Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/406

 384 HISTORY OF GREECL. of the Syracusans, immediately following upon circumstances of so much excitement and interest. They appear to have carried on war against Katana, where some fugitives from the vanquished Athenian army contributed to the resistance against them. 1 But both this city and Naxos, though exposed to humiliation and dan- ger as allies of the defeated Athenians, contrived to escape without the loss of their independence. The allies of Syracuse were prob- ably not eager to attack them, and thereby to aggrandize that city farther ; while the Syracusans themselves also would be sensible of great exhaustion, arising from the immense efforts through which alone their triumph had been achieved. The pecuniary burdens to which they had been obliged to submit known to Nikias dur- ing the last months of the siege, 2 and fatally misleading his judg- ment, were so heavy as to task severely their powers of endur- ance. After paying, and dismissing with appropriate gratitude, the numerous auxiliaries whom they had been obliged to hire, after celebrating the recent triumph, and decorating the temples, in a manner satisfactory to the exuberant joy of the citizens 3 there would probably be a general disposition to repose rather than to aggressive warfare. There would be much destruction to be re- paired throughout their territory, poorly watched or cultivated during the year of the siege. In spite of such exhaustion, however, the sentiment of exas- peration and vengeance against Athens, combined with gratitude towards the Lacedaemonians, was too powerful to be balked. A confident persuasion reigned throughout Greece that Athens 4 could not hold out for one single summer after her late terrific disaster; a persuasion, founded greatly on the hope of a large auxiliary squadron to act against her from Syracuse and her other enemies in Sicily and Italy. In this day of Athenian distress, such enemies of course became more numerous. Especially the city of Thurii in Italy, 5 which had been friendly to Athens and had furnished aid to Demosthenes in his expedition to Sicily, now underwent a change, banished three hundred of the leading philo- Athenian citizens (among them the rhetor Lysias), and espoused 1 Lysias, Orat. xx, (pro Polystrato) s. 26, 27. Thucyd. vii, 48, 49. 3 Diodor. xiii, 34. Thucyd. viii, 2 : compare vii, 55. 6 Thneyd. vii, 33-57 ; Dionysius Halikarn. Judic. de Lysia, p. 453.