Nelson's history of the war. Vol. XI., The struggle for the Dvina, and the great invasion of Serbia

36 HISTORY OF THE WAR.

one result of the strife between Europe and Asia at the sea-gates of the Marmora.

But if the story of Herodotus offered a good

omen for the Gallipoli adventure of the Allies in 1915, there was another tale of an overseas expedition told by a greater historian which could not but recur to men’s minds. Sixty-two years after Xanthippus took Sestos, Nicias the Athenian led a mighty expedition to the siege of Syracuse. It was largely inspired by Alcibiades, a brilliant but erratic politician. It was conducted by the chief naval Power of the day and the chief protagonist of democracy. Its ablest soldier, Lamachus, found his plans overridden by instructions from home. The Syracusans had formidable defences, but they must have fallen, had they not been aided by Sparta, then the chief Power by land and the exponent of oligarchical government. On the part of Athens it was an amphibious expedition, involving a landing of an expeditionary force in co-operation with a great fleet. At first various small victories were gained, but soon the besiegers became the besieged, and the campaign dragged aimlessly on till that tragic autumn when Nicias and Demosthenes laid down their arms and the flower of the youth of Athens perished in the quarries. This, wrote Thucydides, was the greatest disaster that ever befell a Greek army. 2 For being altogether vanquished at all points, and having suffered in great degree every affliction, they were destroyed, as the saying is, with utter destruction, both army and navy and everything ; and only a few out of many returned home.”

The Syracusan expedition was the death-blow of the Athenian Empire. It was easy to make of