History of the Peloponnesian War

Those Catanaeans who were partisans of the Syracusans, seeing the soldiers inside, at once became much frightened and slipped away, not in any large numbers; the others voted alliance with the Athenians and bade them bring the rest of their army from Rhegium.

After this the Athenians sailed back to Rhegium, then putting out from there with their whole armament for Catana, on their arrival they set about arranging their camp.

Meanwhile news came from Camarina that if the Athenians would go thither the Camarinaeans would join them, and also that the Syracusans were manning a fleet. Accordingly they proceeded with their whole army along the coast, first to Syracuse; and when they found no fleet was being manned, they again continued along the coast to Camarina and putting to shore sent forward a herald. The Camarinaeans, however, would not receive them, saying that the terms of their oath were to receive the Athenians only if they put in with a single ship, unless they themselves sent for more.

So the Athenians sailed away without accomplishing anything; and after landing at a point in Syracusan territory and making raids, when the Syracusan cavalry had come to the rescue and killed some of their light-armed troops that were straggling they went back to Catana.

There they found that the galley Salaminia[*](One of the two swift Athenian state triremes kept always manned ready for extraordinary occasions and purposes.) had come from Athens for Alcibiades—to order him to come home and make his defence against the charges which the city was bringing—and for certain of the soldiers also, some of them having been denounced with him as guilty of profanation with regard to the mysteries, and some also with regard to the Hermae.

For after the armament sailed, the Athenians had been pursuing with no less zeal than before their investigation of what had been done in the matter of the mysteries as well as the Hermae; and as they did not test the witnesses, but in their state of suspicion accepted everything, on the credit of bad men they arrested and threw into prison very excellent citizens, thinking it more expedient to sift the matter to the bottom and find out the truth, than that anybody, even one reputed to be good and accused only through the villainy of an informer, should escape without close investigation.

For the people, knowing by tradition that the tyranny of Peisistratus and his sons had become galling at the last, and moreover had been put down, not by themselves and Harmodius, but by the Lacedaemonians,[*](Under Cleomenes, 510 B.C.) were in constant fear and regarded everything with suspicion.