172 HISTORY OF GREECE. religions conscience, and never hearty in his wish for going, a fact perfectly known to the enemy, 1 would hasten to consult his prophets, and might reasonably be expected to renew his opposi- tion 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 charac- ter, and of the Athenian character, when we find him, two years afterwards, with the full concurrence of his soldiers, actually sacrificing the last opportunity of safe retreat for the half-ruined Athenian army in Sicily, and refusing even to allow the proposi- tion to be debated, in consequence of an eclipse of the moon ; and when we reflect that Spartans and other Greeks frequently renounced public designs if an earthquake happened before the execution. 2 But though 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 inind of Athens, and especially of Nikias, this calculation was not realized. Probably matters had already proceeded too far even for Nikias to recede. Notice had been sent round to all the allies ; forces were already on their way to the rendezvous at Korkyra ; the Argeian and Mantineian allies were arriving at Peirteus to embark. So much the more eagerly did the conspir- ators proceed in the other part of their plan, to work that exag- gerated religious terror, which they had themselves artificially brought about, for the ruin of Alkibiades. Few men in Athens either had or deserved to have a greater number of enemies, political as well as private, than Alkibiades ; many of them being among the highest citizens, whom he offended by his insolence, and whose liturgies and other customary exhi- bitions 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 Herman seem to have deliberately planned, his other enemies were ready to turn to profit. 1 Tliucyd. vi. 34.
' See Tlmcyd. v, 45 * 50 ; viii. 5. Xenojihon, Hellen. iv. 7, 4.
