The Athenian fleet was so marshalled, that its great strength was placed in the two wings; in each of which there were sixty Athenian ships, divided into four equal divisions, each division commanded by a general. Of the four squadrons of fifteen ships each, two were placed in front, two to support them in the rear. Aristokratês and Diomedon commanded the two front squadrons of the left division, Periklês and Erasinidês the two squadrons in the rear: on the right division, Protomachus and Thrasyllus commanded the two in front, Lysias and Aristogenês the two in the rear. The centre, wherein were the Samians and other allies, was left weak, and all in single line: it appears to have been exactly in front of one of the isles of Arginusæ, while the two other divisions were to the right and left of that isle. We read with some surprise that the whole Lacedæmonian fleet was arranged by single ships, because it sailed better and manœuvred better than the Athenians; who formed their right and left divisions in deep order, for the express purpose of hindering the enemy from performing the nautical manœuvres of the diekplus and the periplus.[258] It would seem that the Athenian centre, having the land immediately in its rear, was supposed to be better protected against an enemy “sailing through the line out to the rear, and sailing round about,” than the other divisions, which were in the open waters; for which reason it was left weak, with the ships in single line. But the fact which strikes us the most is, that, if we turn back to the beginning of the war, we shall find that this diekplus and periplus were the special manœuvres of the Athenian navy, and continued to be so even down to the siege of Syracuse; the Lacedæmonians being at first absolutely unable to perform them at all, and continuing for a long time to perform them far less skilfully than the Athenians. Now, the comparative value of both parties is reversed: the superiority of nautical skill has passed to the Peloponnesians and their allies: the precautions whereby that superiority is neutralized or evaded, are forced as a necessity on the Athenians. How astonished would the Athenian admiral Phormion have been, if he could have witnessed the fleets and the order of battle at Arginusæ!
Kallikratidas himself, with the ten Lacedæmonian ships, was on the right of his fleet: on the left were the Bœotians and Eubœans, under the Bœotian admiral Thrasondas. The battle was long and obstinately contested, first by the two fleets in their original order; afterwards, when all order was broken, by scattered ships mingled together and contending in individual combat. At length the brave Kallikratidas perished. His ship was in the act of driving against the ship of an enemy, and he himself probably, like Brasidas[259] at Pylos, had planted himself on the forecastle, to be the first in boarding the enemy, or in preventing the enemy from boarding him, when the shock arising from impact threw him off his footing, so that he fell overboard and was drowned.[260] In spite of the discouragement springing from his death, the ten Lacedæmonian triremes displayed a courage worthy of his, and nine of them were destroyed or disabled. At length the Athenians were victorious in all parts: the Peloponnesian fleet gave way, and their flight became general, partly to Chios, partly to Phokæa. More than sixty of their ships were destroyed over and above the nine Lacedæmonian, seventy-seven in all; making a total loss of above the half of the entire fleet. The loss of the Athenians was also severe, amounting to twenty-five triremes. They returned to Arginusæ after the battle.[261]
The victory of Arginusæ afforded the most striking proof how much the democratical energy of Athens could yet accomplish, in spite of so many years of exhausting war. But far better would it have been, if her energy on this occasion had been less efficacious and successful. The defeat of the Peloponnesian fleet, and the death of their admirable leader,—we must take the second as inseparable from the first, since Kallikratidas was not the man to survive a defeat,—were signal misfortunes to the whole Grecian world; and in an especial manner, misfortunes to Athens herself. If Kallikratidas had gained the victory and survived it, he would certainly have been the man to close the Peloponnesian war; for Mitylênê must immediately have surrendered, and Konon, with all the Athenian fleet there blocked up, must have become his prisoners; which circumstance, coming at the back of a defeat, would have rendered Athens disposed to acquiesce in any tolerable terms of peace. Now to have the terms dictated at a moment when her power was not wholly prostrate, by a man like Kallikratidas, free from corrupt personal ambition and of a generous Pan-Hellenic patriotism, would have been the best fate which at this moment could befall her; while to the Grecian world generally, it would have been an unspeakable benefit, that, in the reorganization which it was sure to undergo at the close of the war, the ascendant individual of the moment should be penetrated with devotion to the great ideas of Hellenic brotherhood at home, and Hellenic independence against the foreigner. The near prospect of such a benefit was opened by that rare chance which threw Kallikratidas into the command, enabled him not only to publish his lofty profession of faith but to show that he was prepared to act upon it, and for a time floated him on towards complete success. Nor were the envious gods ever more envious, than when they frustrated, by the disaster of Arginusæ, the consummation which they had thus seemed to promise. The pertinence of these remarks will be better understood in the next chapter, when I come to recount the actual winding-up of the Peloponnesian war under the auspices of the worthless, but able, Lysander. It was into his hands that the command was retransferred, a transfer almost from the best of Greeks to the worst. We shall then see how much the sufferings of the Grecian world, and of Athens especially, were aggravated by his individual temper and tendencies, and we shall then feel by contrast, how much would have been gained if the commander armed with such great power of dictation had been a Pan-Hellenic patriot. To have the sentiment of that patriotism enforced, at a moment of break-up and rearrangement throughout Greece, by the victorious leader of the day, with single-hearted honesty and resolution, would have been a stimulus to all the better feelings of the Grecian mind, such as no other combination of circumstances could have furnished. The defeat and death of Kallikratidas was thus even more deplorable as a loss to Athens and Greece, than to Sparta herself. To his lofty character and patriotism, even in so short a career, we vainly seek a parallel.
The news of the defeat was speedily conveyed to Eteonikus at Mitylênê by the admiral’s signal-boat. As soon as he heard it, he desired the crew of the signal-boat to say nothing to any one, but to go again out of the harbor, and then return with wreaths and shouts of triumph, crying out that Kallikratidas had gained the victory and had destroyed or captured all the Athenian ships. All suspicion of the reality was thus kept from Konon and the besieged, while Eteonikus himself, affecting to believe the news, offered the sacrifice of thanksgiving; but gave orders to all the triremes to take their meal and depart afterwards without losing a moment, directing the masters of the trading-ships also to put their property silently aboard, and get off at the same time. And thus, with little or no delay, and without the least obstruction from Konon, all these ships, triremes and merchantmen, sailed out of the harbor and were carried off in safety to Chios, the wind being fair. Eteonikus at the same time withdrew his land-forces to Methymna, burning his camp. Konon, thus finding himself unexpectedly at liberty, put to sea with his ships when the wind had become calmer, and joined the main Athenian fleet, which he found already on its way from Arginusæ to Mitylênê. The latter presently came to Mitylênê, and from thence passed over to make an attack on Chios; which attack proving unsuccessful, they went forward to their ordinary station at Samos.[262]
The news of the victory at Arginusæ diffused joy and triumph at Athens. All the slaves who had served in the armament were manumitted and promoted, according to promise, to the rights of Platæans at Athens, a qualified species of citizenship. Yet the joy was poisoned by another incident, which became known at the same time, raising sentiments of a totally opposite character, and ending in one of the most gloomy and disgraceful proceedings in all Athenian history.
Not only the bodies of the slain warriors floating about on the water had not been picked up for burial, but the wrecks had not been visited to preserve those who were yet living. The first of these two points, even alone, would have sufficed to excite a painful sentiment of wounded piety at Athens. But the second point, here an essential part of the same omission, inflamed that sentiment into shame, grief, and indignation of the sharpest character.
In the descriptions of this event, Diodorus and many other writers take notice of the first point, either exclusively,[263] or at least with slight reference to the second; which latter, nevertheless, stands as far the gravest in the estimate of every impartial critic, and was also the most violent in its effect upon Athenian feelings. Twenty-five Athenian triremes had been ruined, along with most of their crews; that is, lay heeled over or disabled, with their oars destroyed, no masts, nor any means of moving; mere hulls, partially broken by the impact of an enemy’s ship, and gradually filling and sinking. The original crew of each was two hundred men. The field of battle, if we may use that word for a space of sea, was strewed with these wrecks; the men remaining on board being helpless and unable to get away, for the ancient trireme carried no boat, nor any aids for escape. And there were, moreover, floating about, men who had fallen overboard, or were trying to save their lives by means of accidental spars or empty casks. It was one of the privileges of a naval victory, that the party who gained it could sail over the field of battle, and thus assist their own helpless or wounded comrades aboard the disabled ships,[264] taking captive, or sometimes killing, the corresponding persons belonging to the enemy. According even to the speech made in the Athenian public assembly afterwards, by Euryptolemus, the defender of the accused generals, there were twelve triremes with their crews on board lying in the condition just described. This is an admission by the defence, and therefore the minimum of the reality: there cannot possibly have been fewer, but there were probably several more, out of the whole twenty-five stated by Xenophon.[265] No step being taken to preserve them, the surviving portion, wounded as well as unwounded, of these crews, were left to be gradually drowned as each disabled ship went down. If any of them escaped, it was by unusual goodness of swimming, by finding some fortunate plank or spar, at any rate by the disgrace of throwing away their arms, and by some method such as no wounded man would be competent to employ.
The first letter from the generals which communicated the victory, made known at the same time the loss sustained in obtaining it. It announced, doubtless, the fact which we read in Xenophon, that twenty-five Athenian triremes had been lost, with nearly all their crews; specifying, we may be sure, the name of each trireme which had so perished; for each trireme in the Athenian navy, like modern ships, had its own name.[266] It mentioned, at the same time, that no step whatever had been taken by the victorious survivors to save their wounded and drowning countrymen on board the sinking ships. A storm had arisen, such was the reason assigned, so violent as to render all such intervention totally impracticable.[267]
It is so much the custom, in dealing with Grecian history, to presume the Athenian people to be a set of children or madmen, whose feelings it is not worth while to try and account for, that I have been obliged to state these circumstances somewhat at length, in order to show that the mixed sentiment excited at Athens by the news of the battle of Arginusæ was perfectly natural and justifiable. Along with joy for the victory, there was blended horror and remorse at the fact that so many of the brave men who had helped to gain it had been left to perish unheeded. The friends and relatives of the crews of these lost triremes were of course foremost in the expression of such indignant emotion. The narrative of Xenophon, meagre and confused as well as unfair, presents this emotion as if it were something causeless, factitious, pumped up out of the standing irascibility of the multitude by the artifices of Theramenês, Kallixenus, and a few others. But whatever may have been done by these individuals to aggravate the public excitement, or pervert it to bad purposes, assuredly the excitement itself was spontaneous, inevitable, and amply justified. The very thought that so many of the brave partners in the victory had been left to drown miserably on the sinking hulls, without any effort on the part of their generals and comrades near to rescue them, was enough to stir up all the sensibilities, public as well as private, of the most passive nature, even in citizens who were not related to the deceased, much more in those who were so. To expect that the Athenians would be so absorbed in the delight of the victory, and in gratitude to the generals who had commanded, as to overlook such a desertion of perishing warriors, and such an omission of sympathetic duty, is, in my judgment, altogether preposterous; and would, if it were true, only establish one more vice in the Athenian people, besides those which they really had, and the many more with which they have been unjustly branded.
The generals, in their public letter, accounted for their omission by saying that the violence of the storm was too great to allow them to move. First, was this true as matter of fact? Next, had there been time to discharge the duty, or at the least to try and discharge it, before the storm came on to be so intolerable? These points required examination. The generals, while honored with a vote of thanks for the victory, were superseded, and directed to come home; all except Konon, who having been blocked up at Mitylênê, was not concerned in the question. Two new colleagues, Philoklês and Adeimantus, were named to go out and join him.[268] The generals probably received the notice of their recall at Samos, and came home in consequence; reaching Athens seemingly about the end of September or beginning of October, the battle of Arginusæ having been fought in August 406 B.C. Two of the generals, however, Protomachus and Aristogenês, declined to come: warned of the displeasure of the people, and not confiding in their own case to meet it, they preferred to pay the price of voluntary exile. The other six, Periklês, Lysias, Diomedon, Erasinidês, Aristokratês, and Thrasyllus,—Archestratus, one of the original ten, having died at Mitylênê,[269]—came without their two colleagues; an unpleasant augury for the result.
On their first arrival, Archedêmus, at that time an acceptable popular orator, and exercising some magistracy or high office which we cannot distinctly make out,[270] imposed upon Erasinidês a fine to that limited amount which was within the competence of magistrates without the sanction of the dikastery, and accused him besides before the dikastery; partly for general misconduct in his command, partly on the specific charge of having purloined some public money on its way from the Hellespont. Erasinidês was found guilty, and condemned to be imprisoned, either until the money was made good, or perhaps until farther examination could take place into the other alleged misdeeds.
This trial of Erasinidês took place before the generals were summoned before the senate to give their formal exposition respecting the recent battle, and the subsequent neglect of the drowning men. And it might almost seem as if Archedêmus wished to impute to Erasinidês exclusively, apart from the other generals, the blame of that neglect; a distinction, as will hereafter appear, not wholly unfounded. If, however, any such design was entertained, it did not succeed. When the generals went to explain their case before the senate, the decision of that body was decidedly unfavorable to all of them, though we have no particulars of the debate which passed. On the proposition of the senator Timokratês,[271] a resolution was passed that the other five generals present should be placed in custody, as well as Erasinidês, and thus handed over to the public assembly for consideration of the case.[272]
The public assembly was accordingly held, and the generals were brought before it. We are here told who it was that appeared as their principal accuser, along with several others; though unfortunately we are left to guess what were the topics on which they insisted. Theramenês was the man who denounced them most vehemently, as guilty of leaving the crews of the disabled triremes to be drowned, and of neglecting all efforts to rescue them. He appealed to their own public letter to the people, officially communicating the victory; in which letter they made no mention of having appointed any one to undertake the duty, nor of having any one to blame for not performing it. The omission, therefore, was wholly their own: they might have performed it, and ought to be punished for so cruel a breach of duty.
The generals could not have a more formidable enemy than Theramenês. We have had occasion to follow him, during the revolution of the Four Hundred, as a long-sighted as well as tortuous politician: he had since been in high military command, a partaker in victory with Alkibiadês at Kyzikus and elsewhere; and he had served as trierarch in the victory of Arginusæ itself. His authority therefore was naturally high, and told for much, when he denied the justification which the generals had set up founded on the severity of the storm. According to him, they might have picked up the drowning men, and ought to have done so: either they might have done so before the storm came on, or there never was any storm of sufficient gravity to prevent them: upon their heads lay the responsibility of omission.[273] Xenophon, in his very meagre narrative, does not tell us, in express words, that Theramenês contradicted the generals as to the storm. But that he did so contradict them, point blank, is implied distinctly in that which Xenophon alleges him to have said. It seems also that Thrasybulus—another trierarch at Arginusæ, and a man not only of equal consequence, but of far more estimable character—concurred with Theramenês in this same accusation of the generals,[274] though not standing forward so prominently in the case. He too therefore must have denied the reality of the storm; or at least, the fact of its being so instant after the battle, or so terrible as to forbid all effort for the relief of these drowning seamen.
The case of the generals, as it stood before the Athenian public, was completely altered when men like Theramenês and Thrasybulus stood forward as their accusers. Doubtless what was said by these two had been said by others before, in the senate and elsewhere; but it was now publicly advanced by men of influence, as well as perfectly cognizant of the fact. And we are thus enabled to gather indirectly, what the narrative of Xenophon, studiously keeping back the case against the generals, does not directly bring forward, that though the generals affirmed the storm, there were others present who denied it, thus putting in controversy the matter of fact which formed their solitary justification. Moreover, we come—in following the answer made by the generals in the public assembly to Theramenês and Thrasybulus—to a new point in the case, which Xenophon lets out as it were indirectly, in that confused manner which pervades his whole narrative of the transaction. It is, however, a new point of extreme moment. The generals replied that if any one was to blame for not having picked up the drowning men, it was Theramenês and Thrasybulus themselves; for it was they two to whom, together with various other trierarchs and with forty-eight triremes, the generals had expressly confided the performance of this duty; it was they two who were responsible for its omission, not the generals. Nevertheless they, the generals, made no charge against Theramenês and Thrasybulus, well knowing that the storm had rendered the performance of the duty absolutely impossible, and that it was therefore a complete justification for one as well as for the other. They, the generals, at least could do no more than direct competent men like these two trierarchs to perform the task, and assign to them an adequate squadron for the purpose; while they themselves with the main fleet went to attack Eteonikus, and relieve Mitylênê. Diomedon, one of their number, had wished after the battle to employ all the ships in the fleet for the preservation of the drowning men, without thinking of anything else until that was done. Erasinidês, on the contrary, wished that all the fleet should move across at once against Mitylênê; Thrasyllus said that they had ships enough to do both at once. Accordingly, it was agreed that each general should set apart three ships from his division, to make a squadron of forty-eight ships under Thrasybulus and Theramenês. In making these statements, the generals produced pilots and others, men actually in the battle as witnesses in general confirmation.
Here, then, in this debate before the assembly, were two new and important points publicly raised. First, Theramenês and Thrasybulus denounced the generals as guilty of the death of these neglected men; next, the generals affirmed that they had delegated the duty to Theramenês and Thrasybulus themselves. If this latter were really true, how came the generals, in their official despatch first sent home, to say nothing about it? Euryptolemus, an advocate of the generals, speaking in a subsequent stage of the proceedings, though we can hardly doubt that the same topics were also urged in this very assembly, while blaming the generals for such omission, ascribed it to an ill-placed good-nature on their part, and reluctance to bring Theramenês and Thrasybulus under the displeasure of the people. Most of the generals, he said, were disposed to mention the fact in their official despatch, but were dissuaded from doing so by Periklês and Diomedon; an unhappy dissuasion, in his judgment, which Theramenês and Thrasybulus had ungratefully requited by turning round and accusing them all.[275]
This remarkable statement of Euryptolemus, as to the intention of the generals in wording the official despatch, brings us to a closer consideration of what really passed between them on the one side, and Theramenês and Thrasybulus on the other; which is difficult to make out clearly, but which Diodorus represents in a manner completely different from Xenophon. Diodorus states that the generals were prevented partly by the storm, partly by the fatigue and reluctance and alarm of their own seamen, from taking any steps to pick up, what he calls, the dead bodies for burial; that they suspected Theramenês and Thrasybulus, who went to Athens before them, of intending to accuse them before the people, and that for this reason they sent home intimation to the people that they had given special orders to these two trierarchs to perform the duty. When these letters were read in the public assembly, Diodorus says, the Athenians were excessively indignant against Theramenês; who, however, defended himself effectively and completely, throwing the blame back upon the generals. He was thus forced, against his own will, and in self-defence, to become the accuser of the generals, carrying with him his numerous friends and partisans at Athens. And thus the generals, by trying to ruin Theramenês, finally brought condemnation upon themselves.[276]
Such is the narrative of Diodorus, in which it is implied that the generals never really gave any special orders to Theramenês and Thrasybulus, but falsely asserted afterwards that they had done so, in order to discredit the accusation of Theramenês against themselves. To a certain extent, this coincides with what was asserted by Theramenês himself, two years afterwards, in his defence before the Thirty, that he was not the first to accuse the generals; they were the first to accuse him; affirming that they had ordered him to undertake the duty, and that there was no sufficient reason to hinder him from performing it; they were the persons who distinctly pronounced the performance of the duty to be possible, while he had said, from the beginning, that the violence of the storm was such as even to forbid any movement in the water; much more, to prevent rescue of the drowning men.[277]
Taking the accounts of Xenophon and Diodorus together, in combination with the subsequent accusation and defence of Theramenês at the time of the Thirty, and blending them so as to reject as little as possible of either, I think it probable that the order for picking up the exposed men was really given by the generals to Theramenês, Thrasybulus, and other trierarchs; but that, first, a fatal interval was allowed to elapse between the close of the battle and the giving of such order; next, that the forty-eight triremes talked of for the service, and proposed to be furnished by drafts of three out of each general’s division, were probably never assembled; or, if they assembled, were so little zealous in the business as to satisfy themselves very easily that the storm was too dangerous to brave, and that it was now too late. For when we read the version of the transaction, even as given by Euryptolemus, we see plainly that none of the generals, except Diomedon, was eager in the performance of the task. It is a memorable fact, that of all the eight generals, not one of them undertook the business in person, although its purpose was to save more than a thousand drowning comrades from death.[278] In a proceeding where every interval even of five minutes was precious, they go to work in the most dilatory manner, by determining that each general shall furnish three ships, and no more, from his division. Now we know from the statement of Xenophon, that, towards the close of the battle, the ships on both sides were much dispersed.[279] Such collective direction therefore would not be quickly realized; nor, until all the eight fractions were united, together with the Samians and others, so as to make the force complete, would Theramenês feel bound to go out upon his preserving visitation. He doubtless disliked the service, as we see that most of the generals did; while the crews also, who had just got to land after having gained a victory, were thinking most about rest and refreshment, and mutual congratulations.[280] All were glad to find some excuse for staying in their moorings instead of going out again to buffet what was doubtless unfavorable weather. Partly from this want of zeal, coming in addition to the original delay, partly from the bad weather, the duty remained unexecuted, and the seamen on board the damaged ships were left to perish unassisted.
But presently arose the delicate, yet unavoidable question, “How are we to account for the omission of this sacred duty, in our official despatch to the Athenian people?” Here the generals differed among themselves, as Euryptolemus expressly states: Periklês and Diomedon carried it, against the judgment of their colleagues, that in the official despatch, which was necessarily such as could be agreed to by all, nothing should be said about the delegation to Theramenês and others; the whole omission being referred to the terrors of the storm. But though such was the tenor of the official report, there was nothing to hinder the generals from writing home and communicating individually with their friends in Athens as each might think fit; and in these unofficial communications, from them as well as from others who went home from the armament,—communications not less efficacious than the official despatch, in determining the tone of public feeling at Athens,—they did not disguise their convictions that the blame of not performing the duty belonged to Theramenês. Having thus a man like Theramenês to throw the blame upon, they did not take pains to keep up the story of the intolerable storm, but intimated that there had been nothing to hinder him from performing the duty if he had chosen. It is this which he accuses them of having advanced against him, so as to place him as the guilty man before the Athenian public: it was this which made him, in retaliation and self-defence, violent and unscrupulous in denouncing them as the persons really blamable.[281] As they had made light of this alleged storm, in casting the blame upon him, so he again made light of it, and treated it as an insufficient excuse, in his denunciations against them; taking care to make good use of their official despatch, which virtually exonerated him, by its silence, from any concern in the matter.
Such is the way in which I conceive the relations to have stood between the generals on one side and Theramenês on the other, having regard to all that is said both in Xenophon and in Diodorus. But the comparative account of blame and recrimination between these two parties is not the most important feature of the case. The really serious inquiry is, as to the intensity or instant occurrence of the storm. Was it really so instant and so dangerous, that the duty of visiting the wrecks could not be performed, either before the ships went back to Arginusæ, or afterwards? If we take the circumstances of the case, and apply them to the habits and feelings of the English navy, if we suppose more than one thousand seamen, late comrades in the victory, distributed among twenty damaged and helpless hulls, awaiting the moment when these hulls would fill and consign them all to a watery grave, it must have been a frightful storm indeed, which would force an English admiral even to go back to his moorings leaving these men so exposed, or which would deter him, if he were at his moorings, from sending out the very first and nearest ships at hand to save them. And granting the danger to be such that he hesitated to give the order, there would probably be found officers and men to volunteer, against the most desperate risks, in a cause so profoundly moving all their best sympathies. Now, unfortunately for the character of Athenian generals, officers, and men, at Arginusæ,—for the blame belongs, though in unequal proportions, to all of them,—there exists here strong presumptive proof that the storm on this occasion was not such as would have deterred any Grecian seamen animated by an earnest and courageous sense of duty. We have only to advert to the conduct and escape of Eteonikus and the Peloponnesian fleet from Mitylênê to Chios; recollecting that Mitylênê was separated from the promontory of Kanê on the Asiatic mainland, and from the isles of Arginusæ, by a channel only one hundred and twenty stadia broad,[282] about fourteen English miles. Eteonikus, apprized of the defeat by the Peloponnesian official signal-boat, desired that boat to go out of the harbor, and then to sail into it again with deceptive false news, to the effect that the Peloponnesians had gained a complete victory: he then directed his seamen, after taking their dinners, to depart immediately, and the masters of the merchant vessels silently to put their cargoes aboard, and get to sea also. The whole fleet, triremes and merchant vessels both, thus went out of the harbor of Mitylênê and made straight for Chios, whither they arrived in safety; the merchant vessels carrying their sails, and having what Xenophon calls “a fair wind.”[283] Now it is scarcely possible that all this could have taken place, had there blown during this time an intolerable storm between Mitylênê and Arginusæ. If the weather was such as to allow of the safe transit of Eteonikus and all his fleet from Mitylênê to Chios, it was not such as to form a legitimate obstacle capable of deterring any generous Athenian seaman, still less a responsible officer, from saving his comrades exposed on the wrecks near Arginusæ. Least of all was it such as ought to have hindered the attempt to save them, even if such attempt had proved unsuccessful. And here the gravity of the sin consists, in having remained inactive while the brave men on the wrecks were left to be drowned. All this reasoning, too, assumes the fleet to have been already brought back to its moorings at Arginusæ, discussing only how much was practicable to effect after that moment, and leaving untouched the no less important question, why the drowning men were not picked up before the fleet went back.
I have thought it right to go over these considerations, indispensable to the fair appreciation of this memorable event, in order that the reader may understand the feelings of the assembly and the public of Athens, when the generals stood before them, rebutting the accusations of Theramenês and recriminating in their turn against him. The assembly had before them the grave and deplorable fact, that several hundreds of brave seamen had been suffered to drown on the wrecks, without the least effort to rescue them. In explanation of this fact, they had not only no justification, at once undisputed and satisfactory, but not even any straightforward, consistent, and uncontradicted statement of facts. There were discrepancies among the generals themselves, comparing their official with their unofficial, as well as with their present statements, and contradictions between them and Theramenês, each having denied the sufficiency of the storm as a vindication for the neglect imputed to the other. It was impossible that the assembly could be satisfied to acquit the generals on such a presentation of the case; nor could they well know how to apportion the blame between them and Theramenês. The relatives of the men left to perish would be doubtless in a state of violent resentment against one or other of the two, perhaps against both. Under these circumstances, it could hardly have been the sufficiency of their defence,—it must have been rather the apparent generosity of their conduct towards Theramenês, in formally disavowing all charge of neglect against him, though he had advanced a violent charge against them,—which produced the result that we read in Xenophon. The defence of the generals was listened to with favor and seemed likely to prevail with the majority.[284] Many individuals present offered themselves as bail for the generals, in order that the latter might be liberated from custody: but the debate had been so much prolonged—we see from hence that there must have been a great deal of speaking—that it was now dark, so that no vote could be taken, because the show of hands was not distinguishable. It was therefore resolved to adjourn the whole decision until another assembly; but that in the mean time the senate should meet, should consider what would be the proper mode of trying and judging the generals, and should submit a proposition to that effect to the approaching assembly.
It so chanced that immediately after this first assembly, during the interval before the meeting of the senate or the holding of the second assembly, the three days of the solemn annual festival called Apaturia intervened; early days in the month of October. This was the characteristic festival of the Ionic race; handed down from a period anterior to the constitution of Kleisthenês, and to the ten new tribes each containing so many demes, and bringing together the citizens in their primitive unions of family, gens, phratry, etc., the aggregate of which had originally constituted the four Ionic tribes, now superannuated. At the Apaturia, the family ceremonies were gone through; marriages were enrolled, acts of adoption were promulgated and certified, the names of youthful citizens first entered on the gentile and phratric roll; sacrifices were jointly celebrated by these family assemblages to Zeus Phratrius, Athênê, and other deities, accompanied with much festivity and enjoyment. A solemnity like this, celebrated every year, naturally provoked in each of these little unions, questions of affectionate interest: “Who are those that were with us last year, but are not here now? The absent, where are they? The deceased, where or how did they die?” Now the crews of the twenty-five Athenian triremes, lost at the battle of Arginusæ, at least all those among them who were freemen, had been members of some one of these family unions, and were missed on this occasion. The answer to the above inquiry, in their case, would be one alike melancholy and revolting: “They fought like brave men, and had their full share in the victory: their trireme was broken, disabled, and made a wreck, in the battle: aboard this wreck they were left to perish, while their victorious generals and comrades made not the smallest effort to preserve them.” To hear this about fathers, brothers, and friends,—and to hear it in the midst of a sympathizing family circle,—was well calculated to stir up an agony of shame, sorrow, and anger, united; an intolerable sentiment, which required as a satisfaction, and seemed even to impose as a duty, the punishment of those who had left these brave comrades to perish. Many of the gentile unions, in spite of the usually festive and cheerful character of the Apaturia, were so absorbed by this sentiment, that they clothed themselves in black garments and shaved their heads in token of mourning, resolving to present themselves in this guise at the coming assembly, and to appease the manes of their abandoned kinsmen by every possible effort to procure retribution on the generals.[285]
Xenophon in his narrative describes this burst of feeling at the Apaturia as false and factitious, and the men in mourning as a number of hired impostors, got up by the artifices of Theramenês,[286] to destroy the generals. But the case was one in which no artifice was needed. The universal and self-acting stimulants of intense human sympathy stand here so prominently marked, that it is not simply superfluous but even misleading, to look behind for the gold and machinations of a political instigator. Theramenês might do all that he could to turn the public displeasure against the generals, and to prevent it from turning against himself: it is also certain that he did much to annihilate their defence. He may thus have had some influence in directing the sentiment against them, but he could have had little or none in creating it. Nay, it is not too much to say that no factitious agency of this sort could ever have prevailed on the Athenian public to desecrate such a festival as the Apaturia, by all the insignia of mourning. If they did so, it could only have been through some internal emotion alike spontaneous and violent, such as the late event was well calculated to arouse.
Moreover, what can be more improbable than the allegation that a great number of men were hired to personate the fathers or brothers of deceased Athenian citizens, all well known to their really surviving kinsmen? What more improbable, than the story that numbers of men would suffer themselves to be hired, not merely to put on black clothes for the day, which might be taken off in the evening, but also to shave their heads, thus stamping upon themselves an ineffaceable evidence of the fraud, until the hair had grown again? That a cunning man, like Theramenês, should thus distribute his bribes to a number of persons, all presenting naked heads which testified his guilt, when there were real kinsmen surviving to prove the fact of personation? That having done this, he should never be arraigned or accused for it afterwards,—neither during the prodigious reaction of feeling which took place after the condemnation of the generals, which Xenophon himself so strongly attests, and which fell so heavily upon Kallixenus and others,—nor by his bitter enemy Kritias, under the government of the Thirty? Not only Theramenês is never mentioned as having been afterwards accused, but, for aught that appears, he preserved his political influence and standing, with little if any abatement. This is one forcible reason among many others, for disbelieving the bribes and the all-pervading machinations which Xenophon represents him as having put forth, in order to procure the condemnation of the generals. His speaking in the first public assembly, and his numerous partisans voting in the second, doubtless contributed much to that result, and by his own desire. But to ascribe to his bribes and intrigues the violent and overruling emotion of the Athenian public, is, in my judgment, a supposition alike unnatural and preposterous both with regard to them and with regard to him.
When the senate met, after the Apaturia, to discharge the duty confided to it by the last public assembly, of determining in what manner the generals should be judged, and submitting their opinion for the consideration of the next assembly, the senator Kallixenus—at the instigation of Theramenês, if Xenophon is to be believed—proposed, and the majority of the senate adopted, the following resolution: “The Athenian people having already heard, in the previous assembly, both the accusation and the defence of the generals, shall at once come to a vote on the subject by tribes. For each tribe two urns shall be placed, and the herald of each tribe shall proclaim: All citizens who think the generals guilty, for not having rescued the warriors who had conquered in the battle, shall drop their pebbles into the foremost urn; all who think otherwise, into the hindmost. Should the generals be pronounced guilty, by the result of the voting, they shall be delivered to the Eleven, and punished with death; their property shall be confiscated, the tenth part being set apart for the goddess Athênê.”[287] One single vote was to embrace the case of all the eight generals.[288]
The unparalleled burst of mournful and vindictive feeling at the festival of the Apaturia, extending by contagion from the relatives of the deceased to many other citizens,—and the probability thus created that the coming assembly would sanction the most violent measures against the generals,—probably emboldened Kallixenus to propose, and prompted the senate to adopt, this deplorable resolution. As soon as the assembly met, it was read and moved by Kallixenus himself, as coming from the senate in discharge of the commission imposed upon them by the people.
It was heard by a large portion of the assembly with well-merited indignation. Its enormity consisted in breaking through the established constitutional maxims and judicial practices of the Athenian democracy. It deprived the accused generals of all fair trial; alleging, with a mere faint pretence of truth which was little better than utter falsehood, that their defence as well as their accusation had been heard in the preceding assembly. Now there has been no people, ancient or modern, in whose view the formalities of judicial trial were habitually more sacred and indispensable than in that of the Athenians; formalities including ample notice beforehand to the accused party, with a measured and sufficient space of time for him to make his defence before the dikasts; while those dikasts were men who had been sworn beforehand as a body, yet were selected by lot for each occasion as individuals. From all these securities the generals were now to be debarred; and submitted, for their lives, honors, and fortunes, to a simple vote of the unsworn public assembly, without hearing or defence. Nor was this all. One single vote was to be taken in condemnation or absolution of the eight generals collectively. Now there was a rule in Attic judicial procedure, called the psephism of Kannônus,—originally adopted, we do not know when, on the proposition of a citizen of that name, as a psephism or decree for some particular case, but since generalized into common practice, and grown into great prescriptive reverence,—which peremptorily forbade any such collective trial or sentence, and directed that a separate judicial vote should, in all cases, be taken for or against each accused party. The psephism of Kannônus, together with all the other respected maxims of Athenian criminal justice, was here audaciously trampled under foot.[289]
As soon as the resolution was read in the public assembly, Euryptolemus, an intimate friend of the generals, denounced it as grossly illegal and unconstitutional, presenting a notice of indictment against Kallixenus, under the Graphê Paranomôn, for having proposed a resolution of that tenor. Several other citizens supported the notice of indictment, which, according to the received practice of Athens, would arrest the farther progress of the measure until the trial of its proposer had been consummated. Nor was there ever any proposition made at Athens, to which the Graphê Paranomôn more closely and righteously applied.
But the numerous partisans of Kallixenus—especially the men who stood by in habits of mourning, with shaven heads, agitated with sad recollections and thirst of vengeance—were in no temper to respect this constitutional impediment to the discussion of what had already been passed by the senate. They loudly clamored, that “it was intolerable to see a small knot of citizens thus hindering the assembled people from doing what they chose:” and one of their number, Lykiskus, even went so far as to threaten that those who tendered the indictment against Kallixenus should be judged by the same vote along with the generals, if they would not let the assembly proceed to consider and determine on the motion just read.[290] The excited disposition of the large party thus congregated, farther inflamed by this menace of Lykiskus, was wound up to its highest pitch by various other speakers; especially by one, who stood forward and said: “Athenians! I was myself a wrecked man in the battle; I escaped only by getting upon an empty meal-tub; but my comrades, perishing on the wrecks near me, implored me, if I should myself be saved, to make known to the Athenian people, that their generals had abandoned to death warriors who had bravely conquered in behalf of their country.” Even in the most tranquil state of the public mind, such a communication of the last words of these drowning men, reported by an ear-witness, would have been heard with emotion; but under the actual predisposing excitement, it went to the inmost depth of the hearers’ souls, and marked the generals as doomed men.[291] Doubtless there were other similar statements, not expressly mentioned to us, bringing to view the same fact in other ways, and all contributing to aggravate the violence of the public manifestations; which at length reached such a point, that Euryptolemus was forced to withdraw his notice of indictment against Kallixenus.
Now, however, a new form of resistance sprung up, still preventing the proposition from being taken into consideration by the assembly. Some of the prytanes,—or senators of the presiding tribe, on that occasion the tribe Antiochis,—the legal presidents of the assembly, refused to entertain or put the question; which, being illegal and unconstitutional, not only inspired them with aversion, but also rendered them personally open to penalties. Kallixenus employed against them the same menaces which Lykiskus had uttered against Euryptolemus: he threatened, amidst encouraging clamor from many persons in the assembly, to include them in the same accusation with the generals. So intimidated were the prytanes by the incensed manifestations of the assembly, that all of them, except one, relinquished their opposition, and agreed to put the question. The single obstinate prytanis, whose refusal no menace could subdue, was a man whose name we read with peculiar interest, and in whom an impregnable adherence to law and duty was only one among many other titles to reverence. It was the philosopher Sokratês; on this trying occasion, once throughout a life of seventy years, discharging a political office, among the fifty senators taken by lot from the tribe Antiochis. Sokratês could not be induced to withdraw his protest, so that the question was ultimately put by the remaining prytanes without his concurrence.[292] It should be observed that his resistance did not imply any opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the generals, but applied simply to the illegal and unconstitutional proposition now submitted for determining their fate; a proposition, which he must already have opposed once before, in his capacity of member of the senate.
The constitutional impediments having been thus violently overthrown, the question was regularly put by the prytanes to the assembly. At once the clamorous outcry ceased, and those who had raised it resumed their behavior of Athenian citizens, patient hearers of speeches and opinions directly opposed to their own. Nothing is more deserving of notice than this change of demeanor. The champions of the men drowned on the wrecks had resolved to employ as much force as was required to eliminate those preliminary constitutional objections, in themselves indisputable, which precluded the discussion. But so soon as the discussion was once begun, they were careful not to give to the resolution the appearance of being carried by force. Euryptolemus, the personal friend of the generals, was allowed not only to move an amendment negativing the proposition of Kallixenus, but also to develop it in a long speech, which Xenophon sets before us.[293]
His speech is one of great skill and judgment in reference to the case before him and to the temper of the assembly. Beginning with a gentle censure on his friends, the generals Periklês and Diomedon, for having prevailed on their colleagues to abstain from mentioning, in their first official letter, the orders given to Theramenês, he represented them as now in danger of becoming victims to the base conspiracy of the latter, and threw himself upon the justice of the people to grant them a fair trial. He besought the people to take full time to instruct themselves before they pronounced so solemn and irrevocable a sentence; to trust only to their own judgment, but at the same time to take security that judgment should be pronounced after full information and impartial hearing, and thus to escape that bitter and unavailing remorse which would otherwise surely follow. He proposed that the generals should be tried each separately, according to the psephism of Kannônus, with proper notice, and ample time allowed for the defence as well as for the accusation; but that, if found guilty, they should suffer the heaviest and most disgraceful penalties, his own relation Periklês the first. This was the only way of striking the guilty, of saving the innocent, and of preserving Athens from the ingratitude and impiety of condemning to death, without trial as well as contrary to law, generals who had just rendered to her so important a service. And what could the people be afraid of? Did they fear lest the power of trial should slip out of their hands, that they were so impatient to leap over all the delays prescribed by the law?[294] To the worst of public traitors, Aristarchus, they had granted a day with full notice for trial, with all the legal means for making his defence: and would they now show such flagrant contrariety of measure to victorious and faithful officers? “Be not ye (he said) the men to act thus, Athenians. The laws are your own work; it is through them that ye chiefly hold your greatness: cherish them, and attempt not any proceeding without their sanction.”[295]
Euryptolemus then shortly recapitulated the proceedings after the battle, with the violence of the storm which had prevented approach to the wrecks; adding that one of the generals, now in peril, had himself been on board a broken ship, and had only escaped by a fortunate accident.[296] Gaining courage from his own harangue, he concluded by reminding the Athenians of the brilliancy of the victory, and by telling them that they ought in justice to wreath the brows of the conquerors, instead of following those wicked advisers who pressed for their execution.[297]
It is no small proof of the force of established habits of public discussion, that the men in mourning and with shaven heads, who had been a few minutes before in a state of furious excitement, should patiently hear out a speech so effective and so conflicting with their strongest sentiments as this of Euryptolemus. Perhaps others may have spoken also; but Xenophon does not mention them. It is remarkable that he does not name Theramenês as taking any part in this last debate.
The substantive amendment proposed by Euryptolemus was that the generals should be tried each separately, according to the psephism of Kannônus; implying notice to be given to each, of the day of trial, and full time for each to defend himself. This proposition, as well as that of the senate moved by Kallixenus, was submitted to the vote of the assembly; hands being separately held up, first for one, next for the other. The prytanes pronounced the amendment of Euryptolemus to be carried. But a citizen named Meneklês impeached their decision as wrong or invalid, alleging seemingly some informality or trick in putting the question, or perhaps erroneous report of the comparative show of hands. We must recollect that in this case the prytanes were declared partisans. Feeling that they were doing wrong in suffering so illegal a proposition as that of Kallixenus to be put at all, and that the adoption of it would be a great public mischief, they would hardly scruple to try and defeat it even by some unfair manœuvre. But the exception taken by Meneklês constrained them to put the question over again, and they were then obliged to pronounce that the majority was in favor of the proposition of Kallixenus.[298]
That proposition was shortly afterwards carried into effect by disposing the two urns for each tribe, and collecting the votes of the citizens individually. The condemnatory vote prevailed, and all the eight generals were thus found guilty; whether by a large or a small majority we should have been glad to learn, but are not told. The majority was composed mostly of those who acted under a feeling of genuine resentment against the generals, but in part also of the friends and partisans of Theramenês,[299] not inconsiderable in number. The six generals then at Athens,—Periklês (son of the great statesman of that name by Aspasia), Diomedon, Erasinidês, Thrasyllus, Lysias, and Aristokratês,—were then delivered to the Eleven, and perished by the usual draught of hemlock; their property being confiscated, as the decree of the senate prescribed.
Respecting the condemnation of these unfortunate men, pronounced without any of the recognized tutelary preliminaries for accused persons, there can be only one opinion. It was an act of violent injustice and illegality, deeply dishonoring the men who passed it, and the Athenian character generally. In either case, whether the generals were guilty or innocent, this censure is deserved, for judicial precautions are not less essential in dealing with the guilty than with the innocent. But it is deserved in an aggravated form, when we consider that the men against whom such injustice was perpetrated, had just come from achieving a glorious victory. Against the democratical constitution of Athens, it furnishes no ground for censure, nor against the habits and feelings which that constitution tended to implant in the individual citizen. Both the one and the other strenuously forbade the deed; nor could the Athenians ever have so dishonored themselves, if they had not, under a momentary ferocious excitement, risen in insurrection not less against the forms of their own democracy, than against the most sacred restraints of their habitual constitutional morality.
If we wanted proof of this, the facts of the immediate future would abundantly supply it. After a short time had elapsed, every man in Athens became heartily ashamed of the deed.[300] A vote of the public assembly was passed,[301] decreeing that those who had misguided the people on this occasion ought to be brought to judicial trial, that Kallixenus with four others should be among the number, and that bail should be taken for their appearance. This was accordingly done, and the parties were kept under custody of the sureties themselves, who were responsible for their appearance on the day of trial. But presently both foreign misfortunes and internal sedition began to press too heavily on Athens to leave any room for other thoughts, as we shall see in the next chapter. Kallixenus and his accomplices found means to escape before the day of trial arrived, and remained in exile until after the dominion of the Thirty and the restoration of the democracy. Kallixenus then returned under the general amnesty. But the general amnesty protected him only against legal pursuit, not against the hostile memory of the people. “Detested by all, he died of hunger,” says Xenophon;[302] a memorable proof how much the condemnation of these six generals shocked the standing democratical sentiment at Athens.
From what cause did this temporary burst of wrong arise, so foreign to the habitual character of the people? Even under the strongest political provocation, and towards the most hated traitors,—as Euryptolemus himself remarked, by citing the case of Aristarchus,—after the Four Hundred as well as after the Thirty, the Athenians never committed the like wrong, never deprived an accused party of the customary judicial securities. How then came they to do it here, where the generals condemned were not only not traitors, but had just signalized themselves by a victorious combat? No Theramenês could have brought about this phenomenon; no deep-laid oligarchical plot is, in my judgment, to be called in as an explanation.[303] The true explanation is different, and of serious moment to state. Political hatred, intense as it might be, was never dissociated, in the mind of a citizen of Athens, from the democratical forms of procedure: but the men, who stood out here as actors, had broken loose from the obligations of citizenship and commonwealth, and surrendered themselves, heart and soul, to the family sympathies and antipathies; feelings first kindled, and justly kindled, by the thought that their friends and relatives had been left to perish unheeded on the wrecks; next, inflamed into preternatural and overwhelming violence by the festival of the Apaturia, where all the religious traditions connected with the ancient family tie, all those associations which imposed upon the relatives of a murdered man the duty of pursuing the murderer, were expanded into detail and worked up by their appropriate renovating solemnity. The garb of mourning and the shaving of the head—phenomena unknown at Athens, either in a political assembly or in a religious festival—were symbols of temporary transformation in the internal man. He could think of nothing but his drowning relatives, together with the generals as having abandoned them to death, and his own duty as survivor to insure to them vengeance and satisfaction for such abandonment. Under this self-justifying impulse, the shortest and surest proceeding appeared the best, whatever amount of political wrong it might entail:[304] nay, in this case it appeared the only proceeding really sure, since the interposition of the proper judicial delays, coupled with severance of trial on successive days, according to the psephism of Kannônus, would probably have saved the lives of five out of the six generals, if not of all the six. When we reflect that such absorbing sentiment was common, at one and the same time, to a large proportion of the Athenians, we shall see the explanation of that misguided vote, both of the senate and of the ekklesia, which sent the six generals to an illegal ballot, and of the subsequent ballot which condemned them. Such is the natural behavior of those who, having for the moment forgotten their sense of political commonwealth, become degraded into exclusive family men. The family affections, productive as they are of so large an amount of gentle sympathy and mutual happiness in the interior circle, are also liable to generate disregard, malice, sometimes even ferocious vengeance, towards others. Powerful towards good generally, they are not less powerful occasionally towards evil; and require, not less than the selfish propensities, constant subordinating control from that moral reason which contemplates for its end the security and happiness of all. And when a man, either from low civilization, has never known this large moral reason,—or when from some accidental stimulus, righteous in the origin, but wrought up into fanaticism by the conspiring force of religious as well as family sympathies, he comes to place his pride and virtue in discarding its supremacy,—there is scarcely any amount of evil or injustice which he may not be led to perpetrate, by a blind obedience to the narrow instincts of relationship. “Ces pères de famille sont capables de tout,” was the satirical remark of Talleyrand upon the gross public jobbing so largely practised by those who sought place or promotion for their sons. The same words understood in a far more awful sense, and generalized for other cases of relationship, sum up the moral of this melancholy proceeding at Athens.
Lastly, it must never be forgotten that the generals themselves were also largely responsible in the case. Through the unjustifiable fury of the movement against them, they perished like innocent men, without trial, “inauditi et indefensi, tamquam innocentes, perierunt;” but it does not follow that they were really innocent. I feel persuaded that neither with an English, nor French, nor American fleet, could such events have taken place as those which followed the victory of Arginusæ. Neither admiral nor seamen, after gaining a victory and driving off the enemy, could have endured the thoughts of going back to their anchorage, leaving their own disabled wrecks unmanageable on the waters, with many living comrades aboard, helpless, and depending upon extraneous succor for all their chance of escape. That the generals at Arginusæ did this, stands confessed by their own advocate Euryptolemus,[305] though they must have known well the condition of disabled ships after a naval combat, and some ships even of the victorious fleet were sure to be disabled. If these generals, after their victory, instead of sailing back to land, had employed themselves first of all in visiting the crippled ships, there would have been ample time to perform this duty, and to save all the living men aboard, before the storm came on. This is the natural inference, even upon their own showing; this is what any English, French, or American naval commander would have thought it an imperative duty to do. What degree of blame is imputable to Theramenês, and how far the generals were discharged by shifting the responsibility to him, is a point which we cannot now determine. But the storm, which is appealed to as a justification of both, rests upon evidence too questionable to serve that purpose, where the neglect of duty was so serious, and cost the lives probably of more than one thousand brave men. At least, the Athenian people at home, when they heard the criminations and recriminations between the generals on one side and Theramenês on the other,—each of them in his character of accuser implying that the storm was no valid obstacle, though each, if pushed for a defence, fell back upon it as a resource in case of need,—the Athenian people could not but look upon the storm more as an afterthought to excuse previous omissions, than as a terrible reality nullifying all the ardor and resolution of men bent on doing their duty. It was in this way that the intervention of Theramenês chiefly contributed to the destruction of the generals, not by those manœuvres ascribed to him in Xenophon: he destroyed all belief in the storm as a real and all-covering hindrance. The general impression of the public at Athens—in my opinion, a natural and unavoidable impression—was, that there had been most culpable negligence in regard to the wrecks, through which negligence alone the seamen on board perished. This negligence dishonors, more or less, the armament at Arginusæ as well as the generals: but the generals were the persons responsible to the public at home, who felt for the fate of the deserted seamen more justly as well as more generously than their comrades in the fleet.
In spite, therefore, of the guilty proceeding to which a furious exaggeration of this sentiment drove the Athenians,—in spite of the sympathy which this has naturally and justly procured for the condemned generals,—the verdict of impartial history will pronounce that the sentiment itself was well founded, and that the generals deserved censure and disgrace. The Athenian people might with justice proclaim to them: “Whatever be the grandeur of your victory, we can neither rejoice in it ourselves, nor allow you to reap honor from it, if we find that you have left many hundreds of those who helped in gaining it to be drowned on board the wrecks without making any effort to save them, when such effort might well have proved successful.”