ort, this is what these reports are worth; they do
not arise of themselves, but are concocted by men who are always causing
agitation here in Sicily. However, if you are well advised, you will
not be guided in your calculation of probabilities by what these persons
tell you, but by what shrewd men and of large experience, as I esteem
the Athenians to be, would be likely to do. Now it is not likely that
they would leave the Peloponnesians behind them, and before they have
well ended the war in Hellas wantonly come in quest of a new war quite
as arduous in Sicily; indeed, in my judgment, they are only too glad
that we do not go and attack them, being so many and so great cities as
we are.

"However, if they should come as is reported, I consider Sicily better
able to go through with the war than Peloponnese, as being at all points
better prepared, and our city by itself far more than a match for this
pretended army of invasion, even were it twice as large again. I know
that they will not have horses with them, or get any here, except a
few perhaps from the Egestaeans; or be able to bring a force of heavy
infantry equal in number to our own, in ships which will already have
enough to do to come all this distance, however lightly laden, not to
speak of the transport of the other stores required against a city of
this magnitude, which will be no slight quantity. In fact, so strong is
my opinion upon the subject, that I do not well see how they could
avoid annihilation if they brought with them another city as large as
Syracuse, and settled down and carried on war from our frontier; much
less can they hope to succeed with all Sicily hostile to them, as
all Sicily will be, and with only a camp pitched from the ships, and
composed of tents and bare necessaries, from which they would not be
able to stir far for fear of our cavalry.

"But the Athenians see this as I tell you, and as I have reason to know
are looking after their possessions at home, while persons here invent
stories that neither are true nor ever will be. Nor is this the first
time that I see these persons, when they cannot resort to deeds, trying
by such stories and by others even more abominable to frighten your
people and get into their hands the government: it is what I see always.
And I cannot help fearing that trying so often they may one day succeed,
and that we, as long as we do not feel the smart, may prove too weak for
the task of prevention, or, when t