Worlds That Weren't

“Ah, Sokrates, if you hadn’t put in that last I think you would have broken my heart forever.” Alkibiades made as if to kiss the older man again. Sokrates made as if to pick up a rock and clout him with it. Laughing, they turned and walked back toward the Athenians’ encampment.

Herakleides threw up shocked hands. “This is illegal!” he exclaimed.

Nikias wagged a finger in Alkibiades’ face. “This is unprecedented!” he cried. By the way he said it, that was worse than anything merely illegal could ever be.

Alkibiades bowed to each of them in turn. “Ordering me home when I wasn’t in Athens to defend myself is illegal,” he said. “Recalling a commander in the middle of such an important campaign is unprecedented. We have plenty of Athenians here. Let’s see what they think about it.”

He looked across the square in Katane. He’d spoken here to the Assembly of the locals not long before, while Athenian soldiers filtered into the polis and brought it under their control. Now Athenian hoplites and rowers and marines filled the square. They made an Assembly of their own. It probably was illegal. It certainly was unprecedented. Alkibiades didn’t care. It just as certainly was his only chance.

He took a couple of steps forward, right to the edge of the speakers’ platform. Sokrates was out there somewhere. Alkibiades couldn’t pick him out, though. He shrugged. He was on his own anyhow. Sokrates might have given him some of the tools he used, but he had to use them. He was fighting for his life.

“Here me, men of Athens! Here me, people of Athens!” he said. The soldiers and sailors leaned forward, intent on his every word. The people of Athens had sent them forth to Sicily. The idea that they might be the people of Athens as well as its representatives here in the west was new to them. They had to believe it. Alkibiades had to make them believe it. If they didn’t, he was doomed.

“Back in the polis, the Assembly there”-he wouldn’t call that the people of Athens — “has ordered me home so they can condemn me and kill me without most of my friends-without you — there to protect me. They say I desecrated the herms in the city. They say I profaned the sacred mysteries of Eleusis. One of their so-called witnesses claims I broke the herms by moonlight, when everyone knows it was done in the last days of the month, when there was no moonlight. These are the sorts of people my enemies produce against me.”

He never said he hadn’t mutilated the herms. He never said he hadn’t burlesqued the mysteries. He said the witnesses his opponents produced lied-and they did.

He went on, “Even if I went back to Athens, my enemies’ witnesses would say one thing, my few friends and I another. No matter how the jury finally voted, no one would ever be sure of the truth. And so I say to you, men of Athens, people of Athens, let us not rely on lies and jurymen who can be swayed by lies. Let us rest my fate on the laps of the gods.”

Nikias started. Alkibiades almost laughed out loud. Didn’t expect that, did you, you omen-mongering fool?

Aloud, he continued, “If we triumph here in Sicily under my command, will that not prove I have done no wrong in the eyes of heaven? If we triumph-as triumph we can, as triumph we shall — then I shall return to Athens with you, and let these stupid charges against me be forgotten forevermore. But if we fail here…If we fail here, I swear to you I shall not leave Sicily alive, but will be the offering to repay the gods for whatever sins they reckon me to have committed. That is my offer, to you and to the gods. Time will show what they say of it. But what say you, men of Athens? What say you, people of Athens?”

He waited for the decision of the Assembly he’d convened. He didn’t have to wait long. Cries of, “Yes!” rang out, and, “We accept!” and, “Alkibiades!” A few men tossed their heads and yelled things like, “No!” and, “Let the decision of the Assembly in Athens stand!” But they were only a few, overwhelmed and outshouted by Alkibiades’ backers.

Turning to Herakleides and Nikias, Alkibiades bowed once more. They’d thought they would be able to address the Athenian soldiers and sailors after he finished. But the decision was already made. Herakleides looked stunned, Nikias dyspeptic.

With another bow, Alkibiades said to Herakleides, “You will take my answer and the true choice of the people of Athens back to the polis?”

The other man needed two or three tries before he managed to stammer out, “Y-Yes.”

“Good.” Alkibiades smiled. “Tell the polis also, I hope to be back there myself before too long.”