y the Argives,
discovering it, razed Orneae to the ground, and went back again; after
which the Athenians went home in their ships. Meanwhile the Athenians
took by sea to Methone on the Macedonian border some cavalry of their
own and the Macedonian exiles that were at Athens, and plundered the
country of Perdiccas. Upon this the Lacedaemonians sent to the Thracian
Chalcidians, who had a truce with Athens from one ten days to another,
urging them to join Perdiccas in the war, which they refused to do. And
the winter ended, and with it ended the sixteenth year of this war of
which Thucydides is the historian.

Early in the spring of the following summer the Athenian envoys arrived
from Sicily, and the Egestaeans with them, bringing sixty talents of
uncoined silver, as a month's pay for sixty ships, which they were to
ask to have sent them. The Athenians held an assembly and, after hearing
from the Egestaeans and their own envoys a report, as attractive as it
was untrue, upon the state of affairs generally, and in particular as to
the money, of which, it was said, there was abundance in the temples and
the treasury, voted to send sixty ships to Sicily, under the command of
Alcibiades, son of Clinias, Nicias, son of Niceratus, and Lamachus, son
of Xenophanes, who were appointed with full powers; they were to help
the Egestaeans against the Selinuntines, to restore Leontini upon
gaining any advantage in the war, and to order all other matters in
Sicily as they should deem best for the interests of Athens. Five days
after this a second assembly was held, to consider the speediest means
of equipping the ships, and to vote whatever else might be required by
the generals for the expedition; and Nicias, who had been chosen to the
command against his will, and who thought that the state was not well
advised, but upon a slight aid specious pretext was aspiring to the
conquest of the whole of Sicily, a great matter to achieve, came forward
in the hope of diverting the Athenians from the enterprise, and gave
them the following counsel:

"Although this assembly was convened to consider the preparations to be
made for sailing to Sicily, I think, notwithstanding, that we have still
this question to examine, whether it be better to send out the ships at
all, and that we ought not to give so little consideration to a matter
of such moment, or let ourselves be persuaded by foreigners into
undertaking a war with which we have nothing to do