Let me show you something, my grandson. It is the Fleet Order of Sail for Sicily, or more precisely one of the hundreds of copies drawn up by the demosioi, the secretaries of the Admiralty staff. Feel the paper; it is neither reed nor pulp, but linen. It is woven.
This was a document made to last. It was conceived of as epochal, an artifact of glory which each officer would pass to his heirs for generations. I now cede mine to you, my child, but not for the reasons its creators envisioned, such are the unknowable ways of God.
The Office of the War Archon was responsible for the production of this instrument, a duplicate of which was distributed to every trierarch of the fleet, as well as all pilots and captains of marines, fleet patrons and syndicate officers, the Board of Generals, the hundred members of the Board of Naval Construction, and the Curators of the Yards, as well as the chief executives and corporate officers of the private construction firms, shipbuilders, suppliers, sailmakers, and armament manufacturers who had built and provisioned the fleet. I worked on this document, myself and six other officers, night and day for seven months.
Regard the underlay. It is a pilot's chart of the Piraeus, the Grand Harbor and the Cantharus, extending from the fort and naval establishment of Eetioneia to the Emporium and the Still Harbor to Acte, with soundings indicated for flood and ebb, sitings for all channel markers from the Diazeugma to the Ephebium, including distances mole- to-mole and angles of triangulation among each of the four beacons and twenty-seven benches, so that a ship's master could, by striking azimuths to the various guidons, determine his position within a boat-length at any point of the harbor. This degree of precision was ordained by Nicias and Alcibiades, in concord for once, that each of the fleet's three hundred and sixty-four primary vessels could site herself upon her assigned station and the whole colossal departure come off with an order and symmetry both grand to the eye and pleasing to the gods.
Upon the facing sheet are indicated the priests' and magistrates' stations. The squares along the fairway are the stationary barges erected for the King Archon, the Chief Priests of the Ten Tribes, and the Priestesses of Athena Poliachos, Protectress of the City, as well as the chaplains and sanctuary guardians of Agraulus, Enyalius, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, and Hegemone. Each demarch had his own barge as well, plus privately funded viewing stands in excess of two hundred, which stretched for three miles opposite the Sounium Road. The Choma jetty was reserved to the Council members, likewise garlanded and mounted upon the tribal steps from which they looked out, across the water, upon the Temple of Aphrodite Mistress of Navigation, whose precincts held the delegations of women, the wives and mothers of the trierarchs, in white, bearing wands of yew and hyacinth. At the head of the bay stood the altar of Poseidon, upon which a bull was sacrificed to the sea.
Sorrowful age has ravaged my sight; the document in your hand is but a blur. Yet still I see, ship for ship, that magnificent armada as she passed before my vision half a century gone.
First in ceremonial escort rowed the state galleys, Paralus and Salaminia, the fastest ships in the world. Their sails, as all the fleet, rode reefed upon the yard awaiting the trumpeted order “Make sail!” Upon this command, each line loosed in succession, the topmen riding the fabric down, unfurling it with their feet as they plunged, so that like a pennant suddenly sprung to the breeze, the sails snapped and filled with an audible concussion. Cheers rose from the thousands massed upon the shore as each fresh sail, emblazoned with some design honoring its namesake deity or heroine, filled and drew. These were all ceremonial sails, woven for this day alone and superfluous to the point of absurdity, as all vessels made way entirely under oars. Yet they did look grand! It was remarked that the sigh of relief of the Admiralty staff would have sufficed alone to get the ships under way, so trepidatious had they stood of the ill omen of dead or contrary winds.
Lamachus' division moved out first, though he himself and his flagship, Hegemonia, had embarked days prior with his squadron to secure the cape and alert our Corcyrean allies to the fleet's departure. Now: the fast corvettes, called “cutthroats,” in columns of two, sixteen in all, then the fifty-oared galleys, thirty-six, flanking the cargo, troop, and horse transports which advanced in a mass in the center. These, numbering a hundred and sixty-seven, took an hour to clear the reviewing stands.
Next came the men-of-war, the triremes, in formation by squadron, ten and twelve across and four deep, with each commander on the left in the post of honor. First one-hundred-seventy-four-oared Procne, Autocles' ship, Lamachus' vice-admiral. Her squadronmates were Pompe, Ajax, Ptolemais, Gorgon, and Grampus, whose sail was crimson and bore the image of its guardian beast; then Circe, Thrush, Hippolyta,
Theama, Ram, and Relentless.
Under her crimson sail with griffin emblem came Pyrpnous, Fire-Breather, Pythiades' ship, the hero of Cos. Then Indomitable, Dynamis, Thraseia, Amphitrite, Euxinaia, Achilleia, Centaura, and the triplets Tisiphone, Megaera, and Alecto.
The Nereid squadron under Aristogenes: Thetis, Pytho, Panope, Galatea, Balte, Alcyone, Euploia, Sea Eagle, Invincible, Endeavor, and Aianateia. Then Two-in-Hand, Epitome, Vigilant, Equipoise, Redoubtable, and Medusa.
Nicias' flagship, Trident, led the Oceanus division, her sail of purple and gold and her forepeak triple-pronged in sheathed bronze. Flanking her advanced Tethys, Doris, Eurynome, Zephyr West Wind, Aias, and Antigonis, then Mentor and Bay of Marathon, the sister ships Styx and Acheron, funded by Crito, Socrates' devotee. Next Strife, Castalia, Scylla, Cecropis with its blazon half-woman, half-dragon, and Aphrodisia, whose figurehead, bare- breasted, had been crafted by Phidias himself.
Then Typho, Medea, Hellhound, Anthesteria, Tauropolis, Clytemnestra, Fear, and Discord; Paean, Indefatigable, and Dauntless. Last Syntaxis, Hippothontis, Eleusis, Hecate, Merciless, Ostracon, and Arete.
Now the Thunderbolt division, forty-one ships, under Alcibiades. His helmsman was Antiochus, wing commanders Chaemedemus, Menestheus, and Adeimantus. At the fore rode the flagship, Artemisia, then Atalanta and Parthenos, the Virgin, trailed by the Amazons, Antiope, Hippolyta, and Penthesilea, with Iris, Aigle, Valor, and Europa.
Next Leaina, Lioness, flanked by Hysteria, Reckless, Olympia, Fury, Sophia, Danae, Rhea, Psyche, and Euphranousa. Then Palladium, Semele, Althaea, Nightingale, and Leopard. Hebe, Devastator, Daphne, Erebus, the three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Last Pandora, Swift, Terror, Penelope, Owl, Corsair, Necropolis, and Calypso.
This was the mightiest armada ever launched beneath the banner of a single city. So densely lapped rose the sails of the second and third divisions that their mass cut off the wind of the first. What open water remained stood so thick with small craft that one could have trod from Eetion to Munychia and never gotten his feet wet. There must have been a thousand boys'
“itty-bits,” pressing so densely about the warships that the oars in their sweep overturned no small number. The boys cheered even as they foundered, clinging to the keels of their overturned pots.
You are impatient, my grandson. You wish me to get to the notorious affair of the Herms. Here is how I learned of it: The date was twenty-one days before departure. I had been up all night at Naval Affairs, racing not only to complete this document but to pack up the office, which was being relocated to quarters in the Choma mews, at the harbor. With two other officers, my friend Orestiades, captain of the Resolute, and the younger Pericles, son of the great Pericles and the courtesan Aspasia, I emerged to the dawn from our basement space. It was the morning after Gleaning Day, the early barley harvest, when the widows and orphans had had their hours to scavenge and the stubbled fields, picked clean, had been set ablaze outside the city and across on Euboea. The haze, drifting down the channel and mingling with the sea fog, cast the city in an eerie pall. We had just started toward the marketplace when a press of women hastened past on the Street of the Weavers. They were wailing and uttering cries of distress.
We turned the corner into Council Square. More throngs clamored in disorder. Two slaves dashed past. Pericles seized one and demanded to know what was going on. “They've knocked all the cocks off, sir!”
“By Heracles, speak plain and clear.”
“The herms, Captain. The whole city's dickless!”
During the night a pack or packs of vandals, identities unknown, had rampaged through a number of quarters, defacing the stone statues of Hermes that stood with their erect phalluses as good-luck pieces before private residences and government buildings. The criminals had batted these knobs off and even smashed the statues' faces.
Who could have committed such an outrage? No sentence shy of death could requite such an act of
