History of the Peloponnesian War

For this first armament that sailed for Sicily was the costliest and most splendid, belonging to a single city and with a purely Hellenic force, that had ever up to that time set sail. In number of ships, however, and of hoplites the expedition against Epidaurus under Pericles, and the same one afterwards under Hagnon against Potidaea, was not inferior; for in that voyage four thousand Athenian hoplites and three hundred knights and one hundred triremes had participated, and from Lesbos and Chios fifty triremes, and allied troops besides in large numbers.

But they had set off for a short voyage with a poor equipment; whereas this expedition, as one likely to be of long duration, was fitted out for both kinds of service, according as there might be need of either, with ships and also with land-forces.

The fleet was built up at great expense on the part both of the trierarchs and of the city: the state giving a drachma per day for each sailor and furnishing sixty empty[*](ie. empty hulls without equipment, which the trierarch was to furnish.) warships and forty transports, with crews to man them of the very best; the triearchs giving bounties to the thranitae[*](In the trireme there were three ranks of oars: the thranites rowed with the longest oars; the zygites occupied the middle row; the thalamites the lowest row, using the shortest oars and drawing least pay.) or uppermost bench of the sailors in addition to the pay from the state, and using, besides, figure-heads and equipments that were very expensive; for each one strove to the utmost that his own ship should excel all others both in fine appearance and in swiftness of sailing. The land-forces were picked out of the best lists, and there was keen rivalry among the men in the matter of arms and personal equipment.

And so it came about that among themselves there was emulation, wherever each was assigned to duty, and the whole thing seemed more like a display of wealth and power before the rest of the Hellenes than an undertaking against enemies.

For if one had reckoned the public expenditure on the part of the state and the private outlay of those who made the expedition—on the part of the city, both what it had already advanced and what it was sending in the hands of the generals, and on the part of private individuals whatever a man had expended on his own person or, if trierarch, on his ship, and what they were going to spend still, and, besides, the money we may suppose that everyone, even apart from the pay he received from the state, provided for himself as travelling expenses, counting upon an expedition of long duration, and all the articles for barter and sale merchant or soldier took with him on the voyage—it would have been found that many talents in all were taken from the city.

And the fame of the armament was noised abroad, not less because of amazement at its boldness and the splendour of the spectacle than on account of its overwhelming force as compared with those whom they were going against; and also because it was the longest voyage from home as yet attempted and undertaken with the highest hopes for the future as compared with their present resources.