The Melians, however, refused, and gave the Athenians a good deal of trouble before they could be subdued, when the adult male population was put to death, and the women and children enslaved.  At this time the Athenians resolved, under colour of an appeal for assistance from the Sicilian city of Egesta, deliberately to set about the establishment of their empire in Sicily.  The aggressive policy was vehemently advocated by Alcibiades, and opposed by Nicias.  Nevertheless, he, with Alcibiades and Lamachus, was appointed to command the expedition, which was prepared on a scale of unparalleled magnificence.  It was on the point of starting, when the whole city was stirred to frenzy by the midnight mutilation of the sacred images called Hermae, an act laid at the door of Alcibiades, along with many other charges of profane outrages.  Of set purpose, however, the enemies of Alcibiades refused to bring him to trial.  The expedition sailed.  The Syracusans were deaf to the warnings of Hermocrates until the great fleet had actually arrived at Rhegium.

Nicias was now anxious to find an excuse, in the evident falsity of statements made by the Egestans, for the fleet to content itself with making a demonstration and then returning home.  The scheme of Alcibiades, however, was adopted for gaining over the other Sicilian states in order to crush Syracuse.  But at this moment dispatches arrived requiring the return of Alcibiades to stand trial.  Athens was in a panic over the Hermae affair, which was supposed to portend an attempt to reestablish the despotism which had been ended a hundred years before by the expulsion of the Pisistratidae.  Alcibiades, however, made his escape, and for years pursued a life of political intrigue against the Athenian government.

Nicias and Lamachus, left in joint command, drew off the Syracusan forces by a ruse, and were thus enabled to occupy unchecked a strong position before Syracuse.  Although, however, they inflicted a defeat on the returned Syracusan forces, they withdrew into winter quarters; the Syracusans were roused by Hermocrates to improve their military organisation; and both sides entered on a diplomatic contest for winning over the other states of Sicily.  Alcibiades, now an avowed enemy of Athens, was received by the Lacedaemonians, whom he induced to send an able Spartan officer, Gylippus, to Syracuse, and to determine on the establishment of a military post corresponding to that of Pylos on Attic soil at Decelea.

IV.—­The Disaster of Syracuse

In the spring the Athenians succeeded in establishing themselves on the heights called Epipolae, overlooking Syracuse, began raising a wall of circumvallation, and carried by a surprise the counter-stockade which the Syracusans were raising.  In one of the skirmishes, while the building of the wall was in progress, Lamachus was killed; otherwise matters went well for the Athenians and ill for the Syracusans, till Gylippus was allowed