Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/250

232 2^52 HISTORY OF GREECE. means had formerly invited Athens into Sicily : it would b* alike unjust and impolitic were they now to repudiate her aid, for she could accomplish nothing without them ; if they did so on the present occasion, they would repent it hereafter when exposed to the hostility of a constant encroaching neighbor, and when Athenian auxiliaries could not again be had. He repelled the imputations which Hermokrates had cast upon Athens, but the Kamarinoeans were not sitting as judges or censors upon her merits. It was for them to consider whether that meddlesome disposition, with which Athens was reproached, was not highly beneficial as the terror of oppressors, and the shield of weaker states, throughout Greece. He now tendered it to the Kama- rinaeans as their only security against Syracuse ; calling upon them, instead of living in perpetual fear of her aggression, to seize the present opportunity of attacking her on an equal footing, jointly with Athens. 1 In these two remarkable speeches, we find Hermokrates renewing substantially the same line of counsel as he had taken up ten years before at the congress of Gela, to settle all Sicilian differences at home, and above all things to keep out the inter- vention of Athens ; who if she once got footing in Sicily, would never rest until she reduced all the cities successively. This was the natural point of view for a Syracusan politician ; but by no means equally natural, nor equally conclusive, for an inhabitant of one of the secondary Sicilian cities, especially of the contermi- nous Kamarina. And the oration of Euphemus is an able plead- ing to demonstrate that the Kamarinfeans had far more to fear from Syracuse than from Athens. His arguments to this point are at least highly plausible, if not convincing : but he seems to lay himself open to attack from the opposite quarter. If Athens cannot hope to gain any subjects in Sicily, what motive has she for interfering ? This Euphemus meets by contending that if she does not interfere, the Syracusans and their allies will come across and render assistance to the enemies of Athens in Pelo ponnesus. It is manifest, however, that under the actual circum- stances of the time, Athens could have no real fears of this nature, and that her real motives for meddling in Sicily wer 1 Thucyd. vi, 83-87.