Thucydidês appears to have in view the violent party contests which broke out in reference to the Hermæ and the other irreligious acts at Athens, after the departure of the armament, especially to the mischief of recalling Alkibiadês, which grew out of those contests. He does not allude to the withholding of supplies from the armament; nor was it the purpose of any of the parties at Athens to withhold them. The party acrimony was directed against Alkibiadês exclusively, not against the expedition. Next, as to the main allegation in Dr. Arnold’s note, that _one of the causes_ of the failure of the Athenian expedition in Sicily, was, that it was “insufficiently supplied by Athens.” Of the two passages to which he refers in Thucydidês (vi, 31; vii, 42), the first distinctly contradicts this allegation, by setting forth the prodigious amount of force sent; the second says nothing about it, and indirectly discountenances it, by dwelling upon the glaring blunders of Nikias. After the Athenians had allowed Nikias in the spring to name and collect the force which he thought requisite, how could they expect to receive a demand for farther reinforcements in the autumn, the army having really done nothing? Nevertheless, the supplies _were sent_, as soon as they could be, and as soon as Nikias expected them. If the whole winter was lost, that was not the fault of the Athenians. Still harder is it in Dr. Arnold, to say, “that the armament _was allowed_ to be reduced to great distress and weakness before the second expedition was sent to reinforce it.” The second expedition was sent the moment that Nikias made known his distress and asked for it; his intimation of distress coming quite suddenly, almost immediately after most successful appearances. It appears to me that nothing can be more incorrect or inconsistent with the whole tenor of the narrative of Thucydidês, than to charge the Athenians with having starved their expedition. What they are really chargeable with, is, the having devoted to it a disproportionate fraction of their entire strength, perfectly enormous and ruinous. And so Thucydidês plainly conceives it, when he is describing both the armament of Nikias and that of Demosthenês.