Tides of War (47 page)

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 warehouse. 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.

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.

On the twelfth evening, the most earnest and influential company yet convened at the home of Callias the son of Hipponicus. Critias himself was its spokesman. If Alcibiades assented, he declared, he would the following morning place the motion before the people. It would be enacted by acclamation. At last the city would stand beyond its own self-devastating pendulations of passion. The war could be prosecuted and won.

Alcibiades made no response. Euryptolemus spoke for him. “But, Critias,” he observed, in a tone flat with understatement, “such a motion would be contrary to law.”

“With all respect, my friend. The
demos
makes the law, and what it says is the law.”

Still Alcibiades did not speak.

“Let me be sure I understand you,” Euryptolemus continued to Critias. “Are we to agree that this same
demos
which banished and condemned my cousin unconstitutionally may now, with symmetrical lawlessness, anoint him dictator?”

“The people acted in madness then,” declared Critias with emphasis. “They act with reason now.”

Alcibiades spurned Critias’ summons, as you know, citing the poet’s admonishment that

and when report of this self-regulation reached the people, his popularity soared to yet more unprecedented heights.

Nor did his enemies wait long to find means to exploit this. It was a sight of pungent irony to observe such miscegenated bedfellows as Cleophon, Anytus, Cephisophon, and Myrtilus, the zealots of the oligarchs, leaping into wedlock with the radical democrats, not only stepping forth in concert but advocating those policies most likely to find favor in Alcibiades’ quarter; in other words, to become his most ardent and obeisant toadies, their strategy being, as the comic poets later elucidated, to “over-Alcibiadize” the people until he lodged in their craw and they spat him out.

No one perceived this peril more keenly than Alcibiades himself. He drew about him now those companions of youth and war—Euryptolemus and Adeimantus, Aristocrates, Diotimus, and Mantitheus—whom he felt loved him for himself and did not perceive him, in the phrase of the poet Agathon, through the disrefracting glass of their own hope and terror. I as well found myself drawn more closely into his confidence.

He entrusted me with assignments of increasing import and subtlety. I was sent to address groups of the bereaved of Sicily, to serve on the committee seeking a site for the memorial. I officiated at sacrifices, represented the fleet marine force at official occasions, entertained
prospective allies, and attempted to suborn or intimidate potential foes. I found these chores excruciating and begged to be released. He wished to know my objection.

“They acclaim me not for myself, but for some imagined ‘Polemides,’ and address themselves to me as if I were he.”

He laughed. “Now you’re a politician.”

Until that time I had managed to keep clear of political connivance. This now became impossible. Life was politics. A man encountered may not be greeted as mate or fellow, but must be assessed as partisan or adversary and dealt with by this criterion alone: what can he do for our side, this day, not later, while he simultaneously took our measure, and in the same coin. One no longer talked but negotiated, spoke not but represented. The deal was everything; one breathed only to close. Yet such proved elusive as smoke. For many could say no but only one yes, and without yes you had nothing. The worth of each man rose or fell as a ram in the livestock market, according to that currency which is neither coin nor
khous
but influence. I never smiled so much or meant it less, nor met such friends to whom I was nothing. In all things, perception superseded substance. One may not demand accountability of others, or give his own pledge to any undertaking, however trivial, but always options must be kept open till the last instant, at which point all bets were off and if you’d given your word to a friend, you now broke it at the orders of another friend and leapt as fast as you could upon the main chance. At dawn I stood garlanded, sacrificing to the gods; by night I cut deals with stooges and back-stabbers. This was not my style. I detested it. Compounding all were the tremendous stakes of these affairs, so that one must think, and indeed did, not only how our party may outpolitick those opposed but in the crunch how may we put them by. I missed not only my bride but her brothers and father and the straightforward landsman’s ways of these who had become to me, I realized now apart from them, my hearth and family.