Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/243

 SICILIAN AFFAIRS. — GELU AND HIS DYXA.'iiV. 219 B.C., to entreat his aid for the repulse of the vast host of invad- ers about to cross the Hellespont. Gelo, after reminding them that they had refused a similar application for aid from him, said that, far from requiting them at the hour of need in the like un- generous spirit, he would bring to them an overwhelming rein- forcement (the numbers as given by Herodotus have been already stated), but upon one condition only, — that he should be recognized as generalissimo of the entire Grecian force against the Persians, His oifer was repudiated, with indignant scorn, by the Spartan envoy : and Gelo then so far abated in his demand, as to be content with the command either of the land-foi-ce or the naval force, whichever might be judged preferable. But here the Athenian envoy interposed his protest : " We are sent here (said he) to ask for an army, and not for a general ; and thou givest us the army, only in order to make thyself general. EJQOw, that even if the Spartans would allow thee to command at sea, we would not. The naval command is ours, if they decline it : we Athenians, the oldest nation in Greece, — the only Greeks who have never migrated from home, — whose leader before Troy stands proclaimed by Homer as the best of all the Greeks for marshalling and keeping order in an army, — we, who moi-eover furnish the largest naval contingent in the fleet, — we will never submit to be commanded by a Syracusan." "Athenian stranger (replied Gelo), ye seem to be provided with commanders, but ye are not likely to have soldiers to be commanded. Ye may return as soon as you please, and tell the Greeks that their year is deprived of its spring." i That envoys were sent from Peloponnesus to solicit assistance from Gelo against Xerxes, and that they solicited in vain, is an incident not to be disputed : but the reason assigned for refusas' — conflicting pretensions about the supreme command — may be suspected to have arisen less from historical transmission, than from the conceptions of the historian, or of his informants, re- specting the relations between the parties. In his time, Sparta, ' Herodot. vii, 161, 1C2. Polybius 'xii, 26) does not seem to have read tliis embassy as related by Herodotus, — or at least he must have prefen-ed some other account of it ; — he gives a different account of the answer which they made to Gelo: an answer (not insolent, but) business-like and evasive, — TvpayuariKurarov a-oKpifia, etc. See Timaeus, Fragm. 87, ed. Didot.