Such was the mysterious incident which broke in upon the eager and bustling movement of Athens, a few days before the Sicilian expedition was in condition for starting. In reference to that expedition it was taken to heart as a most depressing omen.[250] It would doubtless have been so determined, had it been a mere undesigned accident happening to any venerated religious object, just as we are told that similar misgivings were occasioned by the occurrence, about this same time, of the melancholy festival of the Adonia, wherein the women loudly bewailed the untimely death of Adonis.[251] The mutilation of the Hermæ, however, was something much more ominous than the worst accident. It proclaimed itself as the deliberate act of organized conspirators, not inconsiderable in number, whose names and final purpose were indeed unknown, but who had begun by committing sacrilege of a character flagrant and unheard of. For intentional mutilation of a public and sacred statue, where the material afforded no temptation to plunder, is a case to which we know no parallel: much more mutilation by wholesale, spread by one band and in one night throughout an entire city. Though neither the parties concerned, nor their purposes, were ever more than partially made out, the concert and conspiracy itself is unquestionable. [250] Thucyd. vi, 27. Καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα μειζόνως ἐλάμβανον· τοῦ τε γὰρ ἐκπλοῦ οἰωνὸς ἐδόκει εἶναι, καὶ ἐπὶ ξυνωμοσίᾳ ἅμα νεωτέρων πραγμάτων καὶ δήμου καταλύσεως γεγενῆσθαι. Cornelius Nepos, Alcibiad. c. 3. “Hoc quum appareret non sine magnimultorum consensione esse factam,” etc. [251] Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 18; Pherekratês, Fr. Inc. 84, ed. Meineke; Fragment. Comic. Græc. vol. ii, p. 358, also p. 1164; Aristoph. Frag. Inc. 120.