Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/403

 8i, SaJ GREAT HOPES IN THE ATHENIAN FLEET 395 the oligarchy at home, and effect the dissolution of their clubs ; and secondly, to exalt himself in the eyes of the army at Samos and fortify their resolution ; thirdly, to widen the breach between Tissaphernes and the enemy, and blast the hopes of the Lacedaemonians. Having these objects in view, Alcibiades carried his fulsome as- surances to the utmost. Tissaphernes, he said, had promised him that if he could only trust the Athenians they should not want for food while he had anything to give, no not if he were driven at last to turn his own bed into money ; that he would bring up the Phoenician ships (which were already at Aspendus) to assist the Athenians instead of the Peloponnesians ; but that he could not trust the Athenians unless Alcibiades were restored and became surety for them. Hearing all this, and a great deal more, the Athenians 82 immediately appointed him a colleague jhey want to sail to of their other generals, and placed the Piraeus, but are everything in his hands; no man restrained by Alcibiades. among them would have given up for all the world the hope of deliverance and of vengeance on the Four Hundred which was now aroused in them; so excited were they that under the influence of his words they despised the Peloponnesians, and were ready to sail at once for the Piraeus. But in spite of the eagerness of the multitude he absolutely forbade them to go thither and leave behind them enemies nearer at hand. Having been elected general, he said, he would make the conduct of the war his first care, and go at once to Tissaphernes. And he went straight from the assembly, in order that he might be thought to do nothing without Tissaphernes ; at the same time he wished to be honoured in the eyes of Tissaphernes himself, and to show him that he had now been chosen general, and that a time had come when he could do him a good or a bad turn. Thus Alcibiades frightened the Athenians with Tissaphernes, and Tissa- phernes with the Athenians.