upon the seas of heaven.”
Such a cry acclaimed this phrase, and such pounding of feet and hands, as to make the square tremble and the very columns of the sanctuary seem to quake. The people cried his name again and again.
“My enemies for years have sought to sow fear of me in your hearts, my countrymen, claiming that my object is rule over you.
No fabrication could be more malign. I have never sought anything, my friends, but to merit your praise and to bear to you those blessings as would induce you to grant me honor. Yet that expression is imprecise. For my conception has never construed the city as a passive vessel into which I, her benefactor, decanted blessings. Such a course would be not only insolent but infamous.
Rather I wished, as an officer advancing into battle at the head of his men, to serve as flame and inspiration to her, to call forth, by my belief in her, her birth and rebirth, altering with Necessity's command, but always advancing toward that which is most herself, that engine of glory which she was and is and must be, and that exemplar of freedom and enterprise to which all the world looks in awe and envy.”
Deafening acclamation made him hold long moments.
“Citizens of Athens, you have tendered me such surfeit of honors as no man may alone requite. Therefore let me summon reinforcements.” He motioned his fellow commanders forward, who had attended thus far in silence upon both hands. “With pride I present to you, your sons whose feats of arms have brought about this hour of glory. Let me call their names and may your eyes feast upon their victorious manhood. Absent Thrasybulus, but present: Theramenes, Thrasyllus, Conon, Adeimantus, Erasinides, Thymochares, Leon, Diomedon, Pericles.”
Each in turn stepped forward and, elevating an arm or executing a bow in salute, elicited such cascades of citation as seemed must never end.
“These stand before you not alone for their own marks but in the stead of thousands yet on station overseas before whose might, we may state at last and acclaim its truth, the enemy has been swept from the seas.”
The roar of acclamation which greeted this eclipsed all which had preceded it. Alcibiades waited until the tumult had subsided.
“But let us not overextol the moment. Our enemies occupy half the states of our empire. Their Persian- provided treasury is ten times ours, nor is their fighting spirit attenuated but by our victories over them recharged and reinspirited. But now and at last, my friends, Athens possesses the will and cohesion to withstand them and prevail. Let us only be ourselves and we cannot fail.”
Such a clamor now arose that the very tiles on the roofs began to clatter and spill. Someone shouted, “Let him see his home!” and at once the tide engulfed the platform, catching up the party and sweeping it toward Scambonidae, to Alcibiades' former estate, restored now by motion of the Assembly and refurbished in anticipation of his return. The scale of the swell choked the square, prodigious as it was, and the gates, capacious enough even for the great procession of the Panathenaea, could not contain the crush and jammed up in a merry mob.
At the peak of this jubilation, a citizen of about sixty years emerged and shouted toward Alcibiades: “Where are those of Syracuse, thou treasonous villain!” Angry cries commanded the elder to break off.
“Their ghosts are not present to cheer thee, godless renegade!”
At once the old man's form was swallowed by the mob. All that could be seen was the pack's rising and plunging fists, then their feet assaulting him, defenseless, on the earth. I turned to reckon Alcibiades' response but could not glimpse him, other figures intervening, but Euryptolemus' countenance rose proximate beside me. Upon his features I beheld such an expression of woe and foreboding as to blight the sun itself upon a cloudless noon.
XXXV
Five days later the prytaneis called the Assembly. Much business had been prepared by the Council, as to the treasury, nearly bankrupt; reassessment of tribute from the empire; renewal of the eisphora, the war tax; imposts from the straits; plus business of the fleet and army, decorations of valor, courts-martial and charges of dereliction and peculation, and the further prosecution of the war. The docket was jammed, yet none would speak. The Assembly only buzzed until Alcibiades appeared, and when he did, the people addressed him with such unction and adulation that no business could be transacted, as each time a bill or measure would be put forward, someone would interrupt with a motion of acclaim.
Nor did the derangement abate the day following or the session after, for each time an issue would be set forward by the epistates, the presiding officer, all heads would swivel to Alcibiades, awaiting his remark or that of his companions. None would cry yea till they saw him vote affirmative, or nay till they glimpsed him frown.
The Assembly had become paralyzed, its deliberative function rendered impotent by the luster of its most celebrated member.
Nor did this aberration confine itself to public debate. Those private individuals as Euryptolemus and Pericles who were perceived as possessing influence with Alcibiades found themselves besieged, not alone by fawning petitioners but simply by friends and associates offering congratulations and proffering their services.
The Assembly consisted only of partisans of Alcibiades. There was no opposition. Even as he beseeched the college to voice dissent without fear, yet individuals seemed to rise only to second that which his votaries had moved or, anticipating such motions as they believed would find favor, bring only these forward. When Alcibiades absented himself, seeking to encourage debate, the assembly simply got up and went home. What was the point of being there if Alcibiades wasn't? When he vacated for dinner, the people did too. He couldn't get up to piss without a coalition reaching beneath their robes, competing to relieve themselves at his elbow.
His triumph of Eleusis followed. That holy procession in honor of the Mysteries whose passage by land had been broken off for fear these years of Spartan siege and been compelled to make its way ingloriously by sea, Alcibiades now restored to splendor, his cavalry and infantry escorting the novices and initiates along their twelve-mile trace, while enemy armor tracked the pilgrimage at a distance, powerless to intervene. I was there and saw the faces of the women as they pressed about their savior, tears sheeting, calling upon the Two Goddesses, whose wronging at his hands had been the genesis of all this evil, to behold his strong arm shielding them and bearing them honor. So that it seemed now he possessed all favor, not alone of men but of heaven.
One presumed the madness would abate, but it didn't. Crowds pressed about him everywhere, in such numbers as to make Samos and Olympia look like children's games. Once passing along that alley called Little Speedway, by which one may approach the Round Chamber from the rear, his party was overwhelmed by such throngs as to wedge against the wall of the lane Diotimus, Adeimantus, and their wives, who happened to be with them, with such force as to make the ladies cry out in terror of suffocation.
The marines in escort must shoulder through the shuttered front of a private home, effusing apologies for the invasion, while the diplomats and their wives fled through the rear egress, leaving the housewomen staring dumbstruck at Alcibiades, upon a bench in the court, his face in his hands, unstrung by the hysteria of the press.
We chased importunists from latrines, rooftops, the tombs of his ancestors. Idolaters came in the night, serenading. Petitions and poems were flung over his wall, wrapped about stones and blocks of wood, descending at times in such a downpour that the servants must evacuate all breakables and children play indoors, so as not to get beaned by these projectiles of adoration. Vendors hawked images of him on plates and eggcups, bossed onto medallions, woven into headbands and dust rags, pennants and paper kites. Ikons called “luck-catchers” were purveyed on every corner, little mast-and-mainsail geegaws with nu and alpha for Victory and Alcibiades. Models of Antiope sold for an obol.
Everywhere the guileless hearts of the commons erected shrines of devotion; through the doorways of their flats one glimpsed the sill of gim-cracks, laid out like an altar to a demigod.
Delegations presented themselves to him from brotherhoods and tribal councils, cults of heroes and ancestors, veterans' associations, craftsmen's guilds, and fellowships of resident aliens; all-female groups, all-elder and all-youth, some applying for redress of some grievance, others declaring their allegiance, still others appearing to present him with the supreme honor of their sect, some preposterous bauble which the marines must label and
