previous next
8. The next summer, early in the spring, the Athenian ambassadors returned from Sicily, and the ambassadors of Egesta with them, and brought in silver uncoined sixty talents, for a month's pay of sixty galleys, which they would entreat the Athenians to send thither. [2] And the Athenians, having called an assembly and heard both from the Egestaean and their own ambassadors, amongst other persuasive but untrue allegations, touching their money, how they had great store ready both in their treasury and temples, decreed the sending of sixty galleys into Sicily, and Alcibiades, the son of Cleinias, Nicias, the son of Niceratus, and Lamachus, the son of Xenophanes, for commanders with authority absolute; the which were to aid the people of Egesta against the Selinuntians, and withal, if they had time to spare, to plant the Leontines anew in their city, and to order all other the affairs of Sicily as they should think most for the profit of the Athenians. [3] Five days after this the people assembled again to consult of the means how most speedily to put this armada in readiness and to decree such things as the generals should further require for the expedition. [4] But Nicias, having heard that himself was chosen for one of the generals, and conceiving that the state had not well resolved, but affected the conquest of all Sicily, a great matter, upon small and superficial pretences, stood forth, desiring to have altered this the Athenians' purpose, and spake as followeth:

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Notes (E.C. Marchant, 1909)
load focus Notes (Charles F. Smith)
load focus English (Benjamin Jowett, 1881)
load focus English (1910)
load focus Greek (1942)
hide References (28 total)
  • Commentary references to this page (11):
    • T. G. Tucker, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 8, 8.29
    • T. G. Tucker, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 8, 8.45
    • C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 4, CHAPTER LXXIII
    • C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 4, CHAPTER LXXXVIII
    • C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 5, 5.40
    • E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides Book 1, 1.128
    • Harold North Fowler, Commentary on Thucydides Book 5, 5.111
    • Charles D. Morris, Commentary on Thucydides Book 1, 1.126
    • Charles D. Morris, Commentary on Thucydides Book 1, 1.139
    • Charles D. Morris, Commentary on Thucydides Book 1, 1.67
    • Charles D. Morris, Commentary on Thucydides Book 1, 1.69
  • Cross-references to this page (6):
    • Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges, THE CASES
    • Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 1.pos=2.1
    • A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), TRIERA´RCHIA
    • Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), SEGESTA
    • Smith's Bio, La'machus
    • Smith's Bio, Xeno'phanes
  • Cross-references in notes to this page (3):
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (8):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: