The seventeenth year of this memorable war is remarkable for that fatal expedition against Sicily, which gave a mortal blow to the Athenian grandeur, and affords a signal instance of the terrible consequences of faction. The Egestians, a small state in Sicily, applied to the Athenians for assistance against the oppressions of the Syracusans. Alcibiades, looking upon it as an object worthy of his ambition, undertook the cause of these suppliants, and knew so well how to flatter the vanity of his countrymen, that a large armament was decreed by the people for that purpose, and Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus, a daring but able officer, were elected generals.[80] Nicias was the only person who had the honesty or courage to oppose a measure which he judged not only rash, but to the last degree impolitick; but the Athenians were deaf to all his remonstrances. The relief of the Egestians was only the pretext; for the entire dominion of Sicily, as Thucydides assures us, was the real object they had in view when they gave orders for that powerful armament.[81] Alcibiades had promised them an easy conquest of that island, which he looked upon only as a prelude to much greater enterprises; and the besotted people had already swallowed up Italy, Carthage, and Africa in their idle imaginations.[82] Both factions concurred in the vigorous prosecution of this measure, though from very different motives: the friends of Alcibiades, from the view of aggrandizing their chief by that vast accession of wealth and glory which they hoped for from this expedition: his enemies, from the hopes of supplanting him in his absence, and gaining the lead in the administration.[83] Thus the true interest of the state was equally sacrificed to the selfish and private views of each party! But, in the midst of these vast preparations, an odd accident threw the whole city into confusion, and at once alarmed the superstition and jealousy of the people. The terms, or statues of Mercury, were all defaced in one and the same night by some unknown persons; nor could the Athenians ever discover the real authors of this reputed sacrilege.[84] Proclamations were issued with a free pardon, and reward for any of the accomplices who could make a discovery, and the information of strangers and slaves was allowed as legal evidence; but no information could be procured as to the true authors of that particular fact; a circumstance which to me does not appear at all surprising: for it was evidently, in my opinion, a piece of party-craft played off against Alcibiades by the opposite faction, who knew that to attack the established religion, was to touch the master-spring of the passions of their countrymen.[85] Some slaves indeed, and other low persons (suborned, as Plutarch asserts, by Androcles,[86] one of the demagogues) deposed, that long before that, some statues had been mutilated, and the most sacred mysteries of their