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.”
XIX
Alcibiades fled at Thurii. To Argos first, men said, then Elis when that became too hot, one jump ahead of the state agents and fee hunters. My brother was among the military posse, led by the crew of the Salaminia, that chased him around Italy's boot.
… these vaunted elite of the state galley are a pretty confection, brother. Though of the cult of Ajax and thus kinsmen of their prey, they hunt him as he were a rabid dog. At Padras he was rumored to be fled to an inn; our search party torched the site in darkness, nearly incinerating a dozen innocents, nor tarried to proffer reparation, but another rumor of our quarry's whereabouts drove us on a further wild-goose chase. These buggers play for keeps, Pommo. They put one poor lad to the cheese grater, though the boy was no older than twelve. Next up was a sprat fisher. These heirs of Eurysaces took him two miles out and, heaving first one of his sons, then the other into the drink to drown, at last chucked the skipper himself. Such stunts these agents of the state perform with a dry eye and a wisecrack.
Clearly they fear the consequences of returning home without their charge; yet it is more than this, Pommo. Why do they hate him so? His own kinsmen! They own a zealotry more void of pity than the partisans we used to see in the islands. This very note must be smuggled out. If these birds cadge a peek at it, they will stretch my hide, and yours, upon the nearest door.
Alcibiades was not the only commander ordered home for trial.
Mantitheus, too, was indicted, trierarch of the Penelope, as was Antiochus, the ablest pilot in Greece, Adeimantus, and Alcibiades' cousin also named Alcibiades. Six other officers were summoned as well.
From my cousin Simon at Athens:
…Salaminia returned. No Alcibiades. He legged it in Italy, on hearing the Assembly had condemned him to death in absentia, though you probably have this news already. “I will let Athens know,” he is said to have pronounced, “that I am very much alive.”
