infraction.”
From girlhood this Timandra had been pursued by suitors, offering, through her mother the courtesan Phrasicleia, worlds and universes to possess her, much as men had courted Alcibiades in his youth. Perhaps this was a bond between them, an understanding. One would say, observing them in public, that they conducted themselves as chastely as brother and sister; yet it was clear that each was passionately devoted to the other.
Timandra domesticated Alcibiades, if such a word may be applied, and lent order to the often chaotic practice of his genius, managed as it was entirely in his head. But the sword of her advent had an under-edge, which was that the apparition of this female, wielding such influence at the epicenter of a coalition of war, contributed to an atmosphere about Alcibiades that smacked of royalty. What was she anyway? A queen? An imperial gatekeeper?
Yet it must be said that someone had to shield him from the siege of distraction which drew him apart from the business of the fleet. For Thrasybulus and Theramenes, though of equal rank, never experienced such inundation of celebrity. They may walk abroad unmolested by the throngs of petitioners, supplicants, and rank- fuckers whose importunities tormented their counterpart without cease.
But to return to my embassy to Endius. It took a month to reach Athens by the required route; by then the Spartan mission was gone, repudiated by Cleonymus and the demagogues. I set off at once to overhaul them, but they had crossed the Isthmus; I must enter the Peloponnese on my own, at last catching up at the border fort of Karyai.
Endius listened gravely to my recitation of Alcibiades' message, rejoining nothing. Next dawn Forehand appeared, bearing a message for Alcibiades in Endius' hand, whose dispatch, the squire stated in distress, was an act of either extraordinary devotion or plain recklessness. Fearing for his master should the letter be intercepted, Forehand refused to depart. I broke the seal. I myself destroyed the letter, committing its contents to memory, to shield this Peer of Lacedaemon whom I had always respected but for whom, till that day, I had felt scant affection.
Endius to Alcibiades, greetings.
I dispatch these contents, my friend, knowing that their discovery may purchase my death. You are right; I may not contest the wisdom of the course you propose. I cannot help however. Not that our party has been overthrown; its agenda holds sway. But I myself have been displaced. Lysander now dominates. I can no longer control him.
Hear what I tell you. Lysander has made himself mentor to young Agesilaus, King Agis' brother, who will himself be king.
Through the youngster he has made Agis his patron, who hates you and you know why. Agis will welcome your head or your liver, but no other part.
Lysander intrigues tirelessly for appointment as fleet admiral.
He believes he can handle the Persian, unlike our other navarchs who could neither dissimulate their contempt for the barbarian nor their despising of themselves for groveling for his gold.
You know this yourself of Lysander's character. To him a lie and the truth are one; he employs which will effect his ends.
Justice in his view is a topic of the salon, personal pride a luxury the warrior may not afford. He despises as fools those of our country who will not bend the knee to the Persian, as he himself has before Agis and others, each prostration advancing himself and his influence. Lysander is by no means evil but by all means effective. He sees human nature for what it is, unlike yourself, who cannot resist sounding it for that which it may become. For what you must brave in him, you may reprove only yourself, as he has studied in your academy and disremembered nothing. All Spartan commanders are as children beside him, as they understand the fight and nothing more. Lysander understands the rest. He grasps the workings of the Athenian democracy, specifically the fickleness of the demos. He believes you capable of vanquishing all, save your own countrymen. They will destroy you, he contends, as every other of excellence before you. In other words, he does not fear you. He wants a fight. He believes he can win.
Lysander possesses all your virtues of war and diplomacy and one other. He is cruel. He will order assassination, torture, and murder wholesale, which are but tools to him, as perjury, bribery, subornation. He will not scruple to apply terror even to his own allies. Like Polycrates the tyrant, he believes his friends will be more grateful when he gives back what he has taken than if he had never taken it at all. Victory is his solitary standard.
Lastly, he believes he knows you. He understands your character. He has studied you, all the time you were in our country, knowing one day he would face you. Do not expect a fair fight. He will demur and dilate, absent all pride as a warrior, then appear from nowhere and overwhelm you.
It will come as cold comfort but I believe the course you outline, of Greek alliance against Persia, is one Lysander himself would champion were it politic at the moment.
I offer this page from his brief: do not undervalue cruelty or the employment of main force. Your style is to eschew coercion, which to you demeans coercer and coerced and backfires in the long run. But, my friend, everything backfires in the long run.
Be of stringent care. You may have met your match in this fellow.
The war for the Hellespont continued; Alcibiades' victories mounted. Lysander failed, for that year and the next, to achieve his posting as fleet admiral.
As for myself, I served at sea with the younger Pericles and in shore units, primarily under Thrasybulus. I paid court, by post and in person when action bore me south to Samos, to my heart's joy, Aurore. With time, acquaintance deepened as well with her father and brothers, for whom I came to feel such fondness and regard as I had known before only with Lion and my own father.
I returned to Alcibiades' squadrons in time for the capitulation of Byzantium. This was the sternest fighting of the Hellespontine War, against frontline Spartan troops, Peers and perioikoi of Selassia and Pellana, reinforced by Arcadian mercenaries and Boeotian heavy infantry of the Cadmus regiment, the same who had hurled us back on Epipolae. At one point a thousand Thracian cavalry under Bisanthes made a rush upon the Spartans, whose numbers had been cut to below four hundred, fighting before the walls all night. The Spartans carved them up, horse and all.
When at last the enemy gave way, overwhelmed by our numbers and the desertion of their Byzantine allies, it took all of Alcibiades' force, in person and shield in hand, to hold the Thracian princes from butchering them to the last man. He had to order our troops to drive the Spartans into the sea, as if to drown them, before the blood-mad tribesmen, who fear water more than you or I fear hell, would give back.
Our ships may not be beached that night, but ride to anchor, bearing the enemy dead and wounded. I assisted a physician of the foe, whom my tongue in error addressed as “Simon” more than once.
The strait lay choked in the morning, with smoking timbers and bodies drifting in the eddies where the outbound current abuts the in. Alcibiades ordered the channel swept and bonfires lighted on both shores, Byzantium on the European, Chalcedon the Asian.
Athens held them both now and with them the Hellespont.
At last Alcibiades commanded the Aegean.
At last he may go home.
Book VII
XXXIII
