History of the Peloponnesian War

Thus spake Euphemus. The Camarinaeans stood thus affected: they bare good will to the Athenians, save that they thought they meant to subjugate Sicily; and were ever at strife with the Syracusians about their borders. Yet because they were afraid that the Syracusians, that were near them, might as well get the victory as the other, they had both formerly sent them some few horse, and also now resolved for the future to help the Syracusians, but underhand and as sparingly as possible; and withal that they might no less seem to favour the Athenians than the Syracusians, especially after they had won a battle, to give for the present an equal answer unto both.

So after deliberation had, they answered thus: that forasmuch as they that warred were both of them their confederates, they thought it most agreeable to their oath for the present to give aid to neither.

And so the ambassadors of both sides went their ways. And the Syracusians made preparations for the war by themselves. The Athenians, being encamped at Naxos, treated with the Siculi to procure as many of them as they might to their side.

Of whom, such as inhabited the plain and were subject to the Syracusians for the most part held off; but they that dwelt in the most inland parts of the island, being a free people, and ever before dwelling in villages, presently agreed with the Athenians, and brought corn into the army, and some of them also money.

To those that held off the Athenians went with their army; and some they forced to come in and others they hindered from receiving the aids and garrisons of the Syracusians. And having brought their fleet from Naxos, where it had been all the winter till now, they lay the rest of the winter at Catana and re-erected their camp formerly burnt by the Syracusians.

They sent a galley also to Carthage to procure amity and what help they could from thence; and into Hetruria, because some cities there had of their own accord promised to take their parts. They sent likewise to the Siculi about them and to Egesta, appointing them to send in all the horse they could, and made ready bricks and iron and whatsoever else was necessary for a siege, and every other thing they needed, as intending to fall in hand with the war early the next spring.

The ambassadors of Syracuse which were sent to Corinth and Lacedaemon, as they sailed by, endeavoured also to move the Italians to a regard of this action of the Athenians.

Being come to Corinth, they spake unto them and demanded aid upon the title of consanguinity. The Corinthians, having forthwith for their own part decreed cheerfully to aid them, sent also ambassadors from themselves along with these to Lacedaemon to help them to persuade the Lacedaemonians both to make a more open war against the Athenians at home and to send some forces also into Sicily.

At the same time that these ambassadors were at Lacedaemon from Corinth, Alcibiades was also there with his fellow fugitives, who presently upon their escape passed over from Thurii first to Cyllene, the haven of the Eleians, in a ship, and afterwards went thence to Lacedaemon, sent for by the Lacedaemonians themselves, under public security.

For he feared them for his doings about Mantineia. And it fell out that in the assembly of the Lacedaemonians the Corinthians, Syracusians, and Alcibiades made all of them the same request. Now the ephores and magistrates, though intending to send ambassadors to Syracuse to hinder them from compounding with the Athenians, being yet not forward to send them aid, Alcibiades stood forth and sharpened the Lacedaemonians, inciting them with words to this effect: