In this jealous temper, Alcibiades, though not included in the accusation, was summoned home from Sicily. He fled to Sparta, and by his powerful talents contributed very principally to produce those reverses which subsequently overtook the Athenians. The account of this remarkable transaction is given in Thucydides, vi. c. 27, 60, and most completely in the speech of Andocides de Mysteriis, which is contained in Bekker’s collection of the Greek orators.
CHAPTER XVI.
Athenian expedition against Sicily—Siege of Syracuse—Retreat and destruction of the army—Retreat of Ney in Russia—Retreat of Sir John Hawkwood in Italy.
We now come to the Sicilian expedition, and request the reader’s patience if we dwell longer than usual on the closing scene of an undertaking, described by its historian as “the greatest that happened in this war, or at all, that we have heard of, among the Grecians, being to the victors most glorious, and most calamitous to the vanquished.”[140] The total destruction of the army of Athens struck a deadly blow at her greatness, though she struggled most energetically to retrieve her loss, and, through the want of able leaders at Sparta, nearly succeeded. But the scale was turned against her, and from this time forwards she fought an uphill battle.
In the seventeenth year of the war, B.C. 415, the Athenians, at the suggestion of Alcibiades, resolved to send a very powerful armament to Sicily, nominally to protect the little republic of Egesta against Selinus and Syracuse, but really to re–establish the Ionian interest in the island. We may observe that Sicily was colonized partly by Ionian, partly by Dorian Greeks, and that the former naturally favoured the Athenians, the latter the Lacedæmonians, as the heads of their respective races. At present the Dorian race, at the head of which stood Syracuse, was by far the more powerful: and alarm was felt, or at least pretended, that unless checked by a powerful diversion at home, they might get all Sicily into their hands, and then unite with their Peloponnesian kinsmen to pull down that object of universal jealousy, the Athenian empire. Moved therefore by the entreaties of the Egestans, by these political arguments, and most of all by the desire of conquest, the Athenians “resolved to go again to Sicily, and if they could, wholly to subdue it, being for the most part ignorant both of the greatness of the island and of the multitude of people, as well Greeks as Barbarians, that inhabited the same, and that they undertook a war, not much less than the war against the Peloponnesians.”[141]
Nicias, of whose cautious and unenterprising temper we have before spoken, saw and remonstrated against the impolicy of hazarding the flower of the state in a distant and dangerous warfare, while many of its revolted subjects remained unsubdued: but his warning was unheeded, and he was required, in conjunction with Alcibiades and Lamachus, to assume the command of this expedition, which he so entirely disapproved. Nicias, a man of courage in the field, was too timid to struggle against the popular will: he submitted, but still endeavoured to damp the eagerness of his countrymen, by exaggerating the force requisite to ensure success. A hundred triremes, he said, with 5000 heavy armed infantry, and archers and slingers in proportion, were the least they could send. Here he rather overshot himself; the force demanded was immediately voted, and no further pretext for dissuasion or denial remained. The armament, including the crews of the triremes, is estimated by Mitford to have contained at least 30,000 men.
Never was an enterprise undertaken with better will. Those who were engaged in it vied with each other in the splendour of their armour and equipment, and far from finding any difficulty to complete the levy, the whole of the citizens would willingly have gone in a body; “the old men, upon hope to subdue the place they went to, or that at least so great a power could not miscarry; and the young men, upon desire to see a foreign country, and to gaze, making little doubt but to return with safety. As for the common sort, and the soldiers, they made account to gain by it not only their wages for the time, but also so to amplify the state in power as that their stipend should endure for ever. So that, through the vehement desire thereunto of the most, they also that liked it not, for fear, if they held up their hands against it, to be thought evil affected to the state, were content to let it pass.”[142]
“The summer being now half spent, they put to sea for Sicily. The Athenians themselves, and as many of their confederates as were at Athens upon the day appointed, betimes in the morning came down into Peiræus, and went aboard to take sea. With them came down in a manner the whole multitude of the city, as well inhabitants as strangers: the inhabitants, to follow after such as belonged unto them, some their friends, some their kinsmen, and some their children: filled both with hope and lamentations; hope of conquering what they went for, and lamentation as being in doubt whether ever they should see each other any more, considering what a way they were to go from their own territory.