Demokratia: The Mortal Struggle of Ancient Athens

By W. S. Walton

Twenty-five hundred years ago a small Mediterranean community devised a new civic order; the community was Athens and the civic order became democracy. Over almost two centuries Athens struggled to keep its democracy. Previous novels, The Demos at Dawn and The Children of Marathon, have described the early portions of this struggle.

The present novel carries the struggle to a close. During the course of this final period, Athenians desperately fought foreign foes and each other, won, lost and suffered through strife, created a thriving commerce and an empire, only to have them lost and then regained and lost again, and produced architecture, art, drama and philosophy unrivaled then or now.

This is a story of some men and women of that time, as well as the story of ancient Athenian democracy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468507867

W. S. Walton

The author, born in 1938, in recent years has run distances, read and written about the ancient Hellenes. His recent writings include The Demos at Dawn and The Children of Marathon. Previously, he practiced law. His family is a source of great satisfaction to him. He lives in America.

Book preview

© 2012 W. S. Walton. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 1/23/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-0785-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-0784-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-0786-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011961508

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Forward

Chapter One:

Fire in the Night—424 BCE

Chapter Two:

Restoration—411 BCE

Chapter Three:

In the Water—406 BCE

Chapter Four:

The Tempest

Chapter Five:

No Law Can Stop the People

Chapter Six:

Behind the Walls

Chapter Seven:

A Disarming Government—404 BCE

Chapter Eight:

Civic Terror

Chapter Nine:

The Democratic Snow Storm—403 BCE

Chapter Ten:

The Games of 402 BCE

Chapter Eleven:

A Trial of Virtue—399 BCE

Chapter Twelve:

Reunion

Chapter Thirteen:

A New War, New Walls and New Schools—392 BCE

Chapter Fourteen:

Empire Redux, Sort of—371 BCE

Chapter Fifteen:

Listen to Me, Athens!—351 BCE

Chapter Sixteen:

Dreams of the Golden West—BCE 325

Dedicated to the loving memory of my parents,

Herb and Milly

Forward

Demokratia: An old Hellenic word meaning people power. Democracy.

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.

Benjamin Franklin

…when someone whose work falls short looks towards another, towards a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and manage his household well, then neighbor vies with neighbor as he hastens to wealth: this Strife is good for mortals.

Works and Days, Hesiod, circa 700 BCE

…there is no greater glory for a man while he lives than that which he achieves by his own hand and foot….

Laodamas to Odysseus, Book VIII,

Lines 155-159, the Odyssey

Men are not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge, declares Odysseus.

Canto 26, The Divine Comedy, Dante

Meno. Well, then, Sokrates, virtue, as I take it, is the love and attainment of the honorable: ….

Sokrates. ….virtue is neither natural nor acquired, but an instinct given by God to the virtuous….

Meno, Plato

…All who knew what manner of man Sokrates was and who seek after virtue continue to this day to miss him beyond all others, as the chief of helpers in the quest of virtue….To me then he seemed to be all that a truly good and happy man must be. …

Memorabilia, IV, viii 11, Xenophon

… [E]ach single one of our citizens, in all the manifold aspects of life, is able to show himself the rightful lord and owner of his own person, and do this, moreover, with exceptional grace and versatility….Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now….Make up your minds that happiness depends upon being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.

From The Funeral Oration of Perikles for the

First to Die in the Peloponnesian War, according to

Thucydides

CHAPTER ONE: FIRE IN THE NIGHT—424 BCE

Chapter One:

Fire in the Night—424 BCE

The richest man in Athens, a hereditary priest of the Mysteries of Demeter at Sacred Eleusis, and here he was, Hipponikos, at the end of a mad day’s fighting in a foreign and hostile land commanding several thousand exhausted and unnerved Athenian hoplites: exhausted because of the day-long fight and unnerved, not so much by the constantly pressing enemy of superior numbers—these men were veterans of many hard engagements—but by the fearsome new weapon deployed against them. They felt very much alone in an alien land.

In fact they were only twenty-five miles march from their home, at a place on the Boeotian shoreline called Delion. The Athenians had brought by ship a substantial army and landed a short distance away. The Athenians thought this would be an easy victory welcomed by the locals in the territory next to their own, but it was not so. Now most of the invading army and the entire supporting navy had slipped away back to Athens—all except the men with Hipponikos, and the Athenian dead.

The Athenians had been surprised and in the fighting their commander, an experienced and good soldier, Hippokrates, was killed along with hundreds of others. Hipponikos, though the heir and beneficiary of a great fortune, commonly referred to as the richest man in Athens also, in the tradition of his family, the Kerykes, an accomplished soldier, tall and commanding, had stepped in and calmly led many through a deadly stream of arrows and missiles in a rapid retreat into the local Temple of the god Apollo, sacred ground to all the combatants—though neither side would respect its sanctity today.

For several days previously the Athenians had labored to make the Temple into a secure redoubt with timbers and stones. Then the Boeotians, Thebans other Spartan allies suddenly appeared in great force, and forty thousand opposing combatants did their best to kill each other, all claiming they were fighting for their homes and families.

Now as night came, the Athenians fort-building would be sorely tested as these remnants found themselves surrounded by a superior and very robust force. The balance of the defeated Athenian army was already, by ship or stony pathway, on its way back the twenty-five miles to the safety of the walls of Athens.

Those remaining with Hipponikos behind the Temple walls became subject to a spectacular fiery and noisy terror which none of them had ever before experienced. A stream of sticky fire arched against the walls and above, cascading into the Temple grounds.

The whole grand military operation had started off well enough with the Athenians advancing into the territory of Boeotia, and then by a seaborne invasion of the coastal city of Delion. The Athenians had come to push back against the allies of Sparta—the Boeotians, Thebans and others from the Peloponnese—one more skirmish in what became the longest war ever fought among Hellenes, later called the Peloponnesian War. Many in Athens and elsewhere called it the Great War: its greatness was only meant comparatively to all previously experienced conflicts (even the Persian Wars) in the ghastly degree of death and destruction it had wrought. It had been ongoing since 432 BCE, but this was 424 BCE and the war had years left.

The Athenians recently had a battle win against Sparta, not conclusive or mortal, but nonetheless stunning, capturing four hundred Spartans and placing their shields on the walls of the great temple to Athena, the Parthenon—very symbolic: recall the Spartan mothers’ injunction to their sons departing for war never, in the thick of battle, to lose their shield, and to return home, if alive, bearing their shield; or, if dead, their shield bearing them.

Now the Athenians sought to punish Sparta’s nearby allies before Sparta could send down another army from the Peloponnese.

The Spartans and Athenians had common genes and lived within a day’s run from each other, but they were separated by much societal deference. In particular, Athenians possessed a unique and special political concept—citizen-government, voting for representatives, but also direct participation by citizens speaking and voting in an Assembly. They called it Demokratia—people power: Democracy.

And it was not just a civic system. Equality in government seemed to flow into the rest of society. Men who were equal in their government were emboldened in their personal, cultural and commercial lives, and in the defense of their community. The Spartans eschewed commerce (and even money); the Athenians thrived on commerce, of the free enterprise type. Some had called this enterprise Magic.

Athens had been virtually unique when it implemented their civic structure a hundred years previously—giving the credit to an aristocrat named Kleisthenes. Soon thereafter Athens was forced to defend its new government and its whole community from external attack by the mighty Persian Empire, the Barbarians. And its successes on their home soil at Marathon, Salamis and Plataea became sacred in Athenian history. True, there were Athenians who distrusted Democracy, even despised it, but the Athenians’ respect for the rule of law and vigorous vigilance had protected this special civic system from internal as well as external overthrow. Through a turbulent time Athenians learned to live with its Democracy and watched it produce a golden era of prosperity and culture led by a professed champion of Democracy, Perikles: the first citizen of Athens for a couple of decades.

Beyond Athens there were some Hellenic settlements which embraced citizen-government, but most of the world, Hellenic or otherwise, remained indifferent or hostile to the idea of common men governing their own civic destiny. The Persian kings saw nothing to their liking in it. And Athens’ principle Hellenic competitor, Sparta, which found comfort and security in an authoritarian regime, saw Democracy as dangerous and subversive. Though, by itself Athenian Democracy had not been enough to start a war over, once started the Spartans saw their opportunity to strangle the life out of this dangerous and subversive thing called Democracy right in its own heartland, Athens.

Yet even without the Spartan fear and contempt for Athenian Democracy the war would have probably come. It was at its essence an international power struggle between Sparta and Athens, plain and simple, and came to engage countless other city-states, settlements and colonies throughout the Hellenic mainland and the Aegean Sea. Athens had a great navy and the Spartan army could not be touched, and on such a pragmatic basis the other Hellenes lined up behind one or the other, having pragmatically bet the eventual outcome. And for all Hellenes it would become truly the Great War and a dreadful experience.

Despite the sheer power of armies and navies, occasionally civic preferences played a part, and the Athenians thought there was hope that their neighbor Boeotia, given a chance by Athenian arms, might itself become democratic and thus an Athenian ally. Otherwise, Athens felt sorely threatened by a hostile city-state so close on its northern border.

The Athenian invasion had been directed by a seasoned general, Hippokrates, to whom Hipponikos was pleased to report. The respect was mutual. Hipponikos had led an initial incursion into Boeotia. And the Athenian expeditionary force had been substantial, with seven thousand hoplite, and hundreds of stone-throwers, light-infantry peltasts, and cavalry—more than enough the Athenians thought. Considerably more than the army the Athenians assembled sixty-six years earlier to beat the Persian hoards at Marathon.

The trouble was that, even at a short twenty-five miles from home, Athenians were on enemy soil and the Boeotians had rallied to defend their homeland. The Athenians should have understood that: they had done the same, defend their homes, against the invading Persians at Marathon and Salamis. Moreover, Hippokrates had told his army they, too, were fighting for home and family, being so close to Athens. But twenty-five miles was twenty-five miles, and the Boeotians rage was enhanced all the more by the Athenians, the foreigners, choosing as their site for a fort, the sacred grounds of Apollo’s Temple.

In addition the Peloponnesians were led by a very clever man, a Theban named Pagodas, and he had with him what was called the Theban Sacred Band—a regiment comprised of paired male lovers, each of whom was sworn to defend his partner to death. Here and later they proved themselves invincible.

The appearance that morning of the enemy army, in such might and numbers, and on the high ground was a dreadful surprise. Pagodas’ stealth and tactical positioning had already put the Athenians at a great disadvantage, though Hippokrates knew immediately what was required. He ordered his hoplites to their classic battle phalanx, lowered spears and charged uphill into the enemy on their way down the hill. Hippokrates stretched his flanks so they would be able to bend around the enemy lines—just as the Athenians had done to the Persians at Marathon—and proceeded with an envelopment. This Athenian tactic could have carried the day, except for some very bad luck. As the Athenians encircled the enemy, the heavily armored hoplites became confused and engaged their own hard-to-identify comrades coming from the other side in a vicious encounter. If only shield identification had been better—both sides employed many of the same insignias. Later they would ironically call such tragedy friendly fire. At Delion it brought down many Athenians and so confused the rest that the chance of victory was lost.

The enemy then came down on them hard, and the Athenians fell in droves, including their commander. The disarrayed Athenians by the thousands looked for the exit home. As soon as they turned for Athens, they were cut down all the more, and the enemy came in for the kill.

Doubting survival from the charging enemy lay, at least for the infantry, in head-long flight over open country, Hipponikos led many back to the Temple fortress, where they now resided. Their arrows fired from behind protective walls would keep them alive for a while. Perhaps when the ardor of battle cooled Hipponikos could negotiate a less bloody withdrawal. He was not personally eager to submit to capture, but perhaps he could thereby save the lives of his hoplites and win then safe-passage home.

In the meantime, Hipponikos and his men were to suffer a heavy siege of arrows and slung missiles—and, most spectacularly, the fantastic fire terror. Every so often in the pitch-black night a great stream of liquid fire came spewing forth from the Boeotian camp and splashing against the wooden barriers or beyond into the fort. At its commencement surprised Athenians were cruelly set afire and screamed until dead. Now, the soldiers shied away from the cinder marked killing field, but the terror was just as great.

What if the flame-thrower, for that was what they immediately called it, was repositioned and sent its death to another place in the Temple, where the men were huddled? Apollo himself would not be secure even in the most inner sanctum of his Temple.

And here it came again—a spectacular terror once more, but burning only the same blackened patch of ground on which it had previously landed. Hipponikos shouted for his men to huddle by the forward stone walls and quit running back to the interior space where the next fire-stream might land. Though Hipponikos observed the forward timber wall, the main object of the bombardment, was now smoking and probably would shortly start its own flame.

What the Boeotians were employing was, for those times, a unique device. A caldron of hot charcoal, pitch and sulfur was perched high above near the mouth of a long wooden tube, aimed at the fort. At the other end of the tube giant blacksmith bellows were placed and pumped. A stream of air swept through the tube and out over the caldron. The charcoal and sulfur burst into a sticky flame which caught up into the air stream and shot toward the Temple and its wooden bulwark. The Boeotians had named the infernal machine Hephaistos’ flute after the blacksmith Olympian, and a giant of a mortal, an actual blacksmith, who had constructed much of the machine, was in charge of the bellows. Whenever the bellows compressed, and the airstream ignited and spewed toward the Temple, the smithy would roar with triumph. Pagodas sat his horse nearby and watched the fire-breather with amusement. He judged it would not take all that long to achieve their objective.

The Boeotians were aiming to burn down the wood barricades and then charge in with overwhelming numbers. Occasionally overshooting their target and incinerating the Athenians in the Temple was just an added bonus.

It would be one thing to parley for an honorable truce allowing his Athenians to go home, but to Hipponikos that seemed not likely now that the siege was underway and the enemy infantry appeared massing for an assault. Under such circumstances Hipponikos was resolved he would never surrender. Athenians did not do that. Perhaps the Boeotians would still allow an escape and be satisfied that they had chased the Athenians the twenty-five miles back home from Delion. It would be ignominious, but not a surrender. Yet, if Hipponikos himself were captured alive and the Peloponnesians became aware they had in their possession the richest man in Athens, they would relish the ransom calculation. It would be a record. It would pay for this battle. That prospect did not appeal to the commander.

Through his thoughts, Hipponikos heard a laughing voice booming out behind him. A time for a good roast, my lord, father-in-law…if we had a pig or two. Let me take a few good men and capture that infernal machine. Despite the dilemma, Hipponikos smiled on hearing this from the most incorrigible man he knew—and the most beautiful, Achilles incarnate.

Ah, the pride of Athens, it is you indeed, Alkibiades, declared Hipponikos. As fresh flames and sparks filled the air, this living Achilles held up for the protection of his commander a golden shield, emblazoned with an image of Eros and a thunderbolt. Not another shield on the battlefield like it—as unique as its owner.

Hipponikos politely acknowledged the courtesy. I suppose one of your hand-picked commando crew would be that teacher, what’s-his-name? First he saves your life when you were a youngster in his first battle, now, today, I heard, you saved his. You must be lovers.

Alkibiades laughed at the accusation, or compliment, whether true or not. The man in question was not so attractive to either sex. Some said he resembled a satyr—like the playful god Pan—and seemed to have much the same sense of humor and inventiveness if not the lustfulness.

As for Alkibiades, he was always bursting with passion and he loved with gusto and indiscriminately, boys, men and women. Oh how his wife, Hipparete, a daughter of Hipponikos knew all of that. Yes, Hipponikos was the father-in-law of this Achilles. On one occasion when her husband’s philandering was all too much, Hipparete, it was said, marched down to the courts seeking a divorce. The story was that Alkibiades caught up with her, threw the protesting women over his shoulder and took her home, declaring to all he was going to make it up to Hipparete, by pledging his full passion, if not his undying fidelity. Over the years to come, she stayed with him thereafter unto death, steadfast or simply resigned—of course, as shall become apparent, he was seldom home, which may have been a burden or a reprieve for Hipparete. She bore him two children.

Another story went that years earlier Alkibiades had, on a dare, boxed the ear of the richest man in Athens. A prank, but so condemned by Athenian society, that Alkibiades came to the house of Hipponikos and made an abject apology, sweeping away his garments and offering to Hipponikos the opportunity to flay him. Hipponikos was so taken with this beau gest, he offered Alkibiades the hand in marriage of Hipparete, and also, oh yes, a dowry of ten talents, the Athenian record in that era. Later after the birth of their first child, Alkibiades suggested to Hipponikos that achievement was worth another ten talents. Hipponikos honored the suggestion: he was the richest man in Athens, even after that. Athenian society buzzed with such stories of these Athenian nobles.

For sure, Alkibiades was one of a kind. He was an aristocrat of the first order, and when his father was killed in battle, Perikles, the powerful and aristocratic Athenian leader and democrat became his prime guardian. Perikles was first citizen of Athens through his ward’s formative years, and Alkibiades absorbed much this Athenaic Olympian had to teach, but Alkibiades made up his own mind. And Perikles’ espousal of Democracy was something Alkibiades loved to debate, at least in private. He did concede that being a democrat, publicly, could help him as much as it did Perikles.

Indeed, Alkibiades was his own man: robust, daring and handsome as the devil with a spirit to match, mercurial and aristocratic in tastes and attitudes. In the years to come, after the death of Perikles and in the long years of war thereafter Alkibiades would prove himself as close to the likes of an Olympic god as any mortal, exhibiting their best and worst qualities.

In the glow of the fire-breather, Hipponikos and Alkibiades, the two aristocrats, chatted with an attitude of studied indifference to the fiery dangers. Sokrates is his name, my lord,… a teacher…a ‘philosopher’. And he did save my mortal being at Potidaea, after my horse had forsaken me. Today I merely did him a similar favor when the rout began and men were running in every direction. I knew he would not budge from the battle line, even though running away was the only sensible tactic. So I just picked him up and had my horse carry the protesting gentlemen out of harm’s way. Alcibiades was naturally serving with the aristocratic cavalry, and his friend Sokrates was foot-slogging with the hoplites. Athens needs him….he urges all of us to question everything, the ground we walk on, the men who govern, even the holy-of-holies, Democracy, and the gods themselves.

He is for the return of the rule by us, the nobles?

Not exactly, my lord. He just likes to question. He likes to push us all to think a bit. He says… Alkibiades stopped talking and listened—it was another powerful whishing noise emanating from the Boeotian lines.

Everyone in the fort braced for the expected fire stream, some ducking their heads and others looking furtively to the sky for the incoming flame. The next lethal shooting star splashed down. It was a changed landing place, where a new scorched patch branded the grasses and men screamed. Above the dreadful noises and resulting confusion, an unflinching and calm Hipponikos continued his conversation, but now having to shout over the din, You called your savior, what was it? A ‘philosopher’?

Alkibiades, impressed by his commander’s demeanor while fire and loud explosions burst forth all round, fought to maintain his own calm and erect position next to Hipponikos, and shouted back, Yes, ‘ a philosopher’, as they say back in the gymnasium, ‘one who loves wisdom’… a man with a quest…a searcher for the answers…a truth seeker.

A lot of appellations! That’s a full-time pursuit, is it? Hipponikos shouted with a laugh.

It is for Sokrates…He used to be a stonemason or sculptor like his father, but then he followed a little voice of his…. Lost in thought, once he stood alone and motionless in a meadow all day and through the night…searching his mind, I suppose, for his love, wisdom.

While terrified soldiers ran back and forth seeking shelter from the fire-storm, some with burning and smoking clothing and screaming in pain, Hipponikos shouted and gave directions to them, and then as if nothing had interrupted his conversation, laughed and commented, ’A lover of wisdom?’ That describes every Athenian…who pays reverence to our embattled Virgin…our own Goddess of Wisdom. Am I right?

Alkibiades smiled. True enough, commander, except Sokrates seems to find more time, and stamina…standing all night and all….for it than most of us. Alkibiades wondered if he could induce Hipponikos to join in one of evening conversations with Sokrates and other lovers of wisdom back in Athens, assuming they were to live through the present circumstances. Alkibiades knew how much Sokrates enjoyed a quick wit particularly in a man as august and wealthy as Hipponikos. It would be amusing, a good contest of cleverness.

A curious Hipponikos, despite the current life-and-death circumstances, asked, Your Sokrates what is his physical passion, for your handsome physique, Alkibiades, or a piece of your fortune? The fire balls kept whishing past.

From my experience he has no desire for a fortune or for me except to save my immortal soul …which signifies to Sokrates that I must live in conformance with wisdom…as Apollo says at Delphi…’know yourself’…I fear I disappoint my philosophic mentor with all my impetuousness.

You, impetuous? responded a straight-faced Hipponikos at his son-in-law in the brilliant flashes of firelight.

Hipponikos and his Athenians held their ground against all comers, including that flamer from Hades—for two more weeks. Food ran low, but a fresh-water well kept them alive, along with their stockpile of arrows. The Temple blackened and more Athenians died, but the attackers were wary. Whether or not the remaining Athenians proved themselves more possessed of wisdom than their adversaries, they were clearly still dangerous as archers even in their much reduced number.

Finally Hipponikos made his bet— he would in the night’s concealment take his men over the rear wall and make a run for Athens. Perhaps they would be gone before detection, or perhaps once the Boeotians saw the Athenians were on their way towards Athens, they would let them go. In any event, for the Athenians it would be a better bet than a final roasting before the eyes of Apollo.

On that certain night Alkibiades led the way, with two hundred survivors. He pointed them on to Athens and let them all pass. He would then wait for his father-in-law, who would be the last Athenian out, like the good officer he was. In a stage whisper Alkibiades urged the troops to step on it, repeating, Remember that brave lad at Marathon, who ran to Sparta and back and then to the battle and then home…this run home will be nothing at all.

Alkibiades saw another flame stream landing in the fort and heard the noises of the charging Boeotians, who were finally making their assault. Where was Hipponikos? Alkibiades turned instinctively to race back and retrieve his commander, but his arm was held firm by his one remaining companion. Sokrates shook his head at Alkibiades and pointed to the Boeotians already on the bastions of the burning Temple. Even the impulsive Alkibiades realized a rescue would be futile. He sadly turned toward Athens.

Lying in the Temple, at ground zero for the most recent fire stream, Hipponikos knew he was dying of his burns, but it would take time. He could not see, but he could smell his scorched clothing and blackened body. The enormous shock to his system masked the pain, for now, and he had time to think. As a soldier, he was familiar with death and accepted his own as not surprising. In fact, he was relieved in one sense: it would relieve him of the ignominy of ransom. He was satisfied his fate would be a dignified one, an honorable conclusion, though he did have regrets—for not doing more for his city-state, something equal to the feats of his ancestors. It was a regret which he had borne already for some time.

In his youthful years he and his family always thought the day would come when he would lead Athens, be even more than another Perikles. In particular his mother, Elpinice, believed it and had told him so. As I had always wanted your valiant father to do, I want you, Hipponikos, to sweep up Athens in your arms and lead her from her misguided civic ways and build a polis of freedom. For close to a hundred years Athens had experimented with citizen-government. Hipponikos’ mother was not an enemy of the common voting citizens. She had witnessed them struggle heroically in the Persian War, and saw many of them support her brother Kimon in war and peace, but she came to believe that citizen-government—what grew in to Democracy— carried with it the danger of tyranny: that the everyday people of Athens might be as dangerous as kings or aristocrats to liberty. She had wanted Democracy tamed by a great man, and it was not Perikles.

Perikles, she believed, had not seen this danger and had only fueled the radical fires. And her brother Kimon, the great defender of his city against the barbarians and the generous spirit in the Assembly, had not faced up to the issue as she had pleaded with him to do.

She looked to her son, Hipponikos, rich and able, as the great hope—to bring civic balance to Athens and assure liberty. Then she died, as did Kallias, her husband, and Kimon, the hero, and Hipponikos lived on as an honorable and generous man and a good soldier—but somehow not the man of such great promise. He never became the one great civic leader to bring about his mother’s civic dream for Athens.

As he had matured and preceded through his adult years, Hipponikos often thought of his mother’s dream and whether his opportunity would still come. He possessed two grandfathers who fought at Marathon, one was Kallias from whom he inherited his riches, the other the victor of the battle, Miltiades, the man who saved Athens. His mother, Elpinice, was the daughter of Miltiades and the sister of the great Kimon—she was the women many said had saved the women and children at the great evacuation before the oncoming Persians, days before the Athenians vanquished the Persian fleet, in sight of the Akropolis, at Salamis. Kimon finished the job thirty years later by vanquishing the Persians on land and sea at the Eurymedon River.

After the death of Kimon, Hipponikos had witnessed his father Kallias negotiate the end of the Persian War—the Peace of Kallias. He remembered the curious thing his mother had said thereafter, Make the ghost of Kimon proud of you. He loved you like a son. Why had she not said Kallias? He had heard the rumors: that Kimon was more than an uncle. But he never knew, and they were all long gone now.

Hipponikos had sought diligently to serve Athens, even if he was never a great general like Miltiades or a great diplomat like Kallias or a great man like Kimon. Unlike the progeny of some famous people, he did not give up the ambition to match or at least do honor to his ancestors. He persevered, without frustration, for he did become a respected and honorable gentleman. Yes, Kimon would have been satisfied with the life of Hipponikos. From beyond the vale of death the good natured Kimon might well reach out for Hipponikos, saying I know, ol’man, what your mother wanted of you. She wanted it of me as well, and I never quite brought the polis around to her liking…but being a soldier kept me busy, as it has you…and we left the politicking to others…of well, the family is not dead yet…there is still hope.

It was true, soldiering had taken Hipponikos away from Athens and it had been a long war which he never embraced as worthy and necessary. In fact he thought the whole war with Sparta and her allies, like the Boeotians who had now killed him, was avoidable. Some came to call it Perikles’ War and said that if Kimon had only lived he would have never pushed Sparta to conflict.

Yet, in this war Hipponikos had been a good soldier. He had followed Perikles to war. He had done even more for Perikles. He had given the Olympian his first wife, but not before she had borne Hipponikos a son, a son and heir. Hipponikos reflected that after this day his son would be Kallias III, the lawful leader of the elite Kerykes family, and, as they always had said of the family leader, Kallias III would be the richest man in Athens.

Hipponikos thought about his son, safe in Athens, away from this unfortunate battle. Do your heritage honor, Kallias, the ghosts of your great ancestors will count on you, my son.

The escaping Athenians had first done as Alkibiades had commanded and ran down the path for home. But after a while, they felt safe from pursuit and slowed down to a lope and then a plod. And that was their pace for the rest of the night on their trek from Delion to the security of walled Athens—never in this war to take on another major land invasion. (There was one by sea, on a far coast, immense and immensely disastrous. Ask Alkibiades about that one.)

Later on the Spartans would move close to Athens and ravage the surrounding countryside of Attica. They would even establish a base at the town of Dekeleia, a few miles from Athens, where thousands of Spartans would reside each fighting season and where Athenian slaves would escape to, twenty thousand of them during the war years. At least the Great War brought good fortune to some people. (Strangely, those freedmen who reached safety at Dekeleia owed a thanks to our Alkibiades, but the explanation comes later.)

Yet, try as they might, the Spartans and their allies could not breach the walls of Athens and those walls shielding the corridor to the close-by harbor at Piraeus, known as the Long Walls. As a result, the Athenians would still have their mighty fleet to carry the war across the seas and to resupply their people. Even with Spartans crawling all over Attica and camped beneath the Athenian walls, so long as Athens had its fleet and access to Piraeus, the war was not lost, not yet.

On that night trek from Delion the cavalry knight Alkibiades walked with the others. No horses made the escape. He glanced at the hoplite shield Sokrates had strapped to his back and asked, Like a good Spartan, Sokrates, you are returning with your shield, but what is that insignia it bears?

Oh, this is not mine. It belonged to a friend who died in the cause. The insignia is for Miletos, where an ancestor fought the Persians before coming to Athens. I thought it belonged with the next generation. I know my dead friend has a little son.

You’re a good man, philosopher. Just like when you carried me to safety that time.

The philosopher merely grunted in response.

Alkibiades lamented, Well, my friend, I fear we lost many a comrade-in-arms back there, including Lord Hipponikos…my wife’s father, ‘the richest man in Athens’, as they say.

Sokrates, seemingly taken with the glorious starry sky, was silent for a bit, but then responded. Knowing Hipponikos by his reputation, he died before capture, and, as for the richest man in Athens…he most definitely lives, unless young Kallias rolled to his death off a couch at the night’s symposium. He added, philosophically, Hipponikos should rest in peace: he died nobly, in the service of Athens, a credit to his famous ancestors…old Kallias, the father of the Persian peace, and on his mother’s side…Kimon and Miltiades, the men who battered the Persians into submission…honorably serving Athens…yes, by his deeds he was a virtuous man…make sure to tell his son Kallias…perhaps it will be an inspiration.

By the cover of the night Alkibiades silently responded only with a grimace. He knew young Kallias all too well.

The Great War continued on, though marked by a respite called the Peace of Nikias, but that was dashed in 419 BCE by violations of terms by those who wanted war more than peace, led on the Athenian side by that young sometimes-disciple of Sokrates, the irrepressible Alkibiades. By age thirty Alkibiades was one of the ten elected generals of Athens. A position from which his mentor, Perikles, had led Athens in its golden era. The ambitious and clever Alkibiades also followed in the political path of his mentor claiming devotion to the principles of radical Democracy, though observant Athenians were less than certain of the sincerity of his political declarations. Nonetheless, his apparent military prowess led to his being given a prime battle command, and he took the Athenians, and allies, into a head long collision with the Spartans at Mantinea in 418 BCE. The Spartans prevailed, but it was not a mortal loss for Athens and its lead soldier. Alkibiades and his military reputation would survive.

Despite his busy life hacking Spartans to death, and leaving hundreds of Athenians dead on battle fields, Alkibiades found time, and more importantly the money, to sponsor seven chariots at the Olympic Games of 416 BCE, taking a first and a bunch of other kudos. And he was still romancing every kind of attractive personage he encountered. He was enough to scare any sober Athenian, but he remained ever so charming, irresistible and irrepressible.

Betrayal:

In 415 BCE Alkibiades, who by his feats of war, politics and love, had grown in the minds of many Athenians into the reincarnation of Homer’s Achilles, despite in reality