Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/206

178 Athens in B.C. 426, and though Thucydides says that they stoutly refused to yield, their name appears on the list of the Athenian confederacy of the next year (B.C. 425) for fifteen talents. This is a large sum (more like a fine than an ordinary contribution), and it was perhaps their omitting to pay it that brought the Athenian fleet upon them again in B.C. 416. At any rate, the Spartans failed to assist them, and after several months blockade of their chief city they were forced to surrender. The Athenians put all men of military age to death, and sold the women and children into slavery, dividing their lands among seven hundred of their own settlers.

Encouraged by the indifference shown by the Spartans to this cruel deed and their failure to stir up Perdiccas of Macedonia and the Chalicidians, the Athenians began schemes of greater importance. As before, their eyes turned to the West; and ad- vantage of a quarrel between two Sicilian cities, Egesta and Selinus, was taken to aim at the conquest of all Sicily. Ambassadors were sent to Egesta to find out whether that city was wealthy and likely to contribute what it had promised when applying for aid. In the spring of B.C. 415 they returned with a favourable report, having been themselves deceived by a show of wealth. Nicias was, as usual, cautious, and tried to dissuade the people from such an enterprise; but Alcibiades