They regarded Sicily not so much as a prize to be won, but as a stepping-stone to greater conquests, meaning from it to attack Carthage, and make themselves masters of the Mediterranean sea as far as the Columns of Herakles.  Public opinion being thus biassed, Nikias could find few to help him in opposing the scheme.  The rich feared lest they should be thought to wish to avoid the burden of fitting out ships and the other expensive duties which they would be called upon to fulfil, and disappointed him by remaining silent.  Yet Nikias did not relax his exertions, but even after the Athenian people had given their vote for the war, and had elected him to the chief command, with Alkibiades and Lamachus for his colleagues—­even then, on the next meeting of the assembly, he made a solemn appeal to them to desist, and at last accused Alkibiades of involving the city in a terrible war in a remote country merely to serve his own ambition and rapacity.  However, he gained nothing by this speech, for the Athenians thought that he would be the best man to command the expedition because of his experience in war, and that his caution would serve as a salutary check upon the rashness of Alkibiades and the easy temper of Lamachus; so that, instead of dissuading them his words rather confirmed them in their intention.  For Demostratus, who of all the popular orators was the most eager promoter of the expedition, rose, and said that he would put an end to these excuses of Nikias:  and he prevailed upon the people to pass a decree that the generals, both at home and in the field, should be invested with absolute irresponsible power.

XIII.  Yet it is said that the expedition met with great opposition from the priests; but Alkibiades found certain soothsayers devoted to his own interests, and quoted an ancient oracle which foretold that the Athenians should one day win great glory in Sicily.  Special messengers also came from the shrine of Ammon,[1] bringing an oracular response to the effect that the Athenians would take all the Syracusans.  Those oracles which made against the project, people dared not mention, for fear of saying words of ill-omen.  Yet even the most obvious portents would not turn them from their purpose, such as the mutilation of all the Hermae, or statues of Hermes, in Athens, in a single night, except only one, which is called the Hermes of Andokides, which was erected by the tribe AEgeis, and stands before the house in which Andokides lived at that time.  A man likewise leaped upon the altar of the Twelve Gods, sat astride upon it, and in that posture mutilated himself with a sharp stone.  At Delphi too there is a golden statue of Pallas Athene standing upon a brazen palm tree, an offering made by the city of Athens from the spoils taken in the Persian war.  This was for many days pecked at by crows, who at last pecked off and cast upon the ground the golden fruit of the palm tree.  This was said to be merely a fable invented by the