48.
Alcibiades urged that it would be a disgrace to have gone forth with so great an armament1 and to return without achieving anything. They should send envoys to every city of Sicily, with the exception of Selinus and Syracuse; they should also negotiate with the Sicels, making friends of the independent tribes, and persuading the rest to revolt from the Syracusans. They would thus obtain supplies and reinforcements. They should first appeal to the Messenians, whose city being on the highway of traffic was the key of Sicily, and possessed a harbour from which the Athenian forces could most conveniently watch the enemy. Finally, when they had brought the cities over to them and knew who would be on their side in the war, they should attack Selinus and Syracuse, unless the Selinuntians would come to terms with the Egestaeans, and the Syracusans would permit the restoration of the Leontines.
1 Alcibiades would do more; he would attack both Selinus and Syrause, first gaining over the other Sicilian states.
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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