weaker than the Dorian, they solicited aid from Athens, and an expedition
was sent to Sicily under Laches, B.C. 426. Another one, under Polydorus,
followed, but without decisive results. The next year still another and
larger expedition, under Eurymedon and Sophocles, arrived in Sicily, while
Athens was jubilant by the possession of the Spartan prisoners, and the
possession of Pylus and Cythera. The Sicilian cities now fearing that
their domestic strife would endanger their independence and make them
subject to Athens, the most ambitious and powerful State in Greece, made a
common league with each other. Eurymedon acceded to the peace and returned
to Athens, much to the displeasure of the war party, which embraced most
of the people, and he and his colleague were banished.

(M540) But wars between the Sicilian cities again led to the intervention
of Athens. Egesta especially sent envoys for help in her struggle against
Selinus, which was assisted by Syracuse. Alcibiades warmly seconded these
envoys, and inflamed the people with his ambitious projects. He, more than
any other man, was the cause of the great Sicilian expedition which proved
the ruin of his country. He was opposed by Nicias, who foretold all the
miserable consequences of so distant an expedition, when so little could
be gained and so much would be jeopardized, and when, on the first
reverse, the enemies of Athens would rally against her. He particularly
cautioned his countrymen not only against the expedition, but against
intrusting the command of it to an unprincipled and selfish man who
squandered his own patrimony in chariot races and other extravagances, and
would be wasteful of the public property--a man without the experience
which became a leader in so great an enterprise. Alcibiades, in reply,
justified his extravagance at the Olympic games, where he contested with
seven chariots, as a means to impress Sparta with the wealth and power of
Athens, after a ten years' war. He inflamed the ambition of the assembly,
held out specious hopes of a glorious conquest which would add to Athenian
power, and make her not merely pre-eminent, but dominant in Greece. The
assembly, eager for war and glory, sided with the youthful and magnificent
demagogue, and disregarded the counsels of the old patriot, whose wisdom
and experience were second to none in the city.

(M541) Consequently the expedition was fitted out for the attack of
Syracuse--the largest and most po