Though the order was not executed, however, there can be little doubt that it was publicly announced and threatened, thus becoming known to the Ionic cities in Sicily as well as to Athens; and that it weighed materially in determining the latter afterwards to assist those cities, when they sent to invoke her aid. Instead of despatching their forces to Peloponnesus, where they had nothing to gain, the Sicilian Dorians preferred attacking the Ionic cities in their own island, whose territory they might have reasonable hopes of conquering and appropriating,—Naxos, Katana, and Leontini. These cities doubtless sympathized with Athens in her struggle against Sparta; yet, far from being strong enough to assist her or to threaten their Dorian neighbors, they were unable to defend themselves without Athenian aid. They were assisted by the Dorian city of Kamarina, which was afraid of her powerful border city Syracuse, and by Rhegium in Italy; while Lokri in Italy, the bitter enemy of Rhegium, sided with Syracuse against them. In the fifth summer of the war, finding themselves blockaded by sea and confined to their walls, they sent to Athens, both to entreat succor, as allies[190] and Ionians, and to represent that, if Syracuse succeeded in crushing them, she and the other Dorians in Sicily would forthwith send over the positive aid which the Peloponnesians had so long been invoking. The eminent rhetor Gorgias of Leontini, whose peculiar style of speaking is said to have been new to the Athenian assembly, and to have produced a powerful effect, was at the head of this embassy. It is certain that this rhetor procured for himself numerous pupils and large gains, not merely in Athens but in many other towns of Central Greece,[191] though it is exaggeration to ascribe to his pleading the success of the present application. [190] Thucyd. vi, 86. [191] Thucyd. iii, 86; Diodor. xii, 53; Plato, Hipp. Maj. p. 282, B. It is remarkable that Thucydidês, though he is said, with much probability, to have been among the pupils of Gorgias, makes no mention of that rhetor personally as among the envoys. Diodorus probably copied from Ephorus, the pupil of Isokratês. Among the writers of the Isokratean school, the persons of distinguished rhetors, and their supposed political efficiency, counted for much more than in the estimation of Thucydidês. Pausanias (vi, 17, 3) speaks of Tisias also as having been among the envoys in this celebrated legation.