quarters, but are compelled to depend both for supplying the crews
in service and for making good our losses upon the men whom we brought
with us. For our present confederates, Naxos and Catana, are incapable
of supplying us. There is only one thing more wanting to our
opponents, I mean the defection of our Italian markets. If they were
to see you neglect to relieve us from our present condition, and
were to go over to the enemy, famine would compel us to evacuate,
and Syracuse would finish the war without a blow.
"I might, it is true, have written to you something different and
more agreeable than this, but nothing certainly more useful, if it
is desirable for you to know the real state of things here before
taking your measures. Besides I know that it is your nature to love to
be told the best side of things, and then to blame the teller if the
expectations which he has raised in your minds are not answered by the
result; and I therefore thought it safest to declare to you the truth.
"Now you are not to think that either your generals or your soldiers
have ceased to be a match for the forces originally opposed to them.
But you are to reflect that a general Sicilian coalition is being
formed against us; that a fresh army is expected from Peloponnese,
while the force we have here is unable to cope even with our present
antagonists; and you must promptly decide either to recall us or to
send out to us another fleet and army as numerous again, with a
large sum of money, and someone to succeed me, as a disease in the
kidneys unfits me for retaining my post. I have, I think, some claim
on your indulgence, as while I was in my prime I did you much good
service in my commands. But whatever you mean to do, do it at the
commencement of spring and without delay, as the enemy will obtain his
Sicilian reinforcements shortly, those from Peloponnese after a longer
interval; and unless you attend to the matter the former will be
here before you, while the latter will elude you as they have done
before."
Such were the contents of Nicias's letter. When the Athenians had
heard it they refused to accept his resignation, but chose him two
colleagues, naming Menander and Euthydemus, two of the officers at the
seat of war, to fill their places until their arrival, that Nicias
might not be left alone in his sickness to bear the whole weight of
affairs. They also voted to send out another army and navy, drawn
partly from the Athenians on the muster-roll, partly from the
allies. The colleagues chosen for Nicias were Demosthenes, son of
Alcisthenes, and Eurymedon, son of Thucles. Eurymedon was sent off
at once, about the time of the winter solstice, with ten ships, a
hundred and twenty talents of silver, and instructions to tell the
army that reinforcements would arrive, and that care would be taken of
them; but Demosthenes stayed behind to organize the expedition,
meaning to start as soon as it was spring, and sent for troops to
the allies, and meanwhile got together money, ships, and heavy
infantry at home.
The Athenians also sent twenty vessels round Peloponnese to
prevent any one crossing over to Sicily from Corinth or Peloponnese.
For the Corinthians, filled with confidence by the favourable
alteration in Sicilian affairs which had been reported by the envoys
upon their arrival, and convinced that the fleet which they had before
sent out had not been without its use, were now preparing to
dispatch a force of heavy infantry in merchant vessels to Sicily,
while the Lacedaemonians did the like for the rest of Peloponnese. The
Corinthians also manned a fleet of twenty-five vessels, intending to
try the result of a battle with the squadron on guard at Naupactus,
and meanwhile to make it less easy for the Athenians there to hinder
the departure of their merchantmen, by obliging them to keep an eye
upon the galleys thus arrayed against them.
In the meantime the Lacedaemonians prepared for their invasion of
Attica, in accordance with their own previous resolve, and at the
instigation of the Syracusans and Corinthians, who wished for an
invasion to arrest the reinforcements which they heard that Athens was