s, and who if they succeed will show no
proper gratitude, and if they fail will drag down their friends with
them. And if there be any man here, overjoyed at being chosen to
command, who urges you to make the expedition, merely for ends of his
own--specially if he be still too young to command--who seeks to be
admired for his stud of horses, but on account of its heavy expenses
hopes for some profit from his appointment, do not allow such a one to
maintain his private splendour at his country's risk, but remember that
such persons injure the public fortune while they squander their own,
and that this is a matter of importance, and not for a young man to
decide or hastily to take in hand.

"When I see such persons now sitting here at the side of that same
individual and summoned by him, alarm seizes me; and I, in my turn,
summon any of the older men that may have such a person sitting next him
not to let himself be shamed down, for fear of being thought a coward
if he do not vote for war, but, remembering how rarely success is got
by wishing and how often by forecast, to leave to them the mad dream
of conquest, and as a true lover of his country, now threatened by the
greatest danger in its history, to hold up his hand on the other side;
to vote that the Siceliots be left in the limits now existing between
us, limits of which no one can complain (the Ionian sea for the coasting
voyage, and the Sicilian across the open main), to enjoy their own
possessions and to settle their own quarrels; that the Egestaeans, for
their part, be told to end by themselves with the Selinuntines the war
which they began without consulting the Athenians; and that for the
future we do not enter into alliance, as we have been used to do, with
people whom we must help in their need, and who can never help us in
ours.

"And you, Prytanis, if you think it your duty to care for the
commonwealth, and if you wish to show yourself a good citizen, put
the question to the vote, and take a second time the opinions of the
Athenians. If you are afraid to move the question again, consider that
a violation of the law cannot carry any prejudice with so many abettors,
that you will be the physician of your misguided city, and that the
virtue of men in office is briefly this, to do their country as much
good as they can, or in any case no harm that they can avoid."

Such were the words of Nicias. Most of the Athenians that came forward
spoke in favour of the