Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/162

144 144 HISTORY OF GREECE. The Tieontine exiles at Brikinnies, however, received no bene- fit from his assurances, and appear soon afterwards to have been completely expelled. Nevertheless, Athens was noway disposed, for a considerable time, to operations in Sicily. A few montha after the visit of Phaaax to that island, came the Peace of Nikias : the consequences of that peace occupied her whole attention in Peloponnesus, while the ambition of Alkibiades carried her on for three years in intra-Peloponnesian projects and cooperation with Argos against Sparta. It was only in the year 417 B.C.. when these projects had proved abortive, that she had leisure to turn her attention elsewhere. During that year, Nikias had con templated an expedition against Amphipolis in conjunction with Perdikkas, whose desertion frustrated the scheme. The yeai 416 B.C. was that in which Melos was besieged and taken. Meanwhile the Syracusans had cleared and appropriated all the territory of Leontini, which city now existed only in the talk and hopes of its exiles. Of these latter a portion seem to have continued at Athens, pressing their entreaties for aid, which began to obtain some attention about the year 417 B.C., when another incident happened to strengthen their chance of success. A quarrel broke out between the neighboring cities of Selinus (Hellenic) and Egesta (non-Hellenic) in the western corner of Sicily ; partly about a piece of land on the river which divided the two territories, partly about some alleged wrong in cases of internuptial connection. The Selinuntines, not satisfied with their own strength, obtained assistance from the Syracusans their allies, and thus reduced Egesta to considerable straits by land as well as by sea. 1 Now the Egestoeans had allied themselves with Laches ten years before, during the first expedition sent by the Athenians to Sicily ; upon the strength of which alliance they sent to Athens, to solicit her intervention for their defence, after having in vain applied both to Agrigentum and to Carthage. It may seem singular that Carthage did not at this time readily 1 Thucyd. vi, 6; Diodor. xii, 82. The statement of Diodorus that the Egcstaeans applied not merely to Agrigentum but also to Syracuse ia highly improbable. The war which he mentions as having taken place some years before between Egesta and Lilybamm (xi, 86) in 454 B.C., may probably have been & war between Egesta and Selinus.