handed.

  So the galleys went ahead. These made port at Piraeus two days prior to the squadron, accompanied by a fast courier with instructions to return, reporting the vessels’ reception. But the arrival of the merchantmen precipitated such elation in the port, with the news that Alcibiades’ ships followed, that the people would not let the cutter reembark until a proper reception may be mustered to accompany her. Meanwhile the squadron, advancing unapprised of what awaited, began to fear. Beating round Cape Sounium into a fierce westerly, the lead vessels, descrying a score of triremes bearing down out of the sun so that their ensigns could not be made out, the younger Pericles, officer of the van, had brought the formation to line abreast to defend itself when it was realized that the advancing vessels bore not hazard but welcome, garlanded, and laden with parties of kinsmen and notables.

  Still Alcibiades feared treachery. Beneath his cloak he wore not the light ceremonial cuirass, but a bronze breastplate of battle. Directions were rehearsed to the marine party to remain about him at alert. The ships, which had been advancing in two columns, deployed to singles approaching the harbor entrance at Eetoniea. Antiope lay off, seventh in column, that she may put about at once in the event of duplicity. We could see the ramparts now. Reflections flared, as from spearpoints and armor of massed infantry. The flagship bore sidescreens “at the step,” primed for deployment. But as the vessels drew abreast of the bastion, the men could see the flares were not of missiles or armor, but of ladies’ vanities and children’s sundazzlers. Clouds of wreaths descended. Youths launched candies upon the breeze, suspended from the spruce spinners that old men whittle wharfside, which can soar for miles on the updrafts. These now came winging overhead, clattering against the hull and splashing amid the oar sweep.