Greek Lives by Plutarch & Philip A. Stadter & Robin Waterfield

Author:Plutarch & Philip A. Stadter & Robin Waterfield
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Classics, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780199540051
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1973-09-29T23:00:00+00:00

At the time of his return, then, the people convened in the Assembly and Alcibiades stepped up to address them. He spoke with sorrow and anguish of his sufferings, but he hardly blamed the Athenian people for them at all, and then only moderately; instead, he attributed the whole business to his own bad luck and to a spiteful deity. He spent most of the time talking about his fellow citizens’ hopes for the future and boosting their morale. After his speech, he was crowned with garlands of gold, and was elected to the post of military commander with full powers on land and sea.* They also voted to restore his property to him, and decreed that the Eumolpidae and the Heralds were to revoke the curses they had spoken against him in accordance with the people’s instructions. All the other priests revoked their curses, except for Theodorus, the High Priest, who said, ‘No, I never prayed that he would suffer harm—provided he does no wrong to the city.’

[34] So Alcibiades was doing spectacularly well. However, the timing of his return disturbed some people. The landing of his ship coincided with the day when Athena’s Plynteria were being performed; this is the ceremony carried out in secret by the Praxiergidae on the twenty-fifth of Thargelion, which involves taking off the goddess’s robes and covering her image. Consequently, the Athenians regard this day as one of most unlucky in the calendar and refuse to carry out business of any kind on it. So the goddess was taken to be hiding herself from Alcibiades and rejecting him, rather than receiving him back in a kindly or welcoming fashion.*

Nevertheless, everything was going Alcibiades’ way, and a fleet of 100 triremes was being fitted out for another expedition he planned to make. But then he was seized by a noble ambition which kept him in Athens until the time of the Mysteries. Ever since Decelea had been fortified and by their presence there the enemy had controlled the approaches to Eleusis, the rites had been conducted in a chaotic fashion: the procession went by sea, and sacrifices, dances, and a number of the rites which are performed en route to Eleusis, when they parade out of the city with Iacchus, had to be omitted.* It therefore struck Alcibiades as a good idea, bearing in mind how it would enhance not only his piety in the eyes of the gods, but also his reputation among men, to restore the traditional form to the rites, by having his infantry escort and guard the ceremony past the enemy. This, he thought, would either thoroughly embarrass and humiliate Agis, if the king chose to do nothing, or would enable him to fight a sacred battle, with the approval of the gods, in a supremely holy and crucial cause, and to do so within sight of his native city, with all his fellow citizens there to witness his courage.

Once he had decided to go ahead, he told the Eumolpidae and the Heralds of his plans.

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