Throughout the Peloponnesian War, as we have seen, Sparta had always been short of money; it had no silver mines, did not engage in trade, and had nothing useful to export except soldiers. The ephors had long believed that they would never defeat Athens unless they built a powerful fleet and destroyed it as a sea power. But they had found out to their cost that warships were expensive and ruinous to maintain as a fighting force. However, if Persia were now to foot the bill, Sparta would renew the war on the waves.
The Spartans decided to do business with Tissaphernes. In 412 careful negotiations were opened. An early draft has survived that showed only too clearly the Great King’s intentions. It read:
All the territories and cities now in the King’s possession or formerly in the possession of his ancestors shall belong to the King….The war shall be carried on jointly by the King and the Spartans and their allies….Any people who revolt from the King shall be treated as enemies by the Spartans and their allies.
The final text was more discreet, but the message was clear. Sparta, the liberator of Greece against the invading barbarians, had signed up to help those very barbarians regain the lands they had lost. In return Darius would subsidize a Spartan fleet. Everyone could see that once the protection of Athens was withdrawn the Ionian poleis would fall back into his hands like low-hanging fruit. The treaty was evidence of the bitterness and the corruption of values that the long war had engendered.
The Spartans agreed to help the men of Chios, which was in the satrap’s theater of operations, with their insurrection. They sent their new fleet to this southern theater of war, and with them sailed Alcibiades, still making trouble for Athens.
—
His astonishing career now lurched in a new direction. While in Sparta he had apparently had an affair with Timaea, the wife of King Agis, while he was away on campaign at Decelea. This was discovered probably in February 412, much to her husband’s annoyance. It is alleged they had a son, Leotychidas, whom Agis disavowed, although years later on his deathbed he changed his mind and acknowledged him as his. According to Plutarch, Alcibiades
said, in his mocking way, that he had not done this merely as an insult, nor simply to satisfy his lust, but to ensure that his descendants would one day rule over the Spartans.
His hopes were in vain, for the boy never acceded to the throne. In any event, Agis was seriously displeased and took against the Athenian renegade. As a matter of fact, the Spartans had never entirely trusted him and were now tiring of him. The term of office as ephor of Endius, a family friend, came to an end in the following autumn and removed a key supporter. Alcibiades had pressed for Sparta’s new maritime policy, financed by the Persians, and had engineered or assisted revolts against Athenian rule. This was beginning to look like bad advice, for Athens was taking energetic and largely successful measures to protect its foreign possessions. Chios was not the center of a general uprising as had been expected, but was under siege and consuming Peloponnesian resources. Athenian sailors were tactically more experienced and imaginative; Spartans were in awe of them and tended to avoid battle when they could. The notion that the empire was ready to fall over at one push was proving to be wishful thinking.
A letter was sent to the Spartan admiral ordering him to put the unruly Athenian to death. Alcibiades got wind of this and without making any fuss removed himself to the court of Tissaphernes. Ostensibly he continued to work for Sparta, but in fact became the satrap’s confidential adviser.
Typically, he immediately fit into his new environment. He turned his irresistible charm onto Tissaphernes, who despite his long-standing hatred of the Greeks was bowled over. Plutarch writes that he
surrendered so completely to Alcibiades’s blandishments as to surpass him in reciprocal flatteries. He decreed that the most beautiful park [or
paradeisos
] he owned, which was famous for its refreshing streams and lawns and contained pavilions and retreats decorated in a regal and extravagant style, should be renamed after Alcibiades. Everyone always called it by that name.
In fact, Alcibiades was in a very tricky position. He was running out of options. He could follow the example of Themistocles, who had ended his career as a Persian official, but what if he fell out of the satrap’s favor? Moreover, he was homesick. Now that he was no longer persona grata in Lacedaemon, it was not in his interest to support a Spartan victory. He began to consider how he might negotiate his recall, despite the terrible damage he had done to his homeland’s interests.
Some Athenians were thinking the same thing.
—
The women of Athens are tired of the long war and thirst for peace. The inspirational and strong-minded Lysistrata persuades them to take over the government of the city. This they do by refusing sexual favors to their husbands and by taking over the treasury on the Acropolis. We learn that they will forswear a popular erotic position called The Lioness on a Cheese-Grater. The men are soon desperate for sex and sport enormous erections. A Spartan herald appears, similarly incommoded, proposing peace talks. An accord is soon agreed. Husbands receive back their wives. Spartans and Athenians join in a celebratory dance and banquet.
None of this happened, of course, for this was the plot of Aristophanes’ latest farce, Lysistrata (her name means “army disbander”), which premiered in 411. But many Athenians in the audience will have wished that it had.
In fact, there was sharp dissension in the city, but not between the sexes. The quarrel was between the classes. The city’s aristocrats had endured, but not enjoyed, the democracy, this despite the fact that many of them got themselves elected as generals and government officials. They still believed in their hereditary primacy—what Pindar called “the splendour running in the blood.” Now their opportunity had come to abolish the democracy and return to the old order. The demos deserved to take the blame for Sicily and respectable people of moderate views felt that popular rule should be reined back. They were willing to support the establishment of some kind of oligarchy.
In Athens the atmosphere was gloomy. A posse of blue-blooded young thugs assassinated leading democratic politicians and terrorized the population. In May, one century after its creation, the ecclesia let itself be bullied into abrogating the constitution. It dissolved itself and was replaced by a council of four hundred oligarchs, which took office in June 411. Its leaders promised in due course to establish an assembly of five thousand voting citizens. In the meantime executive authority lay in its hands. Payment for service in almost all public offices was abolished.
The new regime was more unstable than it looked at first glance. Many suspected that it intended to concede an ignominious peace treaty with Sparta. In spite of their exhaustion, most Athenians would see this as treachery, for they had not lost hope in victory or at least a draw. Above all, the ringleaders of the revolution were few and depended on the support of moderates.
One of these was Theramenes, an able and agile politician and the son of a Periclean general. One of nature’s compromisers, he was nicknamed Cothurnus, a boot worn by actors that fit either foot. He quickly grew disenchanted with his more radical and unyielding colleagues. He noticed that they were putting off publishing a list of the Five Thousand, as they had promised, and suspected they were dragging their feet, because they knew their power would fade once the new assembly began to meet. The Four Hundred split into two groups, extremists and moderates like Theramenes, who favored a qualified, not an out-and-out, democracy.