ambitions and private interests, in matters apparently quite foreign
to the war, to lead them into projects unjust both to themselves and to
their allies--projects whose success would only conduce to the honour
and advantage of private persons, and whose failure entailed certain
disaster on the country in the war. The causes of this are not far to
seek. Pericles indeed, by his rank, ability, and known integrity, was
enabled to exercise an independent control over the multitude--in short,
to lead them instead of being led by them; for as he never sought power
by improper means, he was never compelled to flatter them, but, on the
contrary, enjoyed so high an estimation that he could afford to anger
them by contradiction. Whenever he saw them unseasonably and insolently
elated, he would with a word reduce them to alarm; on the other hand,
if they fell victims to a panic, he could at once restore them to
confidence. In short, what was nominally a democracy became in his hands
government by the first citizen. With his successors it was different.
More on a level with one another, and each grasping at supremacy, they
ended by committing even the conduct of state affairs to the whims
of the multitude. This, as might have been expected in a great and
sovereign state, produced a host of blunders, and amongst them
the Sicilian expedition; though this failed not so much through a
miscalculation of the power of those against whom it was sent,
as through a fault in the senders in not taking the best measures
afterwards to assist those who had gone out, but choosing rather to
occupy themselves with private cabals for the leadership of the commons,
by which they not only paralysed operations in the field, but also first
introduced civil discord at home. Yet after losing most of their fleet
besides other forces in Sicily, and with faction already dominant in the
city, they could still for three years make head against their original
adversaries, joined not only by the Sicilians, but also by their own
allies nearly all in revolt, and at last by the King's son, Cyrus, who
furnished the funds for the Peloponnesian navy. Nor did they finally
succumb till they fell the victims of their own intestine disorders.
So superfluously abundant were the resources from which the genius of
Pericles foresaw an easy triumph in the war over the unaided forces of
the Peloponnesians.

During the same summer the Lacedaemonians and their allies made an
exped