Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/168

150 150 HISTORY OF GREECE. and have uever yet been conquered : other continental subjects, too, are not much to be trusted ; and you are going to redress injuries offered to Egesta, before you have yet thought of redress- ing your own. Now your conquests in Thrace, if you make any, can be maintained ; but Sicily is so distant, and the people so powerful, that you will never be able to maintain permanent ascendency ; and it is absurd to undertake an expedition wherein conquest cannot be permanent, while failure will be destructive. The Egestaians alarm you by the prospect of Syracusan aggran- dizement. But to me it seems that the Sicilian Greeks, even if they become subjects of Syracuse, will be less dangerous to you than they are at present : for as matters stand now, they might possibly send aid to Peloponnesus, from desire on the part of each to gain the favor of Lacedaemon, but imperial Syracuse would have no motive to endanger her own empire for the pur- pose of putting down yours. You are now full of confidence, because you have come out of the war better than you at first feared. But do not trust the Spartans : they, the most sensitive of all men to the reputation of superiority, are lying in wait to play you a trick in order to repair their own dishonor : their oligarchical machinations against you demand all your vigilance, and leave you no leisure to think of these foreigners at Egesta. Having just recovered ourselves somewhat from the pressure of disease and war, we ought to reserve this newly-acquired strength for our own purposes, instead 01 Casting it upon the treacherous assurances of desperate exiles from Sicily." Nikias then continued, doubtless turning towards Alkibiades : " If any man, delighted to be named to the command, though still too young for it, exhorts you to this expedition in his own selfish interests, looking to admiration for his ostentation in chariot- racing, and to profit from his command, as a means of making good his extravagances, do not let such a man gain celebrity for himself at the hazard of the entire city. Be persuaded that such persons are alike unprincipled in regard to the public prop- erty and wasteful as to their own, and that this matter s too serious for tie rash counsels of youth. I tremble when I see before me this band sitting, by previous concert, close to their leader in the assembly; and I in my turn exhort the elderly men, are near them, not to be shamed out of their opposition by