The Historians' History of the World 04

At the restoration of the democracy, Alcibiades was already no more. Shortly after the catastrophe at Ægospotami, he had sought shelter in the satrapy of Pharnabazus, no longer thinking himself safe from Lacedæmonian persecution in his forts on the Thracian Chersonesus. He carried with him a good deal of property, though he left still more behind him in these forts: how acquired we do not know. But having crossed apparently to Asia by the Bosporus, he was plundered by the Thracians in Bithynia, and incurred much loss before he could reach Pharnabazus in Phrygia. Renewing the tie of personal hospitality which he had contracted with Pharnabazus four years before, he now solicited from the satrap a safe conduct up to Susa. The Athenian envoys—whom Pharnabazus, after his former pacification with Alcibiades, 408 B.C., had engaged to escort to Susa, but had been compelled by the mandate of Cyrus to detain as prisoners—were just now released from their three years’ detention, and enabled to come down to the Propontis; and Alcibiades, by whom this mission had originally been projected, tried to prevail on the satrap to perform the promise which he had originally given, but had not been able to fulfil. The hopes of the sanguine exile, reverting back to the history of Themistocles, led him to anticipate the same success at Susa as had fallen to the lot of the latter: nor was the design impracticable, to one whose ability was universally renowned, and who had already acted as minister to Tissaphernes.

The court of Susa was at this time in a peculiar position. King Darius Nothus, having recently died, had been succeeded by his eldest son Artaxerxes Mnemon; but the younger son Cyrus, whom Darius had sent for during his last illness, tried after the death of the latter to supplant Artaxerxes in the succession—or at least was suspected of so trying. Cyrus being seized and about to be slain, the queen-mother, Parysatis, prevailed upon Artaxerxes to pardon him, and send him again down to his satrapy along the coast of Ionia, where he laboured strenuously, though secretly, to acquire the means of dethroning his brother; a memorable attempt, of which we shall speak more fully hereafter. But his schemes, though carefully masked, did not escape the observation of Alcibiades, who wished to make a merit of revealing them at Susa, and to become the instrument of defeating them. He communicated his suspicions as well as his purpose to Pharnabazus; whom he tried to awaken by alarm of danger to the empire, in order that he might thus get himself forwarded to Susa as informant and auxiliary.

Pharnabazus was already jealous and unfriendly in spirit towards Lysander and the Lacedæmonians (of which we shall soon see plain evidence)—and perhaps towards Cyrus also, since such were the habitual relations of neighbouring satraps in the Persian empire. But the Lacedæmonians and Cyrus were now all-powerful on the Asiatic coast, so that he probably did not dare to exasperate them, by identifying himself with a mission so hostile, and an enemy so dangerous, to both. Accordingly he refused compliance with the request of Alcibiades; granting him nevertheless permission to live in Phrygia, and even assigning to him a revenue. But the objects at which the exile was aiming soon became more or less fully divulged to those against whom they were intended. His restless character, enterprise, and capacity, were so well known as to raise exaggerated fears as well as exaggerated hopes. Not merely Cyrus, but the Lacedæmonians, closely allied with Cyrus, and the decarchies, whom Lysander had set up in the Asiatic Grecian cities, and who held their power only through Lacedæmonian support—all were uneasy at the prospect of seeing Alcibiades again in action and command, amidst so many unsettled elements. Nor can we doubt that the exiles whom these decarchies had banished, and the disaffected citizens who remained at home under their government in fear of banishment or death, kept up correspondence with him, and looked to him as a probable liberator. Moreover the Spartan king Agis still retained the same personal antipathy against him, which had already (some years before) procured the order to be despatched, from Sparta to Asia, to assassinate him. Here are elements enough, of hostility, vengeance, and apprehension, afloat against Alcibiades—without believing the story of Plutarch, that Critias and the Thirty sent to apprise Lysander that the oligarchy at Athens could not stand so long as Alcibiades was alive.

[404 B.C.]