Rally of Athens, during the year after the defeat at Syracuse. b.c. 412.

About a year elapsed between the catastrophe of the Athenians near Syracuse and the victory which they gained over the Milêsians, on landing near Milêtus (from September 413 b.c., to September 412 b.c.). After the first of those two events, the complete ruin of Athens had appeared both to her enemies and to herself, impending and irreparable. But so astonishing, so rapid, and so energetic, had been her rally, that at the time of the second, she was found again carrying on a tolerable struggle, though with impaired resources and on a purely defensive system, against enemies both bolder and more numerous than ever. Nor is there any reason to doubt that her foreign affairs might have gone on thus improving, had they not been endangered at thiscritical moment by the treason of a fraction of her own citizens—bringing her again to the brink of ruin, from which she was only rescued by the incompetence of her enemies.

Commencement of the conspiracy of the Four Hundred at Athens—Alkibiadês.

That treason took its first rise from the exile Alkibiadês. I have already recounted how this man, alike unprincipled and energetic, had thrown himself with his characteristic ardour into the service of Sparta, and had indicated to her the best means of aiding Syracuse, of inflicting positive injury upon Athens, and lastly, of provoking revolt among the Ionic allies of the latter.