The Leontine exiles at Brikinnies, however, received no benefit from his assurances, and appear soon afterwards to have been completely expelled. Nevertheless, Athens was noway disposed, for a considerable time, to operations in Sicily. A few months after the visit of Phæax to that island, came the Peace of Nikias: the consequences of that peace occupied her whole attention in Peloponnesus, while the ambition of Alkibiadês carried her on for three years in intra-Peloponnesian projects and coöperation with Argos against Sparta. It was only in the year 417 B.C., when these projects had proved abortive, that she had leisure to turn her attention elsewhere. During that year, Nikias had contemplated an expedition against Amphipolis in conjunction with Perdikkas, whose desertion frustrated the scheme. The year 416 B.C. was that in which Mêlos was besieged and taken. Meanwhile the Syracusans had cleared and appropriated all the territory of Leontini, which city now existed only in the talk and hopes of its exiles. Of these latter a portion seem to have continued at Athens, pressing their entreaties for aid, which began to obtain some attention about the year 417 B.C., when another incident happened to strengthen their chance of success. A quarrel broke out between the neighboring cities of Selinus (Hellenic) and Egesta (non-Hellenic) in the western corner of Sicily; partly about a piece of land on the river which divided the two territories, partly about some alleged wrong in cases of internuptial connection. The Selinuntines, not satisfied with their own strength, obtained assistance from the Syracusans their allies, and thus reduced Egesta to considerable straits by land as well as by sea.[215] Now the Egestæans had allied themselves with Lachês ten years before, during the first expedition sent by the Athenians to Sicily; upon the strength of which alliance they sent to Athens, to solicit her intervention for their defence, after having in vain applied both to Agrigentum and to Carthage. It may seem singular that Carthage did not at this time readily embrace the pretext for interference, considering that, ten years afterwards, she interfered with such destructive effect against Selinus. At this time, however, the fear of Athens and her formidable navy appears to have been felt even at Carthage,[216] thus protecting the Sicilian Greeks against the most dangerous of their neighbors. [215] Thucyd. vi, 6; Diodor. xii, 82. The statement of Diodorus—that the Egestæans applied not merely to Agrigentum but also to Syracuse—is highly improbable. The war which he mentions as having taken place some years before between Egesta and Lilybæum (xi, 86) in 454 B.C., may probably have been a war between Egesta and Selinus. [216] Thucyd. vi, 34.