Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [42]
5. THE OUTBREAK OF WAR (ATHENS AND NORTHERN GREECE, AUTUMN 323 B.C.)
Even after reports of Alexander’s death were confirmed, revolt was not an easy choice for the Athenians. Those with money and property, who would principally foot the bill for the war, did not want to fight. Their lot had improved in the last twelve years, and promised to get better yet if the Pax Macedonica were sustained. Then there were the arguments of Phocion to reckon with. Phocion, as usual, did not think Athens strong enough for war. An experienced military man, now almost eighty with more than forty years of generalship, Phocion had the ear of those disinclined to take risks. Hyperides, who chafed for war, had often despaired at Phocion’s cautiousness. “When will you ever advise Athens to fight?” he challenged the old man before the Assembly. “When I see the young men willing to keep in formation, the rich to pay war taxes, and the politicians to stop stealing from the treasury,” the high-minded Phocion replied, lording it over those implicated in the recent bribery scandal.
Now, though, Hyperides had a way to trump Phocion’s caution. Into the Assembly he brought Leosthenes, the mercenary captain of Taenaron, who had secretly been on the Athenian payroll for several months. Here was a general who had all the swagger Phocion lacked, who commanded thousands of mercenaries, men with experience fighting under, or against, the Macedonians. And here was the money to pay for that army: the stash of 350 talents still left on the Acropolis. Alexander’s stolen hoard, though mysteriously reduced by half, could now at last serve the purpose for which Harpalus had brought it, revolt from Macedon.
The Athenians were wild with enthusiasm. In a flurry of votes the Assembly elected Leosthenes a state military commander, mobilized all citizens up to age forty, and dispatched envoys to the rest of Greece to seek alliances. The goal of the coming war, according to the Assembly’s decrees, was “the common freedom of the Greeks and the liberation of the garrisoned cities,” the places guarded by hated Macedonian detachments. A team was sent to northern Greece to make common cause with the powerful Aetolian League. The Aetolians had just as much reason as the Athenians to stop enforcement of the Exiles’ Decree: some years earlier they had seized a neighboring city and expelled its inhabitants, just as the Athenians had expelled the Samians. The Aetolians promised to add their troops to Leosthenes’ core force of five thousand Athenian infantry and five hundred cavalry, plus almost twice as many hired mercenaries.
Most Athenians rushed to get behind Hyperides and the war party, but Phocion remained cool. Some citizens tauntingly asked him whether he was impressed by the city’s armed forces. In reply Phocion invoked a comparison from the Greek athletic games. “They are good enough for the stadion,” he said, referring to a sprint of about two hundred yards, “but it’s the dolichos of war I fear”—a footrace several miles in length. Athens was throwing all its ships, soldiers, and money into a single attack force, he said; were these defeated, there would be no reserves to draw on. He might have added rowers to this list, the power supply of Greek battleships. In the end it was rowers, more than any other resource, on which the outcome of the war would hang.
Despite his contrarian views, Phocion’s long military record made him valuable to the Athenians. They could not leave him without a command. They appointed him to lead the home guard, the force that would meet a seaborne invasion of Attica were the Macedonians somehow to get past Athens’ expert navy. In that post, within sight of Athens’ walls, Phocion could help the war effort without getting in the way of Leosthenes. For the two men disliked and mistrusted each other and had sparred bitterly in the Assembly. In a recent debate Leosthenes