Sicilian expedition

It was Nicias, then, who, when an embassy came from Egesta and Leontini seeking to persuade the Athenians to undertake an expedition against Sicily, opposed the measure, only to be defeated by the ambitious purposes of Alcibiades.

I think that Nicias is a suitable parallel to Crassus, and the Sicilian to the Parthian disaster.

Meton made no pretence of madness, but burned his house down in the night, and then came forward publicly in great dejection and begged his fellow citizens, in view of the great calamity which had befallen him, to release from the expedition his son, who was about to sail for Sicily in command of a trireme.

And Nicias, the son of Niceratus, because he was trusted by the citizens, though he knew what the expedition to Sicily would be, both from the god and from his own reasoning, was nevertheless compelled to go on the campaign, sick as he was, on account of this trust.

in the Decelean War they lost ten thousand heavy armed troops of their own and of their allies, and in Sicily forty thousand men and two hundred and forty ships, and, finally, in the Hellespont two hundred ships.

For they reached such a degree of neglect of their own possessions and of covetousness of the possessions of other states that when the Lacedaemonians had invaded our territory and the fortifications at Decelea had already been built, they manned triremes to send to Sicily and were not ashamed to permit their own country to be cut off and plundered by the enemy while dispatching an expedition agai …

Nay, they arrived at such a pitch of folly that at a time when they were not masters of their own suburbs they expected to extend their power over Italy and Sicily and Carthage.

And moreover, in regard to the Sicilian business, many will tell you what I said about the destruction of the army.

THE same winter the Athenians wished to sail again to Sicily, with a larger armament than that under Laches and Eurymedon, and bring it into subjection to them, if they could;

they voted to send sixty ships, with Alcibiades son of Clinias, Nicias son of Niceratus, and Lamachus son of Xenophanes, as commanders, with full powers, to assist the Segestans against the Selinuntines, and to join in re-founding Leontini, should they gain any advantage in the war, and to carry out all other measures in Sicily, as they should deem best for the Athenians.

The following summer, as soon as the spring commenced, the ambassadors of the Athenians came from Sicily, and the Segestans with them, bringing sixty talents of uncoined silver, as a month's pay for sixty ships which they were to beg them to send.