Winter came. With Alcibiades and his companions gone, the fleet had lost not only its boldest and most enterprising officers but those most passionately devoted to the expedition. Nicias and Lamachus now shared command. At once all initiative fled. Instead of advancing with vigor against the cities of Sicily, cutting Syracuse off from her natural allies, Nicias made one halfhearted pass at cowing her directly, then ordered the fleet to retire for winter to Catana. I languished there two months before Pandora was dispatched, mercifully, to Iapygia, seeking horses for the cavalry. Lion was there too, with Medusa.
Iapygia, as you know, is the heel of Italy's boot. It blows like hell up there, wild gales the non-Greek natives call nocapelli, bald heads. You get all the news, though; every vessel puts in at Caras, and the crews, flush with gossip, are glad of a toasty hearth to spill it in. Lion and I learned of our absconded commander from the master of a Tyrrhenian coaster who had it from a boatswain of Corinth who had run Conon's blockade of the gulf. This Corinthian had accompanied his captain to Sparta; he had passed two evenings in the Hyacinthieum and even been permitted upon the porticoes of the apella, the Assembly, where foreigners are occasionally licensed to attend upon the debate within.
Alcibiades had fled neither to Italy nor to the moon, imparted our informant. He was at Sparta. “And not on the gibbet either. But free and in his glory, the cynosure of all Lacedaemon!”
This intelligence was greeted with hooting disbelief by the mariners who packed the public room.
“This same perfumed coxcomb,” our captain continued, unperturbed, “who in the Assembly of Athens swathed himself in purple and trailed his robe astern in the dust, this same profligate and libertine, I say, in short this consummate Athenian, now in Sparta has recast himself and hatched a new Alcibiades, unrecognizable to all who knew him hitherto.
“This new Alcibiades garments himself in plain Spartan scarlet, tramps about with soles unshod, curls cascading to his shoulders in the Lacedaemonian style. He takes his meals in the common mess, bathes in the frigid Eurotas, and lays himself down each night upon a bed of reeds. He dines on black broth and takes wine only in moderation. Of speech he is as parsimonious as if words were gold and he a miser. At break of day one may discover him afield and asweat, training upon the running course. Forenoon finds him in the gymnasium or upon the athletic grounds, into whose games he plunges with a passion exceeding even that of his most ardent and accomplished hosts. In short the man has become more spartan than the Spartans, and they idolize him for it. Boys trail him about, Peers compete to call him comrade, and women…well, the laws of Lycurgus promote polyandry, as you know, so that even men's wives may dote openly upon this paragon of whom all declare,
… here is not a second Achilles, but the man, the very man himself.”
The seamen responded with an anthem of knuckle raps on the benchtops. Later Lion and I interrogated the Tyrrhenian aside in a more sober vein. What had his friend reported of Alcibiades' intentions? Clearly our erstwhile commander had not decamped to Sparta to play at ball or train on the track.
“That square of sail I trimmed from my fable, mates. I doubted it would prompt a smile.”
“Spill it now, friend.”
“He works against you, brothers, and with all his bowels. That avidity with which he in past paid court to Athens, with matching gall he now plots her ruin. You know what stay-at-homes the Lacedaemonians are and how tardy to act. Well, Alcibiades gave them an earful of Athenian fire, enough to rouse even those boneheads from their slumber.
“The Spartans had held the fate of Sicily as not affecting their interests. Alcibiades apprised them otherwise. Who, he inquired, would know better the expedition's object than himself, its author? This he declared to be neither Sicily, Italy, nor Carthage, but these, conquered, to serve as stepping-stones to an assault upon the Peloponnese, whose ultimate aim was the conquest of Sparta herself. In terms most passionate he exhorted his hosts to dispatch at once to Syracuse all aid they could spare and proffered diverse other counsels to bring evil upon his countrymen.”
We returned to Catana with the spring. The place was gloomier, even, than I remembered. Curfew had been instituted. Wages came late, and in chits not coin; there were brawls every payday.
Simon reports Alcibiades' odor at home:
… the Assembly has gone so far as to enact a motion of imprecation; the Eumolpid priests have placed a curse upon him.
How Homeric! So many turned out, it sparked a riot. This is no joke, Pommo. Alcibiades will doubtless seek to bring the Spartan army against you, or at least have them dispatch a crack general.
Win fast, cousin. Or better, get home.
On the second of Munychion the army moved out for Syracuse.
Lion brought his new woman Berenice. We held all in common, including correspondence. When I finished reading aloud cousin Simon's letter, Berenice asked if she might have it. “For Lion's historia.”
My brother was compiling a chronicle of the war.
“Why the hell shouldn't I? I know my alphas and betas as well as the next moron. Besides, here is a tale worth telling, one whose publication cannot fail to produce fortune and renown and relieve its author ever after of squandering his hours with such as yourself.”
I declared this a noble ambition.
“Attend my logic, Pommo. These verses of Homer:
…into the manslaughter advanced Peleus' peerless son, god-born Achilles, and in their ranks he broke the enemy before him..
“Or this:
… these he left in numbers upon the field, a feast for dogs and crows..
“Now I put this to you, brother. Who would you and I be, upon that thousand-years-gone field? Not Achilles, that's certain! We'd be the luckless bastards mowed down beneath his blade. And our
obituary? One louse-ridden line, lumped with fifty other nameless ciphers. Yet these are the men, don't you see, whose story cries out most to be told. Our story! By the gods, we are heroes too.
And is not the paying public comprised precisely of such as we?
Other gentlemen of the armored infantry. They will eat up my narrative, which I will recite to unceasing citation within the salons and auditoria of our nation. I may even set it to music and accompany myself on the lyre.”
A number of mates had clustered with their women. And who, our comrade Chowder inquired, will play Achilles to your Homer?
Why, Alcibiades of course!
“The Iliad,” Lion reedified his adherents, “narrates the tale of the wrath of Achilles and the destruction in its train which wreaked havoc upon the Achaeans, hurling in their hosts to hell stout souls of heroes…
“Consider, friends. Wronged by his king and commander, Achilles sheathes his blade and retires to his tent. This prayer he makes: that his countrymen discover, by the sufferings they must now endure, how far the best of them he is, and bemoan bitterly that they have let him be so ignobly used.
“Is not Alcibiades' equation identical, my friends, excepting only this: our modern Achilles has gone his counterpart one better. Not only had he retired from contending at our side, depriving us of his skills and counsel, but now he yokes himself to the cause of our enemy, applying his full rage and resourcefulness in their interest, against us.”
Lion's listeners began to squirm.
“It gets worse, brothers. For this enemy, Sparta, has never wanted in valor or skill in warfare. All she lacks is that which our contemporary Achilles may provide her: vision and audacity.
Alcibiades will rouse this enemy to initiatives she would never have undertaken absent his urgings and provide her with masterstrokes of strategy she could never have advanced upon her own.”
“Enough, Lion!” Chowder elevated his palms.
“Ah, friends, you fail yet to perceive the genius of my construct.
For my epic, unlike Homer's, discovers its significance not among divinely spawned champions and their destinies, but here in the dirt with us sons of mortals who must endure them. Upon us, the grimy heroes of my tale, falls the necessity to gift it with significance. Alcibiades will serve our story, not we his. This is how modern war differs from mythic.”
To my cousin, that summer:
… we are in action at last, if you can call building a wall action.
