“l couldn't summon the pluck to inquire in the presence of the others, Alcibiades,” our host's kinsman seized the moment to venture, “but can you truly be serious about this Persian business?”
“Sober as a shroud, my friend.”
“Surely you can't expect this night's synod to remain privileged.
It wouldn't surprise me if reports were speeding now on the road to Athens.”
Alcibiades smiled. “Tonight's caucus was for many audiences, Pericles, least of all those assembled to receive it firsthand.
“ Alcibiades drew up and, his speech altering into that tenor of confidentiality which may not be dissimulated, addressed us as a master his acolytes or a hierophant his mystae. “Understand what may be accomplished. Victory over Sparta is a chimera. Persian treasure or no, her army remains invincible. Nor would one wish to overthrow her even if he could, lest such a consequence, in Cimon's phrase, make Greece over lame and rob Athens of its yoke- fellow.
What, then, is possible? Not peace. This, Greece has never known and never will. Rather a nobler war. A war that will not alone turn the Monster from devouring her own vitals but set her upon a stage of such scale and moment as may permit the meanest to mount to prominence and the greatest to undying glory.”
Alcibiades served the bread and meat. We both wondered at the daring of his vision and the extravagance of his ambition.
“One perceives your purpose, sir. But in all candor, can such an adventure succeed?”
“It must and it shall.”
He sat then and, remarking Pericles' expression of incredulity, rejoined with a dissertation so extraordinary, and so revelatory of the configuration of his intellect, that this officer took the extraordinary measure upon return to our quarters of setting it down, as close to verbatim as he and I could recollect. I have the notes yet, in my sea chest.
“Most men believe,” Alcibiades began, “that what they call waking life is our only existence, while dreams are such substanceless apparitions as visit our slumbering selves at night.
The wild tribes beyond Bithynian Thrace warrant the opposite. To them true existence takes place in sleep, while this, waking life, they dismiss as phantom and illusion. They can locate wild game, that is, predict the site of its appearance, based on dreams which they claim to summon the night in advance. I have hunted with them and I believe it. They enter and exit dreams at will, they testify, and fear nothing more than to die in their dreams, while death in the flesh they account as nothing, the dream enduring absent even that vessel which housed it.”
“What nonsense!” Pericles exclaimed. “If you die in a dream you don't wake up dead. But croak in real life and you'll dream no more!”
Alcibiades only smiled. “One senses a world beneath this one.
Not a dream exactly, but a possibility. That which is not yet but which may be. And which we may summon. As a boy lies in the grass at the brook edge, who may break the surface with his hand to snatch a pebble from the bottom. This is how one lives, is it not?
A beast sees gross substance only, but a man sees dreams.
“I have dined on dreams. Not alone to sustain myself but to set a feast before others. This is how the great identify one another and how the commander of vision leads free men. Ah,” Alcibiades continued, “but not any dream will do. Only one, and that, like the pebble in the stream, has long been nominated. This pebble has a name. It is called Necessity. Necessity is the dream. That which cries out to be born and summons all who would call themselves commanders to draw it forth.
“As a boy I often observed this of the elder Pericles: that he was capable, through no force beyond that of his own person, of defining present and future not only for himself but for others. He could tell them what they saw and make them see it, perceiving no longer with their own eyes but with his. By such means he held the city, and the world, in thrall.
“Lovers perform this service for each other, the elder elevating the younger by donating his nobler and more far-reaching vision.
For all boys, and most men, are profoundly imperfect not only in themselves but in their aspirations, which are mediocre, vain, and self-interested. This was Socrates' gift to me, to exalt my aspiration, and I perceived of the power by which it held me that this was man's supreme gift to his fellows and also his mightiest instrument of ambition. For what may raise a man higher in his countrymen's esteem than to bear to them happiness and prosperity?
“Socrates,” he continued, “considers politics inferior to philosophy, and in this I concur. What educated man wouldn't?
But philosophy could not exist without politics. By this measure politics is the noblest calling of all, for it makes all others possible.
And how would one define politics except the bringing forth of a vision for the people, that vision which is their destiny but which they sense only imperfectly and by part.”
“That is no politician, Alcibiades, but a prophet!”
“The prophet perceives truth, Pericles, but the politician brings it into manifestation, for his countrymen and often in the face of their bitter opposition.”
“And in the case of Athens,” this officer put in, “that of our subjects and enemies.”
Here was a point I myself wished to question.
“Suppose, Alcibiades, that Justice were seated at this table and were to call you short, saying, 'My friend, you have left me from your equation. For what you call Necessity, others name Injustice, Oppression, and even Murder.' How would you respond to the goddess?”
“I would remind Justice, my friend, that Necessity is elder to her and was made before even the earth. Justice, as she well knows, may not prevail even in heaven. Why should she, therefore, among mortals?”
“This is a stern philosophy, Alcibiades.”
“It is the philosophy of power and those who possess it. The philosophy of empire. And we have all embraced it who hold our subject states, Spartans and Persians as well as Athenians.
Otherwise let them go! But then we fall, and fail, and slight our destiny. This to my mind is a far weightier crime than injustice, particularly our own benign species, which in fact brings greater security and material blessing than our subject states would be capable of providing for themselves without us.
“But here is the point, my friends. Our so-called subject states are not subject in the deeper sense, that is, held down by force, but are instead compelled to emulate us, at our greatest, by their thralldom to our excellence. Otherwise why do their sons flock to our city and our fleet, even in her most embattled hours? Their destiny ascends with ours and is indivisible from it, as that of all those slumbering states whose armies will fall in freely and joyfully at our side when we advance against Asia.”
“Then you see not just for Athens, Alcibiades, but for her subjects and enemies as well?”
“And the wide world!” Pericles put in.
Alcibiades responded with a peal of irony light as spindrift. He indicated the plates and platter before us.
“I merely set out the banquet and stand aside while my companions dine.”
Returning to our billets, we passed those of Anytus, Critias, and Charicles, yet astir and hissing with conspiracy. Alcibiades' enemies intrigued for a device by which to bring him low. They did not reckon that that agent which would despoil him, and themselves, had already at that hour debarked at Castolus in Ionia, under guard of the Caranedion, the Royal Horse of Prince Cyrus of Persia.
Book VIII
XXXVIII
