Perhaps the commissioners despatched were men themselves friendly to the enterprise; nor is it impossible that some of them may have been individually bribed by the Egestæans; at least such a supposition is not forbidden by the average state of Athenian public morality. But the most honest or even suspicious men could hardly be prepared for the deep-laid stratagems put in practice to delude them, on their arrival at Egesta. They were conducted to the rich temple of Aphroditê on Mount Eryx, where the plate and donatives were exhibited before them; abundant in number, and striking to the eye, yet composed mostly of silver-gilt vessels, which, though falsely passed off as solid gold, were in reality of little pecuniary value. Moreover, the Egestæan citizens were profuse in their hospitalities and entertainments both to the commissioners and to the crews of the triremes.[219] They collected together all the gold and silver vessels, dishes, and goblets, of Egesta, which they farther enlarged by borrowing additional ornaments of the same kind from the neighboring cities, Hellenic as well as Carthaginian. At each successive entertainment, every Egestæan host exhibited all this large stock of plate as his own property, the same stock being transferred from house to house for the occasion. A false appearance was thus created, of the large number of wealthy men in Egesta; and the Athenian seamen, while their hearts were won by the caresses, saw with amazement this prodigious display of gold and silver, and were thoroughly duped by the fraud.[220] To complete the illusion, by resting it on a basis of reality and prompt payment, sixty talents of uncoined silver were at once produced as ready for the operations of war. With this sum in hand, the Athenian commissioners, after finishing their examination, and the Egestæan envoys also, returned to Athens, which they reached in the spring of 415 B.C.,[221] about three months after the capture of Mêlos. [219] Thucyd. vi, 46. ἰδίᾳ ξενίσεις ποιούμενοι τῶν τριηριτῶν, τά τε ἐξ αὐτῆς Ἐγέστης ἐκπώματα καὶ χρυσᾶ καὶ ἀργυρᾶ ξυλλέξαντες, καὶ τὰ ἐκ τῶν ἐγγὺς πόλεων καὶ Φοινικικῶν καὶ Ἑλληνίδων αἰτησάμενοι, ἐσέφερον ἐς τὰς ἑστιάσεις ὡς οἰκεῖα ἕκαστοι. Καὶ πάντων ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ τοῖς αὐτοῖς χρωμένων, καὶ πανταχοῦ πολλῶν φαινομένων, μεγάλην τὴν ἔκπληξιν τοῖς ἐκ τῶν τριήρων Ἀθηναίοις παρεῖχον, etc. Such loans of gold and silver plate betoken a remarkable degree of intimacy among the different cities. [220] Thucyd. vi, 46; Diodor. xii, 83.