[208] Thucyd. iv, 65. We learn from Polybius (Fragm. xii, 22, 23, one of the Excerpta recently published by Maii, from the Cod. Vatic.) that Timæus had in his twenty-first book described the congress of Gela at considerable length, and had composed an elaborate speech for Hermokratês: which speech Polybius condemns, as a piece of empty declamation. [209] Thucyd. v, 5. [210] Thucyd. vi, 13-52. On reaching Athens, however, he and his colleagues were received by the people with much displeasure. He himself was fined, and his colleagues Sophoklês and Pythodôrus banished, on the charge of having been bribed to quit Sicily, at a time when the fleet—so the Athenians believed—was strong enough to have made important conquests. Why the three colleagues were differently treated we are not informed.[211] This sentence was harsh and unmerited; for it does not seem that Eurymedon had it in his power to prevent the Ionic cities from concluding peace, while it is certain that without them he could have achieved nothing serious. All that seems unexplained in his conduct, as recounted by Thucydidês, is, that his arrival at Rhegium with the entire fleet in September, 425 B.C., does not seem to have been attended with any increased vigor or success, in the prosecution of the war. But the Athenians—besides an undue depreciation of the Sicilian cities, which we shall find fatally misleading them hereafter—were at this moment at the maximum of extravagant hopes, counting upon new triumphs everywhere, impatient of disappointment, and careless of proportion between the means intrusted to, and the objects expected from, their commanders. Such unmeasured confidence was painfully corrected in the course of a few months, by the battle of Delium and the losses in Thrace. But at the present moment, it was probably not less astonishing than grievous to the three generals, who had all left Athens prior to the success in Sphakteria. [211] Thucyd. iv, 65.