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But they were especially incited by envoys from Egesta, who had come to Athens and invoked their aid more urgently than ever. The Egestaeans had gone to war with their neighbours the Selinuntines upon questions of marriage and disputed territory, and the Selinuntines had procured the alliance of the Syracusans, and pressed Egesta hard by land and sea.
He often seeks to shelter himself behind the opinions of Xenarchus, as when he tells us that the Athenians thought it a bad omen that the general whose name was Victory refused to command the expedition to Sicily; and when he says that by the mutilation of the Hennas the gods signified that the Athenians would suffer their chief disasters at the hands of Hermokrates the son of Hermon; or, again, when he observes that Herakles might be expected to take the side of the Syracusans because of Proserpine, the daughter of Demeter, who gave him the dog Kerberus, and to be angry with the Athenians because they protected the people of Egesta, who were descended from the Trojans, whereas he had been wronged by Laomedon, king of Troy, and had destroyed that city.
Meanwhile the three ships that had been sent on came from Egesta to the Athenians at Rhegium, with the news that so far from there being the sums promised, all that could be produced was thirty talents.
On the fall of Ilium, some of the Trojans escaped from the Achaeans, came in ships to Sicily, and settled next to the Sicanians under the general name of Elymi; their towns being called Eryx and Egesta. With them settled some of the Phocians carried on their way from Troy by a storm, first to Libya, and afterwards from thence to Sicily.
The whole metabolism of the body is indeed affected, and during the latter part of pregnancy study of the ingesta and egesta has shown that a storage of nitrogen and even of water is taking place. The woman, as Pinard puts it, forms the child out of her own flesh, not merely out of her food; the individual is being sacrificed to the species.
Before long the ships came back with their report, and the Athenians now learned to their great chagrin that all the fabled wealth of Egesta had dwindled to the paltry sum of thirty talents. The three generals now held a council of war, to decide on a plan of campaign.
But the Athenian assembly, dazzled by the idea of so splendid an enterprise, decided on despatching a large fleet under Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus, with the design of assisting Egesta, and of establishing the influence of Athens throughout Sicily, by whatever means might be found practicable.
A quarrel had broken out between Egesta and Selinus, both which cities were seated near the western extremity of Sicily; and Selinus, having obtained the aid of Syracuse, was pressing very hard upon the Egestaeans. The latter appealed to the interests of the Athenians rather than to their sympathies.
Meanwhile they were expecting the ships which had gone on and were to meet them from Egesta; for they wished to know whether the Egestæans really had the money of which the messengers had brought information to Athens. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. At the time of the sailing of this fleet the war had been in progress sixteen years.
The Athenians, hearing these arguments constantly repeated in their assemblies by the Egestaeans and their supporters, voted first to send envoys to Egesta, to see if there was really the money that they talked of in the treasury and temples, and at the same time to ascertain in what posture was the war with the Selinuntines. The envoys of the Athenians were accordingly dispatched to Sicily.
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