Among the accusations against Alkibiadês, one is, that after having recommended, in the assembly of the people, that the inhabitants of Melos should be sold as slaves, he had himself purchased a Melian woman among the captives, and had had a son by her: it was criminal, argues the speaker, to beget offspring by a woman whose relations he had contributed to cause to be put to death, and whose city he had contributed to ruin (c. 8). Upon this argument I do not here touch, any farther than to bring out the point of chronology. The speech, if delivered at all, must have been delivered, at the earliest, nearly a year after the capture of Melos by the Athenians: it may be of later date, but it _cannot possibly be earlier_. Now Melos surrendered in the winter immediately preceding the great expedition of the Athenians to Sicily in 415 B.C., which expedition sailed about midsummer (Thucyd. v, 116; vi, 30). Nikias and Alkibiadês both went as commanders of that expedition: the latter was recalled to Athens for trial on the charge of impiety about three months afterwards, but escaped in the way home, was condemned and sentenced to banishment in his absence, and did not return to Athens until 407 B.C., long after the death of Nikias, who continued in command of the Athenian armament in Sicily, enjoying the full esteem of his countrymen, until its complete failure and ruin before Syracuse,—and perished himself afterwards as a Syracusan prisoner. Taking these circumstances together, it will at once be seen that there never can have been any time, ten months or more after the capture of Melos, when Nikias and Alkibiadês _could_ have been exposed to a vote of ostracism at Athens. The thing is absolutely impossible: and the oration in which such historical and chronological incompatibilities are embodied, must be spurious: furthermore, it must have been composed long after the pretended time of delivery, when the chronological series of events had been forgotten. I may add that the story of this duplication of the tribute by Alkibiadês is virtually contrary to the statement of Plutarch, probably borrowed from Æschinês, who states that the demagogues _gradually_ increased (κατὰ μικρὸν) the tribute to thirteen hundred talents (Plutarch, Aristeid. c. 24). [11] Thucyd. ii, 13.