Tides of War, a Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War

XVIII

Before Sicily [Polemides resumed] I had never fought as a marine. The sea fighter's skills were new to me. I knew nothing of two-and-ones or concentrics, the breakthrough or the cutback; I had never thrown a javelin from a kneeling position or dashed forward along a trireme deck, that my weight and my comrades' decline the drive of the ram and cause her to rip the foe more lethally beneath the waterline.

I have had a nightmare here in prison, the same repeated eve upon eve. In the dream I am in Sicily, the Great Harbor of Syracuse.

Of our hundred and forty-four warships, the Athenian and Corcyrean fleets combined, under fifty remain, fit to fight. These have fled to the strand beneath the Olympieum and are thrown up in disorder behind the palisade. Syracusan and Corinthian warships drive at us; the axes of their marines assault the towers bearing the massive drop-weight “dolphins,” while their archers sling ironheads upon us in the water.

Out in the harbor our ships are burning and going down. Along the shore the enemy infantry waits. Where I am, on the palisade, the foe keeps coming. Ram and back water, ram and back water.

These sons of whores are good. Even after ten hours, their blades bite in unison. I am flung rearward into the backwash. The surface is choked with arrow-shafts, marine javelins, and shivered oars.

My strength fails. A ship passes over. I'm going down for good when I wake in terror.

It has been my experience that in certain instances of battle or other moments of extreme peril, reality as it is normally experienced becomes supplanted by a dreamlike state in which events seem to unfold with a stately deliberateness, a retardation almost leisurely, and we ourselves stand apart as if observers of our own peril. A sense of wonder pervades all; one becomes vividly, preternaturally aware, not alone of danger but of beauty as well.

He sees, and keenly appreciates, such subtleties as the play of light upon water, even such surface incarnadined with the blood of comrades dearly loved, or his own. One is able to observe to himself, “I am going to die now,” and absorb this with equanimity.

My brother was fascinated by this phenomenon of dislocation.

Its stem, he maintained, was fear. Fear so overpowering that it drives the animating spirit from the flesh, as in death. In those moments, Lion believed, we actually were dead. The element of soul had fled; it must find its vessel of flesh and reinhabit it.

Sometimes, Lion professed, the soul did not wish to. It was happier whereto it had vacated. This was battle madness, mania maches; the lost soul, the “thousand-yard stare.”

Lion believed that ambition, too, could drive the soul from the body, as could passionate love, greed, or possession by wine and drugs. He warranted that certain forms of government, or misgovernment, could deprive entire populations of their soul. But I drift apart from our tale.

You must bear with me, my friend, if recollection of those days passes before the inward eye as flotsam and marine debris, untethered to the moorings of time. This is how Sicily stands, or drifts, within my recall-as neither dream nor reality but some third state, recaptured only in snatches, as a battle glimpsed through smoke upon the water.

I remember the eve of Alcibiades' recall. This was at Catana in Sicily, three months gone from Athens. Lion and I had embarked in posts not directly under our commander, but he had ordered us and others of long-standing acquaintance seconded to his party. He wanted men he trusted. And he wished to present the most concerted corps of companions when he opened negotiations with the Sicilian cities.

Naxos came over at once; Catana after a little knuckle-busting.

Messana lacked only a nudge. He took a deputation of four ships to Camarina, which, though Dorian, had been Athens' ally in the past and which, our commander's agents now claimed, was ripe to fall.

She sealed her gates, however, refusing even to let us land.

Alcibiades ordered the tiny flotilla back to Catana. When it got there, the state galley Salaminia was waiting, with the orders revoking his command.

I was in Alcibiades' party when Salaminia's master approached, accompanied by two summoners of the Assembly. These were both men of Scambonidae, Alcibiades' home district, known to him, so as not to provoke his defiance. All were unarmed. The officers presented their papers and commanded him to accompany them to Athens, to stand trial for impiety, profanation, and treason.

All expressed regret at the unfortunate nature of their errand. If Alcibiades wished, he need not return a prisoner aboard Salaminia but follow in his own ship. However, he must embark at once, no later than morning.

That night one spoke of nothing but the prospect of a coup.

Nicias and Lamachus called out the marines, myself and Lion among them; we were posted eight to a vessel and by companies at arms up and down the strand.

Years later I served aboard Calliope with the younger Pericles.

Alcibiades' executive officer Antiochus had been his mentor in naval warfare. Antiochus had told him, Pericles recounted, that Alcibiades, anticipating his recall for trial, had for months been orchestrating a campaign via post and through allies at home whose object was to have the charges against him reframed and the indictment of profanation, the only one he truly feared because of the passionate outrage it evoked among the people, dropped.

This goal, letters received two days previous confirmed, had been effected. Such was the news Alcibiades had been hoping for.

Against these reduced charges he was certain he could prevail, defending himself in person before the Assembly. Now on the strand at Catana, however, the summoners informed him, apparently in ignorance of the consequences, that the profanation charges had in fact not been dropped. Alcibiades had been double-crossed, and with brilliance, too late in the game to reply with a counter.

Among Alcibiades' counselors, Mantitheus, Antiochus, and his cousin also named Alcibiades lobbied most vehemently for a coup, dissent voiced by Euryptolemus and Adeimantus. Those who championed this supreme stroke urged Alcibiades to seize command of the expedition here and now, imprisoning or if necessary putting to death all who refused to take his side. Nor did these radicals quit there. They proposed abandoning the Sicilian campaign where it stood and setting sail with the entire fleet for Athens, where Alcibiades, backed by army and navy, would declare himself master of the state.

It was Alcibiades himself who repudiated this. “I would not take Athens as a mistress,” he asserted, “but a bride.”

Many have derided this quip as facile and disingenuous, contending that Alcibiades only acceded to the summoners' decree because he believed he had in place at Athens sufficient cohorts to carry his case; or that his agents had already suborned ample in authority to effect his exoneration. I don't believe this. I think he meant exactly what he said. I allege this not in defense of the man, to characterize him as chivalrous or honor-compassed (though he was both), for consider: such a statement bespeaks an arrogance both supreme and breathtaking.

That was how he felt, I believe. Athens was in his view not nation to be served, but consort to be won; to gain her by means other than her own freely offered affection would be to dishonor her and himself. He craved not love nor power but both, each fed by and founded upon the other.

I had conjured none of this then, as the deputies served their summons beside the beached Artemisia. All, I account, however, comprised Alcibiades' reflection. I regarded him. His expression was informed neither by rage nor vindictiveness, though he came subsequently to act with both in abundance. What I perceived was sorrow. I believe he stood in that instant apart from himself and his fate, as a man at the peak of peril will be lifted and granted vision of the full field. Like a master gamesman, Alcibiades perceived move and countermove four and five turns ahead, all boding evil, yet could discern no masterstroke by which he or his city could escape this end.

“What will you do?” Euryptolemus asked his cousin.

Alcibiades stared gravely, straight ahead.

“Not sail home to be murdered, that much is certain.”