Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/285

267 GYLlt'PUS ENTERS SYRACUSE. 207 Sclinus and Gela, as well as to sound the Sikel towns, not all of them friendly ; lastly, that he had to march all across the island, partly through hostile territory, it is impossible to allow less interval than a fortnight or three weeks between his landing ai Himera and his arrival at Epipoloe. Farther, Nikias must have learned, through his intelligence in the interior of Syracuse, the important revolution which had taken place in Syracusan opinion through the arrival of Goggylus, even before the landing of Gylippus in Sicily was known. He was apprized, from that moment, that he had to take measures, not only against renewed obstinate hostility within the town, but against a fresh invading enemy without. Lastly, that enemy had first to march all across Sicily, during which march he might have been embarrassed and perhaps defeated, 1 and could then approach Syracuse only by one road, over the high ground of Euryalus in the Athenian rear, through passes few in number, easy to defend, by which JSTikias had himself first approached, and through which he had only got by a well-laid plan of surprise. Yet Nikias leaves these passes unoccupied and undefended ; he takes not a single new precaution ; the relieving army enters Syracuse as it were over a broad and free plain. If we are amazed at the insolent carelessness with which JNikias disdained the commonest precautions for repelling the foreknown approach, by sea, of an enemy formidable even single- handed, what are we to say of that unaccountable blindness which led him to neglect the same enemy when coming at the head of a relieving army, and to omit the most obvious means of defence in a crisis upon which his future fate turned ? Homer would have designated such neglect as a temporary delirium inflicted by the fearful inspiration of Ate : the historian has no such explanatory name to give, and can only note it as a sad and suitable prelude to the calamities too nearly at hand. At the moment when the fortunate Spartan auxiliary was thus 1 Compare an incident in the ensuing year, Thucyd. vii, 32. The Athe- nians, at a moment when they had become much weaker than they wero now, had influence enough among the Sikel tribes to raise opposition to the march of a corps coming from the interior to the help of Syracuse. This auxiliary corps was defeated and nearly destroyed in its march.