Summer [VI 8–62]

Next summer, in the early spring, the Athenian envoys returned from Sicily, accompanied by the Egestans who brought with them sixty talents of uncoined silver as a month's pay for a fleet of sixty ships, which is what they were about to ask the Athenians to send. The Athenians held an assembly and listened to the Egestan envoys and their own telling them various things that were both enticing and untrue, in particular that there was plenty of money available in the temples and the public treasury. They accordingly voted to send sixty ships to Sicily and appointed as generals, with full powers of decision, Alcibiades son of Cleinias, Nicias son of Niceratus and Lamachus son of Xenophanes. These were to support the Egestans against the Selinuntians and to join in restoring the Leontines to their city if the progress of the war allowed it, and in general to take whatever actions in Sicily they judged to be in the best interests of the Athenians.

Four days after this there was another assembly to discuss what provision was needed to equip the ships with all speed and to vote anything else the generals might need for the expedition. Nicias had been elected to the command against his wishes, and he thought that the city had reached the wrong decision and was harbouring ambitions for Sicily as a whole, a huge undertaking but one conceived on the basis of slight and specious considerations. He therefore came forward, hoping to divert them, and advised the Athenians as follows.