Lacedaemon, issuing in
the great battle of Mantinea, where there was an Athenian contingent
with the Argives. This was notable especially as completely restoring
the prestige of the Lacedaemonian arms, their victory being decisive. The
result was a new treaty between Sparta and Argos, and the dissolution of
the Argive-Athenian alliance; but this was once more reversed in the
following year, when the Argive oligarchy was attacked successfully by
the popular party.

The next year is marked by the high-handed treatment of the island of
Melos by the Athenians. This was one of the very few islands which had
not been compelled to submit to Athens, but had endeavoured to remain
neutral. Thither the Athenians now sent an expedition, absolutely
without excuse, to compel their submission.

The Melians, however, refused, and gave the Athenians a good deal of
trouble before they could be subdued, when the adult male population was
put to death, and the women and children enslaved. At this time the
Athenians resolved, under colour of an appeal for assistance from the
Sicilian city of Egesta, deliberately to set about the establishment of
their empire in Sicily. The aggressive policy was vehemently advocated
by Alcibiades, and opposed by Nicias. Nevertheless, he, with Alcibiades
and Lamachus, was appointed to command the expedition, which was
prepared on a scale of unparalleled magnificence. It was on the point of
starting, when the whole city was stirred to frenzy by the midnight
mutilation of the sacred images called Hermae, an act laid at the door of
Alcibiades, along with many other charges of profane outrages. Of set
purpose, however, the enemies of Alcibiades refused to bring him to
trial. The expedition sailed. The Syracusans were deaf to the warnings
of Hermocrates until the great fleet had actually arrived at Rhegium.

Nicias was now anxious to find an excuse, in the evident falsity of
statements made by the Egestans, for the fleet to content itself with
making a demonstration and then returning home. The scheme of
Alcibiades, however, was adopted for gaining over the other Sicilian
states in order to crush Syracuse. But at this moment dispatches arrived
requiring the return of Alcibiades to stand trial. Athens was in a panic
over the Hermae affair, which was supposed to portend an attempt to
reestablish the despotism which had been ended a hundred years before by
the expulsion of the Pisistratidae. Alcibiades, however, m