The catastrophe of the Sicilian army was heard at Athens with consternation. In that army, besides light–armed troops and slaves, 10,000 citizens were lost, the flower of the republic and its allied, or rather dependent, states; and the private sorrow from which few houses were exempt, was increased by the alarming perplexity how such another force could be raised from the exhausted population, or such a fleet rebuilt from the exhausted treasury of the state. It was generally believed through Greece that the war would soon come to an end; and if Sparta had been prepared to follow up with energy the blow struck in Sicily, Athens probably would have fallen. But though the project of wresting the dominion of the sea from her seemed no longer visionary, as it had seemed earlier in the war, in which case, deprived both of her territories at home and of her commerce and allies abroad, she must have yielded, the Lacedæmonians at this critical juncture possessed no fleet, and the autumn and winter, which they spent in collecting one, were diligently employed by the Athenians in measures suited to the present emergency. Thus at the close of the nineteenth year of the war, each party, says Thucydides, seemed as it were preparing for the beginning of a war. But at this time a third party appeared in the contest. The King of Persia had discovered that to supply the Greeks with the means of mutual destruction was much better policy than uniting them against himself by measures of open hostility; and Athens, from its restless spirit, as well as from the recollection of former injuries, was the object of especial dislike and fear to that monarchy. From henceforward the want of a public revenue, which had more than anything cramped the exertions of Sparta, was obviated from the inexhaustible riches of Persia.