In the spring of 431 B.C., the Spartans, then organizing their first invasion of Attica, and full of hope that Athens would be crushed in one or two campaigns, contemplated the building of a vast fleet of five hundred ships of war among the confederacy. A considerable portion of this charge was imposed upon the Italian and Sicilian Dorians, and a contribution in money besides; with instructions to refrain from any immediate declaration against Athens until their fleet should be ready.[188] Of such expected succor, indeed, little was ever realized in any way; in ships, nothing at all. But the expectations and orders of Sparta, show that here as elsewhere she was then on the offensive, and Athens only on the defensive. Probably the Corinthians had encouraged the expectation of ample reinforcements from Syracuse and the neighboring towns, a hope which must have contributed largely to the confidence with which they began the struggle. What were the causes which prevented it from being realized, we are not distinctly told; and we find Hermokratês the Syracusan reproaching his countrymen fifteen years afterwards, immediately before the great Athenian expedition against Syracuse, with their antecedent apathy.[189] But it is easy to see, that as the Sicilian Greeks had no direct interest in the contest,—neither wrongs to avenge, nor dangers to apprehend, from Athens,—nor any habit of obeying requisitions from Sparta, so they might naturally content themselves with expressions of sympathy and promises of aid in case of need, without taxing themselves to the enormous extent which it pleased Sparta to impose, for purposes both aggressive and purely Peloponnesian. Perhaps the leading men in Syracuse, from attachment to Corinth, may have sought to act upon the order. But no similar motive would be found operative either at Agrigentum or at Gela or Selinus. [188] Thucyd. ii, 7. Καὶ Λακεδαιμονίοις μὲν, πρὸς ταῖς αὐτοῦ ὑπαρχούσαις, ἐξ Ἰταλίας καὶ Σικελίας τοῖς τἀκείνων ἑλομένοις, ναῦς ἐπετάχθησαν ποιεῖσθαι κατὰ μέγεθος τῶν πόλεων, ὡς ἐς τὸν πάντα ἀριθμὸν πεντακοσίων νεῶν ἐσόμενον, etc. Respecting the construction of this perplexing passage, read the notes of Dr. Arnold, Poppo, and Göller: compare Poppo, ad Thucyd. vol. i, ch. xv, p. 181. I agree with Dr. Arnold and Göller in rejecting the construction of αὐτοῦ with ἐξ Ἰταλίας καὶ Σικελίας, in the sense of “those ships which were in Peloponnesus from Italy and Sicily.” This would be untrue in point of fact, as they observe: there were no Sicilian ships of war in Peloponnesus.