XXVI explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Alliance and Betrayal

  Alcibiades' manipulation of Tissaphernes and the Peloponnesians, and the distrust between Tissaphernes and the Peloponnesian fleet, highlight the fragility of alliances.

• Leadership and Strategy

  Alcibiades' strategic restraint in preventing the fleet from sailing to Piraeus and his use of rhetoric to control both Athenians and Tissaphernes demonstrate his leadership.

• Democracy vs. Oligarchy

  The conflict between the democratic army at Samos and the oligarchic Four Hundred at Athens, and the internal dissent within the oligarchy, underscore the ideological struggle.

Characters to notice

• Alcibiades

  Recalled from exile, elected general at Samos, prevents the fleet from attacking Piraeus, and exaggerates his influence with Tissaphernes to bolster Athenian morale and undermine the oligarchy.

• Tissaphernes

  Goes to Aspendus for the Phoenician fleet but does not bring it, deepening Peloponnesian distrust; his motives are debated, but he appears to aim at wearing out both sides.

• Thrasybulus

  Leads the movement at Samos to recall Alcibiades, convinced that only Alcibiades can bring Tissaphernes over to the Athenian side.

• Theramenes

  Emerges as a leader of the malcontents within the Four Hundred, criticizing the oligarchy and advocating for the Five Thousand to be a real body.

• Phrynichus

  A leading oligarch opposed to democracy, he along with Antiphon and others pushes for peace with Sparta and fortifies Eetionia.

• Antiphon

  Sent as an envoy to Lacedaemon to make peace on any tolerable terms, as the Four Hundred's position weakens.

• Clearchus

  Sent with forty ships to Pharnabazus in the Hellespont, but a storm scatters his fleet; he later proceeds by land to take command.

• Helixus

  Megarian commander who with ten ships reaches the Hellespont and helps effect the revolt of Byzantium.

Key passages

• “Now it was that Alcibiades for the first time did the state a service, and one of the most signal kind. For when the Athenians at Samos were bent upon sailing against their countrymen, in which case Ionia and the Hellespont would most certainly at once have passed into possession of the enemy, Alcibiades it was who prevented them.”

  Alcibiades performed his first great service to Athens by stopping the Samian fleet from attacking Piraeus, which would have allowed the enemy to seize Ionia and the Hellespont.

  Highlights Alcibiades' crucial intervention to prevent civil war and strategic disaster.

• “To myself it seems only too evident that he did not bring up the fleet because he wished to wear out and paralyse the Hellenic forces, that is, to waste their strength by the time lost during his journey to Aspendus, and to keep them evenly balanced by not throwing his weight into either scale.”

  Thucydides believes Tissaphernes deliberately kept the Phoenician fleet away to exhaust both Greek sides and maintain a balance of power.

  Thucydides' analysis of Tissaphernes' motives for not deploying the fleet.

• “Alcibiades accordingly held out to the army such extravagant promises as the following: that Tissaphernes had solemnly assured him that if he could only trust the Athenians they should never want for supplies while he had anything left, no, not even if he should have to coin his own silver couch, and that he would bring the Phoenician fleet now at Aspendus to the Athenians instead of to the Peloponnesians.”

  Alcibiades made grand promises to the army, claiming Tissaphernes would fund them indefinitely and divert the Phoenician fleet to Athens.

  Shows Alcibiades' use of exaggeration to boost morale and his own standing.