VI. THE TRIUMPH OF SPARTA

The disaster broke the spirit of Athens. Nearly half the citizen body was now enslaved or dead; half the women of the citizen class were in effect widows, and the children were orphans. The funds that Pericles had accumulated in the treasury were almost exhausted; in another year the last penny would be gone. Thinking the fall of Athens imminent, the subject cities refused further tribute; most of her allies abandoned her, and many flocked to the side of Sparta. In 413 Sparta, claiming that the “fifty years” peace had been repeatedly violated by Athens, renewed the war. The Lacedaemonians now took and fortified Deceleia; the supply of food from Euboea and of silver from Laurium stopped; the slaves in the mines at Laurium revolted, and went over to the Spartans in a body of twenty thousand men. Syracuse sent an army to join in the attack; and the Persian King, seeing an opportunity to avenge Marathon and Salamis, provided funds for the growing Spartan fleet, on the shameful understanding that Sparta would assist Persia in regaining mastery over the Greek cities of Ionia.²⁵

It was a proof of Athenian courage, and of the vitality of Athenian democracy, that Athens stood off her enemies for ten years more. The government was put upon an economical footing, taxes and capital levies were collected to build a new fleet, and within a year of the defeat at Syracuse Athens was ready to contest Sparta’s new mastery of the sea. Just as recovery seemed assured, the oligarchic faction, which had never favored the war, and, indeed, looked to a Spartan victory to revive aristocracy in Athens, organized a revolt, seized the organs of government, and set up a supreme Council of Four Hundred (411). The Assembly, cowed by the assassination of many democratic leaders, voted its own abdication. The rich supported the rebellion as the only way of controlling the class war that had crossed the lines of the war between Athens and Sparta—much as the struggle of the middle classes against aristocracy united the liberal factions in England and America in the American Revolution. Once in power, the oligarchs sent envoys to make peace with Sparta, and secretly prepared to admit the Spartan army into Athens. Meanwhile Theramenes, leader of a center party of moderate aristocrats, led a counterrevolution, and replaced the Four Hundred—which had ruled some four months—with a Council of Five Thousand (411). For a brief while Athens enjoyed that combination of democracy and aristocracy which seemed to Thucydides and Aristotle²⁶ (aristocrats both) to have been the best and fairest government that Athens had known since Solon. But the second revolt, like the first, had forgotten that Athens depended for its food and life upon its navy, whose personnel, barring a few leaders, had been disfranchised by both revolutions. Incensed at the news, the sailors announced that unless the democracy were restored they would besiege Athens. The oligarchs waited hopefully for a Spartan army; the Spartans as usual were tardy; the new government took to its heels, and the victorious democrats restored the old constitution (411).

Alcibiades had secretly supported the oligarchic revolt, hoping that it might smooth a way for his return to Athens. Now the re-empowered democracy, perhaps ignorant of these intrigues, but knowing how badly Athens had fared since his exile, called him home with a promise of amnesty. Deferring his triumph at Athens, he took charge of the fleet at Samos, and moved into action with a celerity and success that brought Athens a brief moment of happiness. Speeding through the Hellespont, he met and completely destroyed a Spartan fleet at Cyzicus (410). After a year’s siege he captured Chalcedon and Byzantium, and thereby restored Athens’ control of the food supply from the Bosporus. Sailing back south he encountered another Spartan squadron near the isle of Andros, and defeated it with ease. Returning now (407) to Athens, he was welcomed with universal acclaim: his sins were forgotten, only his genius was remembered, and Athens’ desperate need of an able general.²⁷ But Athens, while celebrating his victories, neglected to send him money for the pay of his crews.

Once again Alcibiades’ lack of moral scruple ruined him. Leaving the greater number of his vessels at Notium (near Ephesus) in command of one Antiochus, with strict instructions to stay in port and under no circumstances to give battle, he himself went with a small force to Caria to raise funds for his men by something less than due process of law. Antiochus, itching for fame, left his haven and challenged a Spartan flotilla under Lysander. Lysander accepted the taunt, killed Antiochus in a hand-to-hand fight, and sank or captured most of the Athenian ships (407). When news of this catastrophe came to Athens the Assembly acted with characteristic haste; it censured Alcibiades for leaving his fleet, and removed him from command. Alcibiades, fearing now both Athens and Sparta, fled to a refuge in Bithynia.

Desperate, the Athenians ordered that the gold and silver in the statues and offerings on the Acropolis should be melted down for the building of a new flotilla of 150 triremes, and offered freedom to those slaves, and citizenship to those aliens, who would fight for the city. The new armada defeated a Spartan fleet off the Arginusae Islands (south of Lesbos) in 406, and Athens again thrilled with the news of victory. But the Assembly was furious when it learned that its generals* had allowed the crews of twenty-five ships, sunk by the enemy, to drown in a storm. Hotheads protested that these souls, for lack of proper burial, would wander restlessly about the universe; and accusing the survivors of negligence in not attempting a rescue, they proposed that the eight victorious generals (including the son of Pericles by Aspasia) should be put to death. Socrates, who happened to be a member of the presiding prytany for the day, refused to put the motion to a vote. It was presented and passed over his protests, and the sentence was carried out with the same precipitation with which it had been decreed. A few days later the Assembly repented, and condemned to death those who had persuaded it to execute the generals. Meanwhile the Spartans, weakened by the defeat, offered peace again; but the Assembly, moved by the oratory of the drunken Cleophon, refused.²⁸

Led now by second-rate men, the Athenian fleet sailed north to meet the Spartans under Lysander in the Sea of Marmora. From his hiding place in the hills Alcibiades saw that the Athenian ships had taken up a strategically perilous position at Aegospotami, near Lampsacus. He risked his life to ride down to the shore and advise the Athenian admirals to seek a more sheltered place; but they distrusted his counsel, and reminded him that he was no longer in command. On the next day the decisive battle was fought; all but eight of the 208 Athenian ships were scuttled or taken, and Lysander ordered the execution of three thousand Athenian captives.²⁹ Learning that Lysander had issued orders for his assassination, Alcibiades sought refuge in Phrygia with the Persian general Pharnabazus, who assigned him a castle and a courtesan. But the Persian King, persuaded by Lysander, ordered Pharnabazus to kill his guest. Two assassins besieged Alcibiades in his castle, and set fire to it; he came out naked and desperate, seeking the privilege of fighting for his life; but before his sword could touch his assailants he was pierced by their arrows and javelins. He died at the age of forty-six, the greatest genius and most tragic failure in the military history of Greece.

Lysander, now absolute master of the Aegean, sailed down from city to city, overthrowing the democracies and setting up oligarchic governments subject to Sparta. Entering the Piraeus unresisted, he proceeded to blockade Athens. The Athenians resisted with their accustomed bravery, but within three months their stock of food was exhausted, and the streets were full of dead or dying men. Lysander gave Athens bitter and yet lenient terms: he would not, he said, destroy a city that had in time past performed such honorable services for Greece, nor would he enslave its population; but he demanded the leveling of the Long Walls, the recall of the oligarchic exiles, the surrender of all but eight of the surviving Athenian ships, and a pledge to support Sparta actively in any further war. Athens protested, and yielded.

Supported by Lysander, and led by Critias and Theramenes, the returning oligarchs seized the government, and established a Council of Thirty to rule Athens (404). These Greek Bourbons had learned nothing; they confiscated the property and alienated the support of many rich merchants; they plundered the temples, sold for three talents the wharves of the Piraeus which had cost a thousand,³⁰ exiled five thousand democrats, and put fifteen hundred others to death; they assassinated all Athenians who were distasteful to them politically or personally; they put an end to freedom of teaching, assemblage, and speech, and Critias himself, once his pupil, forbade Socrates to continue his public discourses. Seeking to compromise the philosopher to their cause, the Thirty ordered him and four others to arrest the democrat Leon. The others obeyed, but Socrates refused.

All the sins of the democracy were forgotten as the crimes of the oligarchs increased and multiplied. The number of men, even of substantial means, who began to seek an end to this bloody tyranny grew from day to day. When a thousand armed democrats under Thrasybulus approachedthe Piraeus, the Thirty found that hardly any but their immediate partisans could be persuaded to fight for them. Critias organized a small army, went out to battle, and was defeated and killed. Thrasybulus entered Athens, and restored the democracy (403). Under His guidance the Assembly behaved with unwonted moderation: it decreed death for only the highest surviving leaders of the revolution, and allowed them to escape this sentence by exile; it declared a general amnesty to all others who had supported the oligarchs; it even repaid to Sparta the hundred talents that the ephors had lent to the Thirty.³¹ These acts of humanity and statesmanship gave to Athens at last the peace that she had not known for a generation.