Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/78

 56 HISTORY OF GREECE. elude that the impulse of the armament was not merely nataral, but even founded on a more prudent estimate of the actua: chances, and that Alkibiades was nothing more than fortunate in a sanguine venture. And if, instead of the actual chances, we look to the chances as Alkibiades represented, and as the armament conceived them upon his authority, namely, that the Phenician fleet was close at hand to act against the Lacedaemonians in Ionia. we shall sympathize yet more with the defensive movement homeward. Alkibiades had an advantage over every one else, simply by knowing his own falsehoods. At the same assembly were introduced envoys from Argos, bearing a mission of recognition and an offer of aid to the Athe- nian Demos in Samos. They came in an Athenian trireme, navigated by the parali who had brought home Chaereas in the paralus from Samos to Athens, and had been then transferred into a common ship of war and sent to cruise about Euboea. Since that time, however, they had been directed to convey Lrespodias, Aristophon, and Melesias, 1 as ambassadors from the Four Hun- dred to Sparta. But when crossing the Argolic gulf, probably under orders to land at Prasire, they declared against the oli- garchy, sailed to Argos, and there deposited as prisoners the three ambassadors, who had all been active in the conspiracy of the Four Hundred. Being then about to depart for Samos, they were requested by the Argeians to carry thither their envoys, who were dismissed by Alkibiades with an expression of gratitude, and with a hope that their aid would be ready when called for. Meanwhile the envoys returned from Samos to Athens, carry- ing back to the Four Hundred the unwelcome news of their total failure with the armament. A little before, it appears, some of the trierarchs on service at the Hellespont had returned to Athens also, Eratosthenes, latrokles, and others, who had tried to turn their squadron to the purposes of the oligarchical conspirators, but had been baffled and driven off by the inflexible democracy of their own seamen. 2 If at Athens, the calculations of these 1 Thucyd. viii, 86. It is very probable that the Melesias here mentioned wag the son of that Thucydides who was the leading political opponent cu Pellicle's. Melesias appears as one of the dramatis persona in Plato's di * logue called Laches.
 * Lysias ront. Eratas1ar_. tect. 43, c. 9. p. 411. Reisk. ov yuo vi'i- -ro