118 HISTORY OF GREECE contrasts and juxtapositions, especially that of ruinous reverse following upon overweening good fortune, were highly interest- ing to the Greek mind. And Thucydides having before him an act of great injustice and cruelty on the part of Athens, com- mitted exactly at this point of time has availed himself of the form of dialogue, for once in his history, to bring out the senti- ments of a disdainful and confident conqueror in dramatic antithesis. They are, however, his own sentiments, conceived as suitable to the situation ; not those of the Athenian envoy, still less, those 'of the Athenian public, least of all, those of that much-calumniated class of men, the Athenian sophists. CHAPTER LVII. SICILIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE EXTINCTION OF THE GELONIAN DYNASTY. IN the preceding chapters, I have brought down the general history of the Peloponnesian war to the time immediately preced- ing the memorable Athenian expedition against Syracuse, which changed the whole face of the war. At this period, and for some time to come, the history of the Peloponnesian Greeks becomes intimately blended with that of the Sicilian Greeks. But hith- erto the connection between the two has been merely occasional, and of little reciprocal effect : so that I have thought it for the convenience of the reader to keep the two streams entirely separate, omitting the proceedings of Athens in Sicily during the first ten years of the war. I now proceed to fill up this blank : to recount as much as can be made out of Sicilian events during the interval between 461-41G B.C., and to assign the successive steps whereby the Athenians entangled themselves in ambitiocs projects against Syracuse, until they at length came to stake the
larger portion of their force upon that fatal hazard.
