However, his object for the remainder of this action was clearly neither to participate nor to report, but to preserve his life. Let us shift narrators, then.
It was the younger Pericles' assignment, under Alcibiades, to command the wave of assault ships succeeding Antiochus', those vessels which Polemides recounted as breaching the harbor chain and carrying the assault to the waterfront. I have drawn already from these logs, given me by his wife after his trial following Arginousai. In addition she placed in my care several of the journals Pericles penned in those hours, for his children, that they might not credit the slanders of his accusers, and also, I believe, to preserve his reason during that ordeal, whose chronicle I shall relate in its course. But to return to Ephesus, and Pericles' journal: The plan was Alcibiades', drafted in a single night by the trierarchs and squadron commanders working under his direction.
Its impetus was receipt of the transcript of Lysander's address at the Games. Here was the Spartan's rejoinder, final and beyond appeal, to Alcibiades' overtures of alliance. He would slug it out to the finish, would Lysander, putting his faith less in God, as Alcibiades observed, than in the impatience of the Athenian electorate. Lysander understood this monster as well as his rival.
Victories in the hinterlands, even the sack of mighty cities, would not slake the beast's rapacity, not now, inflamed as it was by expectations of its all-conquering commander. Alcibiades must attack, and attack Lysander. No meaner object would serve. The monster would have its enemy's head, or his who failed to produce it.
Such was the strategic objective. Tactical were three: to raze the shipyards and repair facilities; to destroy or carry off as many battleships as possible, in as spectacular a manner as possible; to capture the Pteron and despoil its superstructure. The assault was an amphibious operation comprising twelve thousand four hundred troops, ninety-seven capital ships, and a hundred and ten support vessels. It involved the coordination of eleven assault elements across a front of twenty miles. Forty-six objectives were assigned. The signal rolls were as thick as your wrist.
Preliminary movements had commenced two days prior. A squadron of twenty-four under Aristocrates and another of twenty-eight under Adeimantus embarked from Samos, manned not by conventional crews, but by armored infantry doubling as oarsmen, with slingers and javelineers, as many as the vessels could bear without betraying their numbers by their draught, prone topside behind sidescreens. Aristocrates' squadron made southeast as for Andros, Adeimantus' north to the Hellespont. Both permitted their movements to be observed by Lysander's lookouts on Mounts Coressus and Lycon. They stood out to sea, beyond sight, doubling back on the second night to land their companies, Aristocrates in the planters' country between Priene and Ephesus, Adeimantus north at the resort colony called the Crook, deserted in this season on account of the Etesian winds.
The horse transports crossed by night from Samos and Lade, putting ashore at an inhabited cove called the Crescent. Alcibiades commanded these. Detaining all who might dash ahead with the alarm, the units proceeded by back tracks across country, linking with Adeimantus' companies landed at the Crook. From there Alcibiades advanced on the city. So swiftly were all pickets overwhelmed that he was into the suburbs before any warning apprised Lysander.
Aristocrates' companies landing to the south not only cut the causeway by which reinforcements could be brought up from the city but released the canal gates, flooding the plain. They cut the chain at Fort Cylon. Swimmers captured the twin islets, the Yolk and the White, which comprised the suspensors of the cable. By this time the first incendiaries were lighting up the suburbs.
Erasinides' marines broke apart the gate north of Exposition Road.
Antiochus' battleships swept past Cylon into the harbor. My twenty-four lay-to seaward of the chain. Should Antiochus be repulsed, we would form the bulwark through which he would withdraw. Should he signal the advance, we would strike in his wake with everything we had. Bonfires at Cylon and the Yolk lit the channel. No more need be told of the ravagement than this: the blazes set upon the shipyards, seawall, and Emporium were on such a scale that their flare could be seen from Chios, sixty miles away.
Alcibiades at this time, one learned later, was very nearly losing his life in the following manner. His cavalry had swept through the suburbs, outpacing Adeimantus' infantry, and were making for the northern gate to link with the marine companies landed on the Pteron by Antiochus and Erasinides. They had a guide, Alcibiades' troop did, who led them through the maze of lanes and alleys which constitute that quarter. They emerged to a square.
Astonishingly a corps of women had seized this choke point and, barricading its lone egress with benches and overturned wagons, made bold to defend it. These were no Amazons but dames of the district, marshaling to preserve their hearths and infants.
The women attacked Alcibiades' cavalry from the rooftops, hurling tiles, bricks, and stones with fabulous daring. Nor did they give back beneath the return volleys, but kept up a din of such profane contumacy as, the troopers testified, evoked sterner terror than any phalanx of Spartans or horde of shrieking savages.
Alcibiades himself was struck by a brick on the shoulder. The blow fractured his collarbone; he must be assisted from the fray by Mantitheus, fighting as ever at his side. Alcibiades, as was his habit, fought helmetless; a handsbreadth more and the missile would have staved his skull.
In the city, the foe's battalions swept along the Exposition Road.
Now came the struggle for the Pteron, the great seawall upon which men and horses and ships were dueling, it seemed, for every yard. Scaffolding ascended on both flanks, all pine and all blazing.
Cofferdams abutted the final furlong, spiked with construction debris, brick and timber, mortar sleds, pumpworks, and great piles of iron fittings which made them jagged death pits. Horses and men were tumbling into these in numbers as ghastly as they were uncountable.
Antiochus made signal: “Advance!” I had stationed Calliope at the left of the line, to pass close abeam of the Pteron to evaluate the situation. We returned signal and kicked off.
The riot upon the seawall was absolutely spectacular.
Alcibiades with the cavalry and heavy infantry had punched through now, though we did not know this yet from our vantage.
Their lane of advance down Exposition Road had been blocked by masses of the foe, a hundred shields across and what looked like a mile deep. Some four or five thousand of the enemy, including cavalry, had got aboard the seawall before Alcibiades and Adeimantus and now hacked and heaved toward the Windlass House at the extremity. They were going for the cable, to reseal the harbor and trap the vessels inside. Defending the final furlong of seawall were the Athenian marines who had taken the Quay and cut the chain. Flanking these, Erasinides' engineering vessels had set themselves broadside against the seaward palisade and were applying winch and tackle to the enemy's submerged stakes while simultaneously disembarking more marines from transports moored outboard hull-to-hull. Passing the terminus of the Pteron aboard Calliope, I could see in the van of the foe a personage magnificently mounted and appareled, compassed by a guard of knights.
This could be none but Lysander.
At once I determined to strike for him, forswearing all other objects. I resolved to sacrifice my own life and all my crew if I must.
I signaled to my second, Lycomenes, aboard Theama to take the squadron forward on his own, then made to Damodes, trierarch of Erato, these signals: “Follow me” and “Land marines.”
I could see Damodes, called the Bear, upon his sternpeak. He, too, had spotted the foe and hopped with frenzy to get at him. As these turns eventuated, Antiochus' Tyche, within the harbor, had had her stem staved and must withdraw. He brought her out stern-first, backing water, and now approached the Pteron from the landward side. To moor a triple against a twenty-foot seawall is no mean feat in broad daylight. Under fire Calliope came in like a garbage scow helmed by a drunk. Antiochus simply rammed Tyche stern-first between two cofferdams and, slinging the last of his hello-theres, mounted behind a screen of fire.
The struggle aboard the Pteron had reached that state of compaction where even the most elementary tactics may not be implemented, such is the press of mayhem. The enemy had five thousand on the wall, massed shield-to-shield, with thousands more pressing from the land. The main of our cavalry fought dismounted now, as the foe in his swarm carved the horses out from under them. These unfortunate creatures wailed in agony upon the block, hooves thrashing, wounding others, while more struggled in the water, drowning. My foot slipped mounting a dam and I fell hard, all my weight plus armor, beating my helmet crown-first into the stone. I blacked both eyes and tore thumb's web so that it still has not knitted. In this shape I clambered at last onto the Pteron, seeking the Spartan.
It was not Lysander but the prince.
Cyrus of Persia, who had sworn to break up his very throne to bring low the might of Athens. Cyrus! Cyrus!
