Launching the Expedition to Sicily
In 415 B.C.
Alcibiades convinced the Athenian assembly to vote to launch a
massive naval campaign against the large island of Sicily1 to seek the
great riches awaiting a conqueror there and prevent any Sicilian cities from aiding
the Spartans. Formally speaking, Athens was responding to a request for support from
the Sicilian city of Egesta (also known as
Segesta2), with whom an alliance had been
struck more than thirty years earlier.
The Egestans encouraged Athens to prepare
a naval expedition3 by misrepresenting the extent of the
resources that they had to devote to the military campaign against non-allies in
Sicily. The
prosperous city of Syracuse4 near the southeastern corner of
the island represented both the richest prize and the largest threat. In the debate
preceding the vote on the expedition, Alcibiades and his supporters argued that the
numerous war ships in the fleet of Syracuse represented an especially serious
potential threat to the security of the Athenian alliance because they could sail from
Sicily to join the Spartan alliance in attacks on Athens and its allies. Nicias led
the opposition to the proposed expedition, but his arguments for caution failed to
counteract the enthusiasm for action that Alcibiades generated with his speeches. His
aggressive dreams of martial glory especially appealed to young men, who had not yet
experienced the realities of war for themselves. The assembly resoundingly backed his
vision by voting to send to Sicily the greatest force ever to sail from Greece. The
arrogant flamboyance of Alcibiades' private life and his blatant political
ambitions had made him many enemies in Athens,5 and
they managed to get him recalled from the expedition's command by accusing him of
having participated in a sacrilegious
mockery of the Eleusinian Mysteries and
being mixed up in the sacrilegious vandalizing of statues6 called
Herms7 just before the sailing of the expedition. Alcibiades' reaction to the charges
certainly was unforeseen:
he deserted to Sparta.8
The mutilation of the Herms
Herms9, stone posts
with sculpted sets of erect male organs and a bust of the god Hermes, were placed
throughout the city as protectors against infertility and bad luck. A Herm stood at
nearly every street intersection, for example, because crossings were, symbolically
at least, zones of special danger. The vandals outraged the public by knocking off
the statues' phalluses.
