Such was the mysterious incident which broke in upon the eager and bustling movement of Athens, a few days before the Sicilian expedition was starting. In reference to that expedition, it was taken to heart as a most depressing omen. It would doubtless have been so interpreted, had it been a mere undesigned accident happening to any venerated religious object--just as we are told that similar misgivings were occasioned by the occurrence, about this same time, of the melancholy festival of the Adonia, wherein the women loudly bewailed the untimely death of Adonis. The mutilation of the Hermae, however, was something much more ominous than the worst accident. It proclaimed itself as the deliberate act of organized conspirators, not inconsiderable in number, whose names and final purpose were indeed unknown, but who had begun by committing sacrilege of a character flagrant and unheard of. For intentional mutilation of a public and sacred statue, where the material afforded no temptation to plunder, is a case to which we know no parallel: much more, mutilation by wholesale--spread by one band and in one night throughout an entire city. Tho neither the parties concerned, nor their purposes, were ever more than partially made out, the concert and conspiracy itself is unquestionable. It seems probable, as far as we can form an opinion, that the conspirators had two objects, perhaps some of them one and some the other:--to ruin Alcibiades[42]--to frustrate or delay the expedition. How they pursued the former purpose, will be presently seen: toward the latter, nothing was ostensibly done, but the position of Teukrus and other metics implicated renders it more likely that they were influenced by sympathies with Corinth and Megara, prompting them to intercept an expedition which was supposed to promise great triumphs to Athens--rather than corrupted by the violent antipathies of intestine politics. Indeed the two objects were intimately connected with each other; for the prosecution of the enterprise, while full of prospective conquest to Athens, was yet more pregnant with future power and wealth to Alcibiades himself. Such chances would disappear if the expedition could be prevented; nor was it at all impossible that the Athenians, under the intense impression of religious terror consequent on the mutilation of the Hermae, might throw up the scheme altogether. Especially Nicias, exquisitely sensitive in his own religious conscience, and never hearty in his wish for going (a fact perfectly known to the enemy), would hasten to consult his prophets, and might reasonably be expected to renew his opposition on the fresh ground offered to him, or at least to claim delay until the offended gods should have been appeased. We may judge how much such a proceeding was in the line of his character and of the Athenian character, when we find him, two years afterward, with the full concurrence of his soldiers, actually sacrificing the last opportunity