Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [66]
With such words Hyperides sought to comfort Athens’ mourners and strengthen the city for the next phase of the war. Because our sole copy of the speech is incomplete, we do not know whether Hyperides acknowledged the difficulties that phase would bring. His one reference to the recent battle against Leonnatus suggests he regarded this as a victory but not one to celebrate; he did not even name its victorious generals, Menon and Antiphilus. He bent all his energy toward glorifying Leosthenes, which meant casting the new team of leaders as lesser men.
A skilled politician knows how to dodge blame by providing scapegoats, and Hyperides may have foreseen that scapegoats would soon be needed. All would be well, he seems to imply, if only his man, Leosthenes, were still in charge.
7. THE WAR AT SEA (HELLESPONT REGION, SPRING–SUMMER 322 B.C.)
The hopes of the antagonists in the Hellenic War now rested on a narrow body of water, in places less than a mile wide. Across these straits, the Hellespont, the primary crossing point between Europe and Asia, reinforcements would need to come if the strategic balance was to be changed. Old man Antipater, now back in Macedonia preparing for a second assault on the rebel Greeks, could not win without more cavalry, and more cavalry could come only from the forces in Asia under Craterus. Antipater had to get control of the straits so Craterus could cross them, and Athens, if it hoped to beat Antipater again, had to prevent such a crossing. The theater of war now moved to the sea.
The Hellespont had always been a vital strategic asset for Athens or for its enemies. In 480 B.C., King Xerxes of Persis, en route to attacking Athens, had bridged the straits with a chain of more than three hundred warships and brought his army into Europe on a road laid across their decks. Rumor had it that when a storm broke apart his bridge, Xerxes flogged the Hellespont and flung shackles into its waters as though to make them his slave. In the end it was Athens, not Xerxes, that mastered the straits, using its formidable navy to patrol them; a large part of Athens’ food supply was shipped through them from the grain-rich lands of the Black Sea, and if those shipments were ever choked off, the Athenians would starve. Only once since the defeat of Xerxes had an enemy of Athens gained control of the straits, and on that occasion—after the capture of an Athenian fleet by the Spartans, in 404 B.C.—Athens had quickly been forced to surrender.
Maintaining mastery over the Hellespont was an expensive proposition. The Athenians kept up a large fleet of warships, over four hundred at times, paid for by boards of wealthy citizens. The burden was a heavy one, and many shirked it. Even more expensive than the ships were the crews needed to row them. Four hundred ships required eighty thousand crewmen, each drawing a daily wage. Athens could neither afford so many nor even find them, for the rapid maneuvers of a warship required not just strength from its rowers but skill and experience. In Europe at the time of the Hellenic War, men who possessed these were hard to come by.
Not so in Asia, however. The seafarers who had once served the Persian empire, in particular the Phoenicians, now served the Macedonians, and where money was needed to pay them, their masters could draw on a bottomless treasury. Persian gold had beaten the Athenians once before: funneled to Sparta during the Peloponnesian War, it had built the navy that denied them use of the straits. Now, in the hands of its new owners, Persian gold might beat them again.
Alexander, just before his death, had started spending that gold to build up his navy. Anticipating war in the West, he had sent a fleet of 110 warships to old man Antipater, along with a supply of cash. These ships had already given the Athenian navy a hard time while Antipater was at Lamia, but they were soon joined by a second fleet commanded by Cleitus the White, an officer who had accompanied Craterus out of Babylon. Sailing to the Hellespont in the spring of 322, Cleitus encountered