History of the Peloponnesian War

Thus Alcibiades spoke. After hearing him and the Egestaeans and some Leontine exiles, who coming forward, besought them and implored them for succour, reminding them of their oaths, the Athenians were far more eager for the expedition than before.

And Nicias, seeing that he could no longer deter them with the same arguments, but thinking that by the magnitude of the armament, if he insisted upon a large one, he might possibly change their minds, came forward and spoke as follows:

"Since I see, men of Athens, that you are wholly bent upon the expedition, I pray that these matters may turn out as we wish;

for the present juncture, however, I will show what my judgment is. The cities we are about to attack are, as I learn by report, large, and neither subject to one another nor in need of any such change as a person might be happy to accept in order to escape from enforced servitude to an easier condition, nor likely to accept our rule in place of liberty; and the number is large, for a single island, of cities of Hellenic origin.

For except Naxos and Catana, which I expect will side with us on account of their kinship to the Leontines, there are seven others;[*](Syracuse, Selinus, Gela, Agrigentum, Messene, Himera, Camarina (Schol.).) and these are equipped with everything in a style very like to our own armament, and not least those against which our expedition is more immediately directed, Selinus and Syracuse.

For they can supply many hoplites, archers and javelin-men, and possess many triremes and a multitude of men to man them. They have wealth, too, partly in private possession and partly in the temples at Selinus; and to the Syracusans tribute has come in from time immemorial from certain barbarians also; but their chief advantage over us is in the fact that they have many horses, and use grain that is homegrown and not imported.

"To cope with such a power we need not only a naval armament of such insignificant size, but also that a large force for use on land should accompany the expedition, if we would accomplish anything worthy of our design and not be shut out from the land by their numerous cavalry; especially if the cities become terrified and stand together, and some of the others, besides Egesta, do not become our friends and supply us cavalry with which to defend ourselves against that of the enemy.