e being already theirs and discipline in the field having thus
been added to it. Indeed, both these qualities would improve, since
danger would exercise them in discipline, while their courage would
be led to surpass itself by the confidence which skill inspires. The
generals should be few and elected with full powers, and an oath should
be taken to leave them entire discretion in their command: if they
adopted this plan, their secrets would be better kept, all preparations
would be properly made, and there would be no room for excuses.

The Syracusans heard him, and voted everything as he advised, and
elected three generals, Hermocrates himself, Heraclides, son of
Lysimachus, and Sicanus, son of Execestes. They also sent envoys to
Corinth and Lacedaemon to procure a force of allies to join them, and to
induce the Lacedaemonians for their sakes openly to address themselves
in real earnest to the war against the Athenians, that they might either
have to leave Sicily or be less able to send reinforcements to their
army there.

The Athenian forces at Catana now at once sailed against Messina, in the
expectation of its being betrayed to them. The intrigue, however, after
all came to nothing: Alcibiades, who was in the secret, when he left
his command upon the summons from home, foreseeing that he would be
outlawed, gave information of the plot to the friends of the Syracusans
in Messina, who had at once put to death its authors, and now rose in
arms against the opposite faction with those of their way of thinking,
and succeeded in preventing the admission of the Athenians. The latter
waited for thirteen days, and then, as they were exposed to the weather
and without provisions, and met with no success, went back to Naxos,
where they made places for their ships to lie in, erected a palisade
round their camp, and retired into winter quarters; meanwhile they sent
a galley to Athens for money and cavalry to join them in the spring.
During the winter the Syracusans built a wall on to the city, so as
to take in the statue of Apollo Temenites, all along the side looking
towards Epipolae, to make the task of circumvallation longer and more
difficult, in case of their being defeated, and also erected a fort at
Megara and another in the Olympieum, and stuck palisades along the sea
wherever there was a landing Place. Meanwhile, as they knew that the
Athenians were wintering at Naxos, they marched with all their people to
Catana, and