A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

Ruin 223
tolerable; and they were at the same time afflicted by
hunger and thirst. During eight months they were allowed
only about half a pint of water and a pint of food a
day. Every kind of misery which could befall man in
such a place befell them. This was the condition of all
the captives for about ten weeks. At length the Syracusans
sold them, with the exception of the Athenians and
of any Sicilians or Italian Greeks who had sided with them
in the war. The whole number of the public prisoners is
not accurately known, but they were not less than seven
thousand.
Of all the Hellenic actions which took place in this war,
or indeed of all the Hellenic actions which are on record
this was the greatest—the most glorious to the victors,
the most ruinous to the vanquished; for they were utterly
and at all points defeated, and their sufferings were prodigious.
Fleet and army perished from the face of the
earth; nothing was saved and of the many who went
forth, few returned.
Thus ended the Sicilian expedition.
III.
Alcibiades
The pedigree of Alcibiades is said to begin with Eury- Family and
saces the son of Ajax, while on the mother's side he descended
from Alcmeon, being the son of Deinomache, the
daughter of Megacles.
His father Cleinias fought bravely
at Artemisium in a trireme fitted out at his own expense.
. . , ,
and subsequently fell fighting the Boeotians, m the battle
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Ancient
, World, 224.
of Coronea. Alcibiades was afterward intrusted to Pericles On Artemi-
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Slum; Ancient
and Ariphron, the two sons of Xanthippus, who acted as Worid, 173 f-
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his guardians because they were the next ot kin. . . . As coronea was
to the beauty of Alcibiades it is not necessary to say ^^^^^^^"^
anything except that it was equally fascinating when he