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That the Athenians are coming to attack us, and are already upon the voyage, and all but here this is what I am sure of." Thus far spoke Hermocrates.
A few only believed Hermocrates and realized the danger. At last Athenagoras, the popular leader, who had at that time the greatest influence with the multitude, came forward and spoke.... The Athenians and their allies were by this time collected at Corcyra.
A corps under Diophantus advanced into Cappadocia, to occupy the fortresses there and to close the way to the kingdom of Pontus against the Romans; the leader sent by Sertorius, the propraetor Marcus Marius, went in company with the Pontic officer Eumachus to Phrygia, with a view to rouse the Roman province and the Taurus mountains to revolt; the main army, above 100,000 men with 16,000 cavalry and 100 scythe-chariots, led by Taxiles and Hermocrates under the personal superintendence of the king, and the war-fleet of 400 sail commanded by Aristonicus, moved along the north coast of Asia Minor to occupy Paphlagonia and Bithynia.
Now I, Critias and Hermocrates, am conscious that I myself should never be able to celebrate the city and her citizens in a befitting manner, and I am not surprised at my own incapacity; to me the wonder is rather that the poets present as well as past are no better not that I mean to depreciate them; but every one can see that they are a tribe of imitators, and will imitate best and most easily the life in which they have been brought up; while that which is beyond the range of a man's education he finds hard to carry out in action, and still harder adequately to represent in language.
The message, of course, came from Hermocrates, who had contrived this trick to delay the departure of the Athenians, until time had been gained to occupy the passes on their route. That Nicias should have fallen into the snare is not surprising, but it is less easy to explain how Demosthenes and the other generals came to be deceived by so transparent a fraud.
A corps under Diophantus advanced into Cappadocia, to occupy the fortresses there and to close the way to the kingdom of Pontus against the Romans; the leader sent by Sertorius, the propraetor Marcus Marius, went in company with the Pontic officer Eumachus to Phrygia, with a view to rouse the Roman province and the Taurus mountains to revolt; the main army, above 100,000 men with 16,000 cavalry and 100 scythe-chariots, led by Taxiles and Hermocrates under the personal superintendence of the king, and the war-fleet of 400 sail commanded by Aristonicus, moved along the north coast of Asia Minor to occupy Paphlagonia and Bithynia.
Timaeus says that Demosthenes and Nicias did not die, as Thucydides and Philistus have written, by the order of the Syracusans, but that upon a message sent them from Hermocrates, whilst yet the assembly were sitting, by the connivance of some of their guards, they were enabled to put an end to themselves. Their bodies, however, were thrown out before the gates and offered for a public spectacle.
A strategem planned by Hermocrates and Nicias' superstitious terrors delayed the departure long enough to enable the Syracusans to secure the passes in the interior.
They had good reason to be satisfied with the result of their first encounter with the invader, and they might well share the high and confident hopes expressed by their most eminent citizen, Hermocrates.
The whole city had become a scene of riot and wassail, and if the order were given to march, it was but too evident that not a man would obey. Baffled in this direction, the keen-witted Syracusan hit upon another plan, which he at once proceeded to carry into effect. Hermocrates was not mistaken in his conjecture.
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