Nevertheless it is important to remark, in reference to the general scheme of Athenian operations in Sicily, that if Nikias had adopted the plan originally recommended by Lamachus, or if he had begun his permanent besieging operations against Syracuse in the summer or autumn of 415 B.C., instead of postponing them, as he actually did, to the spring of 414 B.C., he would have found none of these additional defences to contend against, and the line of circumvallation necessary for his purpose would have been shorter and easier. Besides these permanent and irreparable disadvantages, his winter’s inaction at Naxos drew upon him the farther insult, that the Syracusans marched to his former quarters at Katana and burned the tents which they found standing, ravaging at the same time the neighboring fields.[342] [342] Thucyd. vi, 75. Kamarina maintained an equivocal policy which made both parties hope to gain it; and in the course of this winter the Athenian envoy Euphêmus with others was sent thither to propose a renewal of that alliance, between the city and Athens, which had been concluded ten years before. Hermokratês the Syracusan went to counteract his object; and both of them, according to Grecian custom, were admitted to address the public assembly. Hermokratês began by denouncing the views, designs, and past history of Athens. He did not, he said, fear her power, provided the Sicilian cities were united and true to each other: even against Syracuse alone, the hasty retreat of the Athenians after the recent battle had shown how little they confided in their own strength. What he did fear, was, the delusive promises and insinuations of Athens, tending to disunite the island, and to paralyze all joint resistance. Every one knew that her purpose in this expedition was to subjugate all Sicily,—that Leontini and Egesta served merely as convenient pretences to put forward,—and that she could have no sincere sympathy for Chalkidians in Sicily, when she herself held in slavery the Chalkidians in Eubœa. It was, in truth, nothing else but an extension of the same scheme of rapacious ambition, whereby she had reduced her Ionian allies and kinsmen to their present wretched slavery, now threatened against Sicily. The Sicilians could not too speedily show her that they were no Ionians, made to be transferred from one master to another, but autonomous Dorians from the centre of autonomy, Peloponnesus. It would be madness to forfeit this honorable position through jealousy or lukewarmness among themselves. Let not the Kamarinæans imagine that Athens was striking her blow at Syracuse alone: they were themselves next neighbors of Syracuse, and would be the first victims if she were conquered. They might wish, from apprehension or envy, to see the superior power of Syracuse humbled, but this could not happen without endangering their own existence. They ought to do for her what they would have asked her to