Chapter LXI (3)

Astyochus, now alone in command, was still importuned by the urgent solicitations of the distressed Chians for relief, and, in spite of his reluctance, was compelled by the murmurs of his own army to lend an ear to them, when a new incident happened which gave him at least a good pretext for directing his attention southward. A Peloponnesian squadron of twenty-seven triremes under the command of Antisthenês, having started from Cape Malea about the winter tropic or close of 412 B.C., had first crossed the sea to Melos, where it dispersed ten Athenian triremes and captured three of them; then afterwards, from apprehension that these fugitive Athenians would make known its approach at Samos, had made a long circuit round by Krete, and thus ultimately reached Kaunus at the southeastern extremity of Asia Minor. This was the squadron which Kalligeitus and Timagoras had caused to be equipped, having come over for that purpose a year before as envoys from the satrap Pharnabazus. Antisthenês was instructed first to get to Milêtus and put himself in concert with the main Lacedæmonian fleet; next, to forward these triremes, or another squadron of equal force under Klearchus, to the Hellespont, for the purpose of coöperating with Pharnabazus against the Athenian dependencies in that region. Eleven Spartans, the chief of whom was Lichas, accompanied Antisthenês, to be attached to Astyochus as advisers, according to a practice not unusual with the Lacedæmonians. These men were not only directed to review the state of affairs at Milêtus, and exercise control coördinate with Astyochus, but even empowered, if they saw reason, to dismiss that admiral himself, upon whom the complaints of Pedaritus from Chios had cast suspicion; and to appoint Antisthenês in his place.[600]

[600] Thucyd. viii, 39. Καὶ εἴρητο αὐτοῖς, ἐς Μίλητον ἀφικομένους
~τῶν τε ἄλλων ξυνεπιμελεῖσθαι~, ᾗ μέλλει ἄριστα ἕξειν, etc.

No sooner had Astyochus learned at Milêtus the arrival of Antisthenês at Kaunus, than he postponed all idea of lending aid to Chios, and sailed immediately to secure his junction with the twenty-seven new triremes as well as with the new Spartan counsellors. In his voyage southward he captured the city of Kôs, unfortified and half-ruined by a recent earthquake, and then passed on to Knidus; where the inhabitants strenuously urged him to go forward at once, even without disembarking his men, in order that he might surprise an Athenian squadron of twenty triremes under Charmînus; which had been despatched from Samos, after the news received from Melos, in order to attack and repel the squadron under Antisthenês. Charmînus, having his station at Symê, was cruising near Rhodes and the Lykian coast, to watch, though he had not been able to keep back, the Peloponnesian fleet just arrived at Kaunus. In this position he was found by the far more numerous fleet of Astyochus, the approach of which he did not at all expect. But the rainy and hazy weather had so dispersed it, that Charmînus, seeing at first only a few ships apart from the rest, mistook them for the smaller squadron of new-comers. Attacking the triremes thus seen, he at first gained considerable advantage, disabling three and damaging several others. But presently the dispersed vessels of the main fleet came in sight and closed round him, so that he was forced to make the best speed in escaping, first to the island called Teutlussa, next to Halikarnassus. He did not effect his escape without the loss of six ships; while the victorious Peloponnesians, after erecting their trophy on the island of Symê, returned to Knidus, where the entire fleet, including the twenty-seven triremes newly arrived, was now united.[601] The Athenians in Samos—whose affairs were now in confusion, from causes which will be explained in the ensuing chapter—had kept no watch on the movements of the main Peloponnesian fleet at Milêtus, and seem to have been ignorant of its departure until they were apprized of the defeat of Charmînus. They then sailed down to Symê, took up the sails and rigging belonging to that squadron, which had been there deposited, and then, after an attack upon Loryma, carried back their whole fleet, probably including the remnant of the squadron of Charmînus, to Samos.[602]

[601] Thucyd. viii, 42.

[602] Thucyd. viii, 43. This defeat of Charmînus is made the
subject of a jest by Aristophanês, Thesmophor. 810, with the note
of Paulmier.

Though the Peloponnesian fleet now assembled at Knidus consisted of ninety-four triremes, much superior in number to the Athenian, it did not try to provoke any general action. The time of Lichas and his brother commissioners was at first spent in negotiations with Tissaphernês, who had joined them at Knidus, and against whom they found a strong feeling of discontent prevalent in the fleet. That satrap—now acting greatly under the advice of Alkibiadês, of which also more in the coming chapter—had of late become slack in the Peloponnesian cause, and irregular in furnishing pay to their seamen, during the last weeks of their stay at Milêtus. He was at the same time full of promises, paralyzing all their operations by assurances that he was bringing up the vast fleet of Phenicia to their aid: but in reality his object was, under fair appearances, merely to prolong the contest and waste the strength of both parties. Arriving in the midst of this state of feeling, and discussing with Tissaphernês the future conduct of the war, Lichas not only expressed displeasure at his past conduct, but even protested against the two conventions concluded by Chalkideus and by Theramenês, as being, both the one and the other, a disgrace to the Hellenic name. By the express terms of the former, and by the implications of the latter, not merely all the islands of the Ægean, but even Thessaly and Bœotia, were acknowledged as subject to Persia; so that Sparta, if she sanctioned such conditions, would be merely imposing upon the Greeks a Persian sceptre, instead of general freedom, for which she professed to be struggling. Lichas, declaring that he would rather renounce all prospect of Persian pay, than submit to such conditions, proposed to negotiate for a fresh treaty upon other and better terms, a proposition which Tissaphernês rejected with so much indignation as to depart without settling anything.[603]

[603] Thucyd. viii, 43.

His desertion did not discourage the Peloponnesian counsellors. Possessing a fleet larger than they had ever before had united in Asia, together with a numerous body of allies, they calculated on being able to get money to pay their men without Persian aid; and an invitation, which they just now received from various powerful men at Rhodes, tended to strengthen such confidence. The island of Rhodes, inhabited by a Dorian population considerable in number as well as distinguished for nautical skill, was at this time divided between three separate city governments, as it had been at the epoch of the Homeric Catalogue,—Lindus, Ialysus, and Kameirus; for the city called Rhodes, formed by a coalescence of all these three, dates only from two or three years after the period which we have now reached. Invited by several of the wealthy men of the island, the Peloponnesian fleet first attacked Kameirus, the population of which, intimidated by a force of ninety-four triremes, and altogether uninformed of their approach, abandoned their city, which had no defences, and fled to the mountains.[604] All the three Rhodian towns, destitute of fortifications, were partly persuaded, partly frightened, into the step of revolting from Athens and allying themselves with the Peloponnesians. The Athenian fleet, whose commanders were just now too busy with political intrigue to keep due military watch, arrived from Samos too late to save Rhodes, and presently returned to the former island, leaving detachments at Chalkê and Kôs to harass the Peloponnesians with desultory attacks.

[604] Thucyd. viii, 44. Οἱ δ’ ἐς τὴν Ῥόδον, ἐπικηρυκευομένων ἀπὸ
τῶν δυνατωτάτων ἀνδρῶν, τὴν γνώμην εἶχον πλεῖν, etc.

... Καὶ προσβαλόντες Καμείρῳ τῆς Ῥοδίας πρώτῃ, ναυσὶ τέσσαρσι
καὶ ἐνενήκοντα, ~ἐξεφόβησαν μὲν τοὺς πολλοὺς, οὐκ εἰδότας τὰ
πρασσόμενα~, καὶ ἔφυγον, ἄλλως τε καὶ ἀτειχίστου οὔσης τῆς
πόλεως, etc.

We have to remark here, as on former occasions of revolts among
the dependent allies of Athens, that the general population
of the allied city manifests no previous discontent, nor any
spontaneous disposition to revolt. The powerful men of the
island—those who, if the government was democratical, formed the
oligarchical minority, but who formed the government itself,
if oligarchical—conspire and bring in the Peloponnesian force,
unknown to the body of the citizens, and thus leave to the latter
no free choice. The real feeling towards Athens on the part of
the body of the citizens is one of simple acquiescence, with
little attachment on the one hand, yet no hatred, or sense of
practical suffering, on the other.

The Peloponnesians now levied from the Rhodians a contribution of thirty-two talents, and adopted the island as the main station for their fleet, instead of Milêtus. We can explain this change of place by their recent unfriendly discussion with Tissaphernês, and their desire to be more out of his reach.[605] But what we cannot so easily explain, is, that they remained on the island without any movement or military action, and actually hauled their triremes ashore, for the space of no less than eighty days; that is, from about the middle of January to the end of March 411 B.C. While their powerful fleet of ninety-four triremes, superior to that of Athens at Samos, was thus lying idle, their allies in Chios were known to be suffering severe and increasing distress, and repeatedly pressing for aid:[606] moreover, the promise of sending to coöperate with Pharnabazus against the Athenian dependencies on the Hellespont, remained unperformed.[607] We may impute such extreme military slackness mainly to the insidious policy of Tissaphernês, now playing a double game between Sparta and Athens. He still kept up intelligence with the Peloponnesians at Rhodes, paralyzed their energies by assurances that the Phenician fleet was actually on its way to aid them, and insured the success of these intrigues by bribes distributed personally among the generals and the trierarchs. Even Astyochus, the general-in-chief, took his share in this corrupt bargain, against which not one stood out except the Syracusan Hermokratês.[608] Such prolonged inaction of the armament, at the moment of its greatest force, was thus not simply the fruit of honest mistake, like the tardiness of Nikias in Sicily, but proceeded from the dishonesty and personal avidity of the Peloponnesian officers.

[605] Thucyd. viii, 44: compare c. 57.

[606] Thucyd. viii, 40-55.

[607] Thucyd. viii, 39.

[608] Thucyd. viii, 45. Suggestions of Alkibiadês to
Tissaphernês—Καὶ τοὺς τριηράρχους καὶ τοὺς στρατηγοὺς τῶν πόλεων
ἐδίδασκεν ~ὥστε δόντα χρήματα αὐτὸν πεῖσαι~, ὥστε ~ξυγχωρῆσαι
ταῦτα ἑαυτῷ~, πλὴν τῶν Συρακοσίων· τούτων δὲ, Ἑρμοκράτης
ἠναντιοῦτο ~μόνος~ ὑπὲρ τοῦ ξύμπαντος ξυμμαχικοῦ.

About the bribes to Astyochus himself, see also c. 50.

I have noticed, on more than one previous occasion, the many evidences which exist of the prevalence of personal corruption—even in its coarsest form, that of direct bribery—among the leading Greeks of all the cities, when acting individually. Of such evidences the incident here recorded is not the least remarkable. Nor ought this general fact ever to be forgotten by those who discuss the question between oligarchy and democracy, as it stood in the Grecian world. The confident pretensions put forth by the wealthy and oligarchical Greeks to superior virtue, public as well as private,—and the quiet repetition, by various writers modern and ancient, of the laudatory epithets implying such assumed virtue,—are so far from being borne out by history, that these individuals were perpetually ready as statesmen to betray their countrymen, or as generals even to betray the interests of their soldiers, for the purpose of acquiring money themselves. Of course, it is not meant that this was true of all of them; but it was true sufficiently often, to be reckoned upon as a contingency more than probable. If, speaking on the average, the leading men of a Grecian community were not above the commission of political misdeeds thus palpable, and of a nature not to be disguised even from themselves, far less would they be above the vices, always more or less mingled with self-delusion, of pride, power-seeking, party-antipathy or sympathy, love of ease, etc. And if the community were to have any chance of guarantee against such abuses, it could only be by full license of accusation against delinquents, and certainty of trial before judges identified in interest with the people themselves. Such were the securities which the Grecian democracies, especially that of Athens, tried to provide; in a manner not always wise, still less always effectual, but assuredly justified, in the amplest manner, by the urgency and prevalence of the evil. Yet in the common representations given of Athenian affairs, this evil is overlooked or evaded; the precautions taken against it are denounced as so many evidences of democratical ill-temper and injustice; and the class of men, through whose initiatory action alone such precautions were enforced, are held up to scorn as demagogues and _sycophants_. Had these Peloponnesian generals and trierarchs, who under the influence of bribes wasted two important months in inaction, been Athenians, there might have been some chance of their being tried and punished; though even at Athens the chance of impunity to offenders, through powerful political clubs and other sinister artifices, was much greater than it ought to have been. So little is it consistent with the truth, however often affirmed, that judicial accusation was too easy, and judicial condemnation too frequent. When the judicial precautions provided at Athens are looked at, as they ought to be, side by side with the evil, they will be found imperfect, indeed, both in the scheme and in the working, but certainly neither uncalled for nor over-severe.