Thrasyllus summoned his colleagues to a council on shore. Back on the beach, in the azure tranquillity of the island’s leeward side, the generals debated their next move. One proposed that the fleet form a line and row through the field of battle, picking up corpses and rescuing shipwrecked Athenians and their allies. Another argued that they should set out immediately for Mytilene to liberate Conon. Thrasyllus proposed a compromise. All eight generals would join in an immediate attack on the Spartan fleet at Mytilene. The former generals Thrasybulus and Theramenes, along with the lower-ranking officers known as taxiarchs, would stay at Arginusae with forty-seven triremes and comb through the floating wreckage for survivors and the bodies of the dead.
While they were making their plans, a north wind had been rising to gale force in the channel. As the Athenian camp afforded no view of the open sea, the generals were unaware of the change in the weather. By the time they voted to adopt Thrasyllus’ proposal, the wind had caught the scattered debris of battle. The vast expanse of broken hulls and shipwrecked humanity was suddenly on the move, shifting southward with the storm. The sea was by this time too rough for either part of Thrasyllus’ plan to be carried out. Athenian insistence on democratic deliberations, however praiseworthy in principle, now cost the generals their chance. Triremes were not built to survive in heavy seas: even the Athenian marines spoke out against risking more lives in a rescue effort. The generals had no choice but to halt. On the beach they raised a victory trophy, then settled down to wait out the storm.
By morning the wind dropped, but the sea was empty. Wrecks, corpses, and survivors had passed out of sight and out of reach, swept away to beaches far to the south. Grieving for those lost, the Athenians launched their ships and rowed toward Mytilene. Almost immediately they spotted an approaching fleet. It was Conon at the head of his forty ships. The previous evening the Spartan blockaders, learning of Callicratidas’ death and the defeat of their comrades, had set fire to their camp and disappeared into the night. Unable to track down the remnant of the Peloponnesian fleet, the Athenians returned to their base at Samos.
The Assembly at home was overjoyed by news of the victory but dissatisfied with the generals for failing to collect the bodies of the dead. To save themselves from prosecution, Theramenes and Thrasybulus (the trierarchs who had been charged with the task of picking up the corpses) joined the accusers of the generals. After debating the issue, the Assembly recalled all of the generals except Conon to stand trial. This summons was a serious setback for the war effort at a moment when Athens had again seized the upper hand. The accused generals brought many ships back to the Piraeus with them: they wanted the support of their crews when the crisis came.
Two of the eight slipped away into self-imposed exile rather than face the Assembly. Their flight seemed to confirm the guilt of the rest. As the affair wound its tortuous way through inquiry boards, Council sessions, and emotional Assembly meetings, the claims and counterclaims mounted. At length the people voted to imprison, pending a hearing, the six generals who had returned to the city: Thrasyllus, Pericles, Diomedon, Lysias, Aristocrates, and Erasinides. When they were led before the Assembly, the generals insisted that no one could have succeeded in collecting the dead once the storm began. Steersmen who had served at Arginusae testified to the violence of the wind. The mood began to swing in favor of acquittal, but the fading daylight brought a premature end to the debate. Before darkness fell, a final vote charged the Council of Five Hundred with the task of deciding upon the correct charge, if any, and the appropriate form of trial.
When the Assembly reconvened, the citizen of the tribe Antiochis who presided over that day’s meeting was the philosopher Socrates. Presidents were chosen by lot and served for just one day; it was only a coincidence that such a prominent citizen’s name had been drawn. After completing the ritual of sacrifices and prayers, Socrates opened the meeting by asking the secretary to read the Council’s proposal. It called for the six generals to be tried not separately but together, and not in a jury court but by the Assembly itself that very day. Each of the ten tribes would set up two urns, one marked “guilty” and the other “not guilty.” The citizens would then file past the urns and cast their ballots.
Athenians had at times imprisoned, tried, fined, or banished generals, but they had never yet put a general to death for decisions made during battle. Equally unprecedented was the proposal to try the six accused men as a group. To distract the Assembly from questions of military consequences or judicial procedure, a survivor of Arginusae came forward with a sensational story. When his trireme had been rammed, he saved himself by clinging to a wooden flour tub amid the flotsam. He told the Assembly that he had heard all around him the cries of drowning men. Unable to save themselves, they called on him to tell the Athenians at home how the generals had abandoned them. To the crowd on the Pnyx the tragedy was now palpable, the flour tub unforgettable.
This testimony touched off an uproar that overwhelmed any speaker who came forward to support the generals. Strident voices demanded that nothing must thwart the people’s will, and that the president should put the Council’s proposal to an immediate vote. To Socrates the issue was personal as well as legal. One of the accused generals, young Pericles, was a close friend and disciple. Socrates had often talked over the city’s affairs with him and had personally encouraged Pericles to seek the generalship. Now Socrates told the angry mob that Athenian law required individual trials for citizens accused of crimes. He then declared the Council’s proposal to be illegal and refused to put it to the vote. The chief accusers launched another vociferous attack, but Socrates was used to opposition and stood his ground.
In this breathing space a kinsman of Pericles and Alcibiades came forward. He was the same Euryptolemus who had greeted Alcibiades on his return the previous year. He pointed out that at least one of the generals was entirely blameless, since he had been swimming to shore from his sinking flagship at the time of the fatal council. Of what could he be guilty, except bad luck? “Men of Athens,” said Euryptolemus, “you have won a great and fortunate victory. Do not act as though you were smarting under the ignominy of defeat. Do not be so unreasonable as not to recognize that some things are in the hand of heaven. These men are helpless; do not condemn them for treachery. They were unable because of the storm to do what they had been ordered to do. Indeed it would be fairer to crown them with garlands than to punish them with death at the instigation of rogues.”
Euryptolemus moved that each of the six generals be given a separate trial by jury. Socrates willingly consented to put his motion before the Assembly. A majority were raising their hands in favor when an objection was suddenly lodged, possibly by an enemy of the generals, possibly by a stickler for the rules of order. The original proposal of the Council for a trial of all six generals was still tabled. It must be decided before any other motion could be approved. Confident of a rational outcome, Socrates put it to the vote. But he had misjudged the crowd. With insane fickleness the majority unexpectedly voted for an immediate trial of all the generals. Hopeful still of a “not guilty” verdict, Socrates ordered the urns to be set up. Tribe by tribe the citizens filed past and cast their pebbles. A count showed that the generals had been condemned to death.
From the Pnyx the officials known as the Eleven conducted the condemned men back down to the prison. Athenians customarily carried out death sentences at once, though families and friends might visit the jail to take leave of loved ones. The method of death varied according to the nature of the crime and the status of the condemned. Pirates were crucified on wooden boards set up along the road to the Piraeus. Enemies of the state and polluted persons were thrown into a pit called the Barathron. Respectable citizens such as the generals, however, were allowed to drink hemlock.
The poisonous draft of hemlock was extracted from a branchy weed that grew wild throughout Attica. In fields and scrublands the hemlock plants raised their umbels of white flowers to a towering height. When gathered, brought to an apothecary, and pressed in a mortar, the hemlock’s ferny leaves and small fruits yielded a bitter juice, clear and oily. A cupful was enough to kill a man. The jailer recommended walking about to help the poison spread quickly throughout the body. Drowsiness led slowly to paralysis of the limbs, followed by loss of speech. Consciousness remained clear to the end. Once the poison reached the lungs, the victim lost the ability to breathe and died as if drowning on dry land. One after another the heroes of Arginusae drank their vials of hemlock juice and departed this life.
The Athenians soon cooled off and repented. They blamed not themselves but the political leaders who had conspired to lead them astray. But no recriminations could bring the generals back to life, or repair the rupture of trust between the people and their elected military leaders. Democracy unchecked by reason proved as violent and unjust as any tyranny. In the cramped rooms of the prison, Thrasyllus had seen his ominous dream fulfilled, and the career of young Pericles was cut short almost before it had begun.
CHAPTER 16
Rowing to Hades
[405-399 B.C.]
The power of fate is a wonder; dark, terrible wonder.
Neither wealth nor armies, towered walls nor ships,
Black hulls lashed by the salt, can save us from that force.
THREE MONTHS AFTER THE TRIAL OF THE GENERALS THE Athenians celebrated the Lenaea or festival of wine vats. Revels and comic plays honored Dionysus as the grape juice bubbled and fermented under the lids of the vats, making its magical transformation into wine. The city was mourning the passing of two dramatic geniuses. Death had claimed Euripides in Macedon, where he was visiting the royal court. Sophocles too had died, at the age of ninety—no living Athenian could remember a world without him.
At this time of loss Aristophanes produced a new comedy,
Frogs.
His themes were reconciliation, unity, and commitment to the navy. There was also a salute to the slaves who had earned their citizenship at Arginusae. Many of these new Athenians were taking their places in the theater for the first time, freed from bondage by their own heroism.
The action of
Frogs
started with the entrance of Dionysus, the god of the theater, setting out for Hades to bring Euripides back to life. Dionysus sought out the grim boatman Charon and rowed across the River Styx in his boat. A chorus of frogs helped the god keep time with an amphibian rowing chant:
“Brekekekex ko-ax, ko-ax! Brekekekex ko-ax, ko-ax!”
On the far side of the river Dionysus located Euripides and his much older predecessor Aeschylus, author of
Persians,
both residing in the poets’ corner of Hades. Dionysus promptly announced a competition, appointed himself judge, and proclaimed that he would take the winner back with him to Athens. After many trials failed to decide the contest on the basis of poetry alone, Dionysus asked a final question: “How can Athens be saved?” Aeschylus won the day with blunt Themistoclean advice: commit everything to the war at sea and look after the navy. At the play’s end Euripides remained in Hades, but Aeschylus ascended to the upper world. There he would share his patriotic wisdom with the current generation of Athenians.
Frogs
won first prize. The public even demanded that the play be performed again—a rare honor. After the second performance the Athenians crowned Aristophanes not with Dionysus’ ivy but with leaves from Athena’s sacred olive, an award reserved for the city’s greatest benefactors.
The Peloponnesian War was entering its twenty-seventh year. Had Aeschylus actually been able to return to Athens that spring, he could have found no fault with the people as far as the navy was concerned. The shipbuilding program that they had pursued ever since the Sicilian disaster had equipped Athens with almost two hundred triremes ready for active service. Thanks to the revolutionary enfranchisement of slaves and resident aliens, the whole fleet could be manned with the city’s own population. Since the Persians continued to pay the cost of the Spartans’ efforts at sea, it was crucial that the Athenian navy be self-sustaining.
Ships and crews were plentiful; leaders were scarce. The generals who had commanded the fleet during its recent victories were now either dead, passed over by the voters, or unwilling (understandably) to serve. Alcibiades was in exile at his fortress on the Sea of Marmara. Conon had been either navarch or general for many campaigning seasons, but he had done no more than stay out of trouble and win half a naval battle—unfortunately the first half. (It happened off Lesbos as he was being chased into Mytilene harbor by Callicratidas the previous summer.)
Seven years had passed since the disaster in the Great Harbor at Syracuse—a defeat that the Greeks had expected would finish Athens’ rule of the sea. With a Spartan army besieging the city from a base in Attica and repeated naval actions in Ionia and Hellespont, ceaseless war was producing a world both inured to and traumatized by violence. Rumors of atrocities floated about the Aegean like a miasma. One of the new Athenian generals, a warmonger named Philocles, was reported to have captured two enemy triremes on the high seas and thrown their entire crews overboard, leaving them to drown. He was also notorious for proposing that the Athenians should cut off the right hands (or some said, right thumbs) of all prisoners of war, so that when ransomed or released they could never again pull an oar or wield a weapon against Athens. On the Spartan side, the popular commander Lysander was accused of wantonly butchering noncombatants in coastal towns.
Lysander was the most brilliant strategist and tactician that Sparta had ever produced. He was also a man of infinite
mêtis
or cunning. He had been the admiral at Ephesus who avoided direct confrontation with Alcibiades but then struck like lightning as soon as the foolish steersman Antiochus gave him an opening. Far more than any of Athens’ own generals, Lysander was the true heir of Themistocles, Cimon, and Phormio. Like them, he knew that a winning general had no use for scruples. “Deceive boys with knucklebones,” said Lysander, “and men with oaths.” He was immensely popular with Greek allies and Persian princes alike. Lysander had been sent out this year on their insistence as an “adviser” with full authority to command at sea, since Spartan law prevented any man from holding the post of admiral more than once.