Читать книгу Alkibiades - Charles Hamilton Bromby - Страница 7

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‘Alas! unnumbered sorrows do I suffer

A plague is on all our host, nor can thought find any weapon of defence.

One on another mayest thou see urged on like bird on well-plumed wing, swifter than the resistless flame, to the shore of the god of darkness.

By countless deaths the city is perishing; her sons death-bearing lie unpitied upon the ground, with none to make lament for them.’

Sophocles: Oid. Tyran.

Through all that winter, and long after it, the siege of Potidaia lasted. Sokrates showed superhuman power of endurance, keeping his watch by night barefoot amid the ice and snow, in his only dress, which he wore summer and winter, in heat and cold alike, in the pelting rain and bitter winds. He showed endurance, too, in striving to win his scholar to a higher life, to nobler aims.

But Alkibiades in time grew tired of the siege. It was very well to do heroic deeds before the eyes of men, but to sit down before a stubborn town, month after month to go through the same tedious duties, without a chance of honour or distinction, that was a different thing. The siege got wearisome. With returning health and strength he began to long for the pleasures he had left behind at Athens. Moreover, the pest broke out amongst the besiegers and besieged. So he got leave, like many others, to return.

When he got back an awful change had come over the gay city. He had left it in its glory, triumphing in bravery and beauty; he came back to find it a place of mourning. The pest had come there, too, making havoc among the citizens, whose numbers were swelled by almost the whole rural population of the state. For the Lakedaimônian invasion of Attika had forced the country people into Athens, where they lay huddled up together in miserable hovels, in temples, in the porticos and colonnades. And the plague raged amongst them.

Men and women, old and young, and helpless children, all alike—the plague spared none of them. Rich and poor were doomed to the same fearful suffering. A burning torture took possession of their bodies, and defied all remedies. Physicians’ skill was of no avail. The plague demon baffled every precaution. Those who could get away left Athens, and many of them fell victims as they went, unhelped, uncared for by panic-stricken friends. In the town those who were forced to stay sat down in grim despair, waiting their turn for torture and for death.

A black veil hung over the gorgeous city. Like a faded beauty who long ago had decked herself out with ornaments and shone resplendent in her youth, the ornaments were there, the beauty gone—it seemed for ever. The dismayed people, who were stricken with a fever the like of which had not been seen before, and which has passed, as the Greeks themselves have passed, from earth, wallowed in their pain. They rushed to pools, to streams, to fountains, and in delirious feebleness fell headlong in and died. The waters thus polluted were a source for propagating the disease. The very water, gift of purity and cleanliness, became the channel of a loathsome death. An internal fire ate out the very core of life. A scream for drink, more drink, to quench the unextinguishable flame, which burnt from head to foot, through all the limbs, but most through the more vital parts, was heard above the wails and groans—was heard unheeded.

Even when recovery was possible the terrible phenomenon was seen of human beings who had lost all memory of everything that had gone before, all remembrance of their friends, all consciousness of the continuity of their existence, of their own names.

The birds and beasts that prey on human bodies and thrive on such occasions disappeared, either through disgust and satiety, or killed by the infection. Even the women, tender nurses in distress, who know so well how to soothe our pains, when we can scarce tell what we want, whose constant care will watch and help when we are powerless—even women fled in horror from those stricken by that plague. There was none to help; there was little aid that could do any good. Nemesis, for all the too great pride and joy of Athens, poured forth the vials of her retribution.

Alkibiades had, indeed, an opportunity to show how he had profited by the lessons of his friend. He had no fear and great generosity. Among the few who rose above the degrading influence of the terrible contagion no one was more active or persevering than was he. Undaunted by the weight of woe with which he had to deal, he attacked the unseen enemy as resolutely as he had fought Korinthians at Potidaia. While most men slunk away in dread, and others, despairing of their lives, sought to enjoy the short time left them in unsatisfying dissipation, and affected to ignore the danger by an assumed carelessness or noisy drunkenness, he was unwearied in the aid he brought to the panic-stricken people. The rich who had not fled barricaded themselves in their large houses, hoping thus to escape the plague, and many expired there alone. It was not to these he came, but to the poor, who had no palaces in which to stand a siege, to the poor, crowded together in their small tenements, lying helpless on their straw.

The poorer Athenian was accustomed to spend the greater part of his day out of doors. As soon as he rose in the early morning, putting on his simple dress, he was out in the fresh air. His work was done there; there he enjoyed his mid-day rest. If he was summoned to take part in the Assembly of the state, it was in the open air he heard and voted. If he had to try a fellow citizen, it was in a court roofed only by the canopy of heaven. Or when, his work and duty done, he assisted at a play of Sophokles or the broad satire of a comedy, it was under the blue sky he listened and applauded.

It was in unaccustomed confinement that these Greeks lay dying when Alkibiades came, bringing consolation and the sunlight of his radiant happiness. How many in after-years, in the conflict of party strife, when it was their turn to vote for or against him, remembered the god-like youth, who in the flush of strength, and victory, and beauty, had come like Hermes to them in their agony?

When he returned from Potidaia, he found other troubles disturbing the democratic city. The people, dissatisfied with the conduct of the war, and maddened by the plague, turned on their best friend. Perikles, who had subdued the oligarchs, had raised the people to power, had endowed them with the privileges they enjoyed, and had for thirty years guided the popular government of the state so wisely and so strongly that most even of his oligarchic opponents were contented with his guidance, was now the object of the people’s anger.

We can imagine the thoughts with which the old man came home from the Assembly which decreed his degradation and his punishment. He had made Athens what she was. He had guarded her from foes without, the people from their foe within, ever ready to rob them of their rights. It was in his mind that had first risen up the idea of a great Hellenic empire, one confederation, which should include all the self-governing states and towns of Greek origin, with Athens at its head. It had been his hope to call together a pan-Hellenic congress, to consider the rights, the wrongs, the divergent interests, of them all, that they might proceed together, self-defended from barbarian attack, to higher intellectual and ethic greatness, to even nobler efforts in their arts and in their literature—a policy which, had he been allowed an opportunity to carry it out unto its end, must have gone near to realize the great ideal of his hopes, and would certainly have saved Athens and the whole of Greece from the catastrophe which was now about to be unfolded.

It was as a symbol of imperial headship that he had caused Athens to be decorated with the splendid monuments that arose within the city in his time. And now, awakening from his dream of what she—what all Greece—might have been, he found Athens threatened upon every side, and himself marked by her people as the victim for their sacrifice.

Harder blows came on him nearer home. He had seen his old companions, his colleagues, pass away. The plague bore off his only sister, then his eldest son, and then his Paralos, his youngest, best beloved. As the old man placed the funeral wreath upon that head, the emotion he had mastered hitherto quite mastered him; he fell down, overwhelmed with woe. The human mass which ruled in Athens, even they were touched at that sad spectacle. The people recollected what he had done for them, for Athens; they called their leader back to power as suddenly as they had driven him away.

But Perikles was broken down. He felt his sun was setting. His far-reaching plans had failed. He longed for peace and for silent converse with his sorrow. Alkibiades, the bright, the rising sun, came to his old friend and tutor, whose glory was departing, and, after much persuasion, induced the old warrior and chief to return to lead the people.

Once more he heard the shouts of gratulation as he raised a trembling arm and swayed them as of old. Once more his eyes, grown dim with age and grief, saw the vast sea of faces gazing at him as he kept the huge concourse silent with his word. But the elasticity was gone. The heart within him rose not as it had used to do. His day was done. Within another year the greatest of Greek statesmen was taken, not reluctantly, to his last resting-place. And the world, save for the undying works he left behind him, went on as though he had not been.

Conflicting forces rose at once. Oligarchs and democrats, headed by Nikias and Kleon, contended for the prize the dead leader had abandoned.

Nikias, representing the rich old families, and supported by them, was of high birth and wealthy. He was timid, cautious, safe and superstitious, narrow-minded, honest, and respectable.

Kleon was of the middle, trading class. Many of this sort, during the last thirty years of prosperity, had become wealthy. He was the first who presumed to bid for power. It is one of the strange phenomena of nature that after pestilence comes great fecundity. This has often been observed, especially after the plague which ravaged Europe in 1348 and 1349 of our era. The air is cleared, as it were, by the storm which has passed over. Those who survive, too, get to themselves such courage they begin to imagine they are exempt from ordinary dangers. They become rich with the wealth of those who have died, and rejoice in a new and opulent existence. At Athens life burst out anew in the fulness of enjoyment.

None knew how to enjoy it more than Alkibiades. We need not dwell upon the life he led for the next few years. His mind, his ambition, was expanding. He was nearing the age when he should take his share in the government of the Athenian empire. He had enriched his mind with all the knowledge of the Greeks at the highest period of their culture. Nature had endowed him with a genius to discover the right course to take in every emergency, as if by intuition; so that, apparently without effort, he divined the course events would take. In him she joined courage and resource with a circumspect solicitude seldom found together with promptness in action.

She had given him besides a body of so much strength and beauty, and withal of so great grace, that sculptors, who, while he was a boy, had realized at sight of him the face and form of Eros, God of Love, now took him as their model when they strove to mould a Hermes, the wise, quick, strong, radiant messenger of Heaven.

If we dare not linger on the life he led at this time, if we can only speculate on some of the motives of his conduct, neither can we venture to describe his outward form, the perfect oval of his face, the thickly curling hair he allowed to grow so long, the large voluptuous eyes, now gazing with half-closed indolence, now flashing with the latent fire within, the faultless classic profile, the clean-cut nose, with nostrils that would sometimes dilate and tremble with excitement, above a mouth which often stayed half opened, careless in repose, and sometimes withering in its contempt.

Can we wonder if, in the graphic language of the Greek historian, ‘he was hunted by good women, as the hunter hunts his prey’? Ought we to be hard in our judgment on him if, living before the world had yet been taught a higher law, his life was not what we call virtuous? If we do not pardon him, we can make excuses. We cannot but remember the circumstances of his youth and bringing up in the house of Perikles and Aspasia; the licence of affection unsanctioned by the marriage tie, which even severe critics like Sokrates did not condemn. Of all this liberty he took his fill. None so sought after as he, none sooner weary of ordinary easy love. He astonished Athens by his erratic escapades. He had all there at his command. That was not enough. Hearing of renowned beauties far away, the difficulties of the pursuit lent enchantment to the search. At one time we hear of him, in disguise, at Korinth, at another at Abydos in the Hellespont, drawn thither only by rumour of the beauty of Medontis.

So three years went by as in a wanton dream. As Perikles had for his friend the learned and beautiful Aspasia, whose salon was frequented by the wit and genius of Greece, so his pupil formed a strong attachment to Timandra, and felt perhaps the truest love he ever felt for the fair Athenian. She, like Aspasia, was of the class which society at that time something more than tolerated. Doubtless she was fitter to become companion of the life and work of such a man, the confidante of his hopes and aspirations, than were the most part of the high-born Grecian ladies. We shall see how faithfully, through all his ills, she followed him unto the end. But the offspring of such alliances could not become their fathers’ heirs, except by special legislation, so Alkibiades must marry, and marry one of his own caste.

The rich and famous general Hipponikos, whose ancestors were among the most famous mythic heroes of the Greeks, whose family were the hereditary torch-bearers at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, had an only daughter, Hippareté, whom he loved devotedly, and who was to share his wealth. Her hand was eagerly sought for by most of the young men of old descent. The fact that she was coveted by many enhanced her value in the eyes of Alkibiades. She whom so many were anxious to possess was worth pursuing. He found in that pursuit an opportunity to show how he could excel the other youthful heroes of the day in love as well as war.

Her mother had been separated from Hipponikos by the odious law which allowed a wife for little cause to change her husband for another—the bane and fruitful source of evil in the old societies. Released from her first husband, she had married Perikles, and became the mother of some of his children; but growing jealous of Aspasia, she was divorced from Perikles, and joined herself in wedlock to a third. It was the daughter of this woman and Hipponikos that Alkibiades wooed and won—perhaps too easily.