(I) 1. Speaking in the congress at Gela in 424 B.C., Hermocrates warns his hearers against the designs of Athens. The Athenians, he says, are now on our coast with a few ships; but some day they will come with a larger fleet, and endeavour to reduce the whole island[1]. The Athenian fleet on the Sicilian coast at this time must have numbered some fifty or sixty triremes[2]. Hermocrates, speaking in 424 B.C., certainly would not have spoken of these as "a few ships," least of all when it was his object to show that Athens was formidable[3]. But Thucydides, when he composed the speech, had in view the vast fleet—at least thrice as numerous[4]—sent to Sicily in 415 B.C.
2. Nicias, in his second speech dissuading the Athenians from the expedition to Sicily, says that the only Sicilian cities likely to join the invaders are Naxos and Catana[5]. Both Naxos,and Catana did, in fact, join the Athenians. But the Athenians, when they opened the campaign in Sicily, had hopes
- ↑ iv. 60, ὀλίγαις ναυσὶ παρόντες . . . πλέονί ποτε στόλῳ ἐλθόντας.
- ↑ Twenty triremes had been sent in 427 B.C. under Laches (iii. 88), whom Pythodorus had superseded; forty more were afterwards sent under Eurymedon (iii. 115), and these had now joined the first detachment (iv. 48).
- ↑ As Grote remarks, vii. 189, n.
- ↑ Thuc. vi. 31.
- ↑ vi. 20.
