ATHENIAN MISSION TO EGKSTA. 14? entertainment, every Egestaean host exhibited all this large stock of plate as his own property, the same stock being transferred from house to house for the occasion. A false appearance was thus created, of the large number of wealthy men in EgestiE ; and the Albanian seamen, while their hearts were won by the caresses, saw with amazement this prodigious display of gold and sil- er, and were thoroughly duped by the fraud. 1 To complete the illusion, by resting it on a basis of reality and prompt pay- ment, sixty talents of uncoined silver were at once produced as ready for the operations of war. With this sum in hand, the Athenian commissioners, after finishing their examination, and the Egestoean envoys also, returned to Athens, which they reached in the spring of 415 is.c., 2 about three months after the capture of Melos. The Athenian assembly being presently convened to hear their report, the deluded commissioners drew a magnificent picture of the wealth, public and private, which they had actually seen and touched at Egesta, and presented the sixty talents one month's pay for a fleet of sixty triremes as a small instalment out of the vast stock remaining behind. While they thus officially cer tiffed the capacity of the Egestreans to perform their promise of defraying the cost of the war, the seamen of their trireme, addressing the assembly in their character of citizens, beyond all suspicion of being bribed, overflowing with sympathy for the town in which they had just been so cordially welcomed, and full of wonder at the display of wealth which they had witnessed, would probably contribute still more effectually to kindle the sympathies of their countrymen. Accordingly, when the Eges ' Thucyd. vi, 46; Diodor. xii, 83.
- To this winter or spring, perhaps, we may refer the representation ol
,he lost comedy Tpi<j>u?,r)f of Aristophanes. Iberians were alluded to in it. x> be introduced by Aristarchus ; seemingly, Iberian mercenaries, who were among the auxiliaries talked of at this time by Alkibiades and the other prominent advisers of the expedition, as a means of conquest in Sicily (Thucyd. vi, 90). The word Tp^aA??^ was a nickname (not difficult to understand) applied to Alkibiades, who was just now at the height of his importance, and therefore likely enough to be chosen as the butt of a come- dy. See the few fragments remaining of the Tpi<j>u?*tif, in Meineke,
Comic. Gr. vol. ii. pp. 1 162-1 1G7.
