of safe retreat for the half-ruined Athenian army in Sicily, and refusing even to allow the proposition to be debated, in consequence of an eclipse of the moon; and when we reflect that Greeks frequently renounced public designs if an earthquake happened before the execution. But tho the chance of setting aside the expedition altogether might reasonably enter into the plans of the conspirators, as a likely consequence of the intense shock inflicted on the religious mind of Athens, and especially of Nicias--this calculation was not realized. Probably matters had already proceeded too far even for Nicias to recede. Notice had been sent around to all the allies; forces were already on their way to the rendezvous at Corcyra; at Argeian and Mantineian allies were arriving at Piraeus to embark. So much the more eagerly did the conspirators proceed in that which I have stated as the other part of their probable plan; to work that exaggerated religious terror, which they had themselves artificially brought about, for the ruin of Alcibiades. Few men in Athens either had, or deserved to have, a greater number of enemies, political as well as private, than Alcibiades; many of them being among the highest citizens, whom he offended by his insolence, and whose liturgies and other customary exhibitions he outshone by his reckless expenditure. His importance had been already so much increased, and threatened to be so much more increased, by the Sicilian enterprise, that they no longer observed any measures in compassing his ruin. That which the mutilators of the Hermae seemed to have deliberately planned his other enemies were ready to turn to profit. II IF ALEXANDER HAD LIVED[43] The death of Alexander, thus suddenly cut off by a fever in the plenitude of health, vigor, and aspirations, was an event impressive as well as important in the highest possible degree, to his contemporaries far and near. When the first report of it was brought to Athens, the orator Demades exclaimed, "It can not be true: if Alexander were dead, the whole habitable world would have smelt of his carcass." This coarse, but emphatic comparison, illustrates the immediate, powerful, and wide-reaching impression produced by the sudden extinction of the great conqueror. It was felt by each of the many remote envoys who had so recently come to propitiate this far-shooting Apollo--by every man among the nations who had sent these envoys--throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, as then known--to affect either his actual condition or his probable future.