in addition to the original delay, partly from the bad weather, the duty remained unexecuted, and the seamen on board the damaged ships were left to perish unassisted. [278] The total number of ships lost with all their crews was twenty-five, of which the aggregate crews, speaking in round numbers, would be five thousand men. Now we may fairly calculate that each one of the disabled ships would have on board half her crew, or one hundred men, after the action; not more than half would have been slain or drowned in the combat. Even ten disabled ships would thus contain one thousand living men, wounded and unwounded. It will be seen, therefore, that I have understated the number of lives in danger. [279] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 6, 33. [280] We read in Thucydidês (vii, 73) how impossible it was to prevail on the Syracusans to make any military movement after their last maritime victory in the Great Harbor, when they were full of triumph, felicitation, and enjoyment. They had visited the wrecks and picked up both the living men on board and the floating bodies _before_ they went ashore. It is remarkable that the Athenians on that occasion were so completely overpowered by the immensity of their disaster, that they never even thought of asking permission, always granted by the victors when asked, to pick up their dead or visit their wrecks (viii, 72). But presently arose the delicate, yet unavoidable question, “How are we to account for the omission of this sacred duty, in our official despatch to the Athenian people?” Here the generals differed among themselves, as Euryptolemus expressly states: Periklês and Diomedon carried it, against the judgment of their colleagues, that in the official despatch, which was necessarily such as could be agreed to by all, nothing should be said about the delegation to Theramenês and others; the whole omission being referred to the terrors of the storm. But though such was the tenor of the official report, there was nothing to hinder the generals from writing home and communicating individually with their friends in Athens as each might think fit; and in these unofficial communications, from them as well as from others who went home from the armament,—communications not less efficacious than the official despatch, in determining the tone of public feeling at Athens,—they did not disguise their convictions that the blame of not performing the duty belonged to Theramenês. Having thus a man like Theramenês to throw the blame upon, they did not take pains to keep up the story of the intolerable storm, but intimated that there had been nothing to hinder _him_ from performing the duty if he had chosen. It is this which he accuses them of having advanced against him, so as to place him as the guilty man before the Athenian public: it was this which made him, in retaliation and self-defence, violent and unscrupulous in denouncing them as the