But Lamachus found no favor with either of the other two, and being thus compelled to choose between the plans of Alkibiadês and Nikias, gave his support to that of the former, which was the mean term of the three. There can be no doubt—as far as it is becoming to pronounce respecting that which never reached execution—that the plan of Lamachus was far the best and most judicious; at first sight, indeed, the most daring, but intrinsically the safest, easiest, and speediest, that could be suggested. For undoubtedly the siege and capture of Syracuse, was the one enterprise indispensable towards the promotion of Athenian views in Sicily. The sooner that was commenced, the more easily it would be accomplished: and its difficulties were in many ways aggravated, in no way abated, by those preliminary precautions upon which Alkibiadês insisted. Anything like delay tended fearfully to impair the efficiency, real as well as reputed, of an ancient aggressive armament, and to animate as well as to strengthen those who stood on the defensive, a point on which we shall find painful evidence presently. The advice of Lamachus, alike soldier-like and far-sighted, would probably have been approved and executed either by Brasidas or by Demosthenês; while the dilatory policy still advocated by Alkibiadês, even after the suggestion of Lamachus had been started, tends to show that if he was superior in military energy to one of his colleagues, he was not less inferior to the other. Indeed, when we find him talking of besieging Syracuse, _unless_ the Syracusans would consent to the reëstablishment of Leontini, it seems probable that he had not yet made up his mind peremptorily to besiege the city at all; a fact completely at variance with those unbounded hopes of conquest which he is reported as having conceived even at Athens. It is possible that he may have thought it impolitic to contradict too abruptly the tendencies of Nikias, who, anxious as he was chiefly to find some pretext for carrying back his troops unharmed, might account the proposition of Lamachus too desperate even to be discussed. Unfortunately, the latter, though the ablest soldier of the three, was a poor man, of no political position, and little influence among the hoplites. Had he possessed, along with his own straightforward military energy, the wealth and family ascendency of either of his colleagues, the achievements as well as the fate of this splendid armament would have been entirely altered, and the Athenians would have entered Syracuse not as prisoners but as conquerors.