nce might be required.

On the fleet the greatest pains and expense had been lavished by the
trierarchs and the state. The public treasury gave a drachma a day to
each sailor, and furnished empty hulls for sixty swift sailing
vessels, and for forty transports carrying hoplites. All these were
manned with the best crews which could be obtained. The trierarchs,
besides the pay given by the state, added somewhat more out of their
own means to the wages of the upper ranks of rowers and of the petty
officers. The figureheads and other fittings provided by the
trierarchs were of the most costly description. Every one strove to
the utmost that his own ship might excel both in beauty and
swiftness. The infantry had been well selected and the lists carefully
made up. There was the keenest rivalry among the soldiers in the
matter of arms and personal equipment.

And while at home the Athenians were thus competing with one another
in the performance of their several duties, to the rest of Hellas the
expedition seemed to be a grand display of their power and greatness,
rather than a preparation for war. If any one had reckoned up the
whole expenditure (1) of the state, (2) of individual soldiers and
others, including in the first not only what the city had already laid
out, but what was entrusted to the generals, and in the second what
either at the time or afterward private persons spent upon their
outfit, or the trierarchs upon their ships, the provision for the long
voyage which every one may be supposed to have carried with him over
and above his public pay, and what soldiers or traders may have taken
for purposes of exchange, he would have found that altogether an
immense sum amounting to many talents was withdrawn from the city. Men
were quite amazed at the boldness of the scheme and the magnificence
of the spectacle, which were everywhere spoken of, no less than at the
great disproportion of the force when compared with that of the enemy
against whom it was intended. Never had a greater expedition been sent
to a foreign land; never was there an enterprise in which the hope of
future success seemed to be better justified by actual power.

When the ships were manned and everything required for the voyage had
been placed on board, silence was proclaimed by the sound of the
trumpet, and all with one voice before setting sail offered up the
customary prayers; these were recited, not in each ship, but by a
single herald, the wh