ns would send an armament to their assistance, to provide the
necessary funds for the prosecution of the war. Their most powerful
advocate was Alcibiades, whose ambitious views are said to have
extended even to the conquest of Carthage. The quieter and more
prudent Nicias and his party threw their weight into the opposite
scale. But the Athenian assembly, dazzled by the idea of so splendid
an enterprise, decided on despatching a large fleet under Nicias,
Alcibiades, and Lamachus, with the design of assisting Egesta, and of
establishing the influence of Athens throughout Sicily, by whatever
means might be found practicable.

For the next three months the preparations for the undertaking were
pressed on with the greatest ardour. Young and old, rich and poor, all
vied with one another to obtain a share in the expedition. Five years
of comparative peace had accumulated a fresh supply both of men and
money; and the merchants of Athens embarked in the enterprise as in a
trading expedition. It was only a few of the wisest heads that escaped
the general fever of excitement, The expedition was on the point of
sailing, when a sudden and mysterious event converted all these
exulting feelings into gloomy foreboding.

At every door in Athens, at the corners of streets, in the market
place, before temples, gymnasia, and other public places, stood Hermae,
or statues of the god Hermes, consisting of a bust of that deity
surmounting a quadrangular pillar of marble about the height of the
human figure. When the Athenians rose one morning towards the end of
May, 415 B.C., it was found that all these figures had been mutilated
during the night, and reduced by unknown hands to a shapeless mass.
The act inspired political, as well as religious, alarm. It seemed to
indicate a widespread conspiracy, for so sudden and general a
mutilation must have been the work of many hands. The sacrilege might
only be a preliminary attempt of some powerful citizen to seize the
despotisn, and suspicion pointed its finger at Alcibiades. Active
measures were taken and large rewards offered for the discovery of the
perpetrators. A public board was appointed to examine witnesses, which
did not, indeed, succeed in eliciting any facts bearing on the actual
subject of inquiry, but which obtained evidence respecting similar acts
of impiety committed at previous times in drunken frolics. In these
Alcibiades himself was implicated; and though the fleet was