The risk of attack from
the Peloponnesians would not be increased by sending part of the
Athenian fleet to Sicily: for Attica was in any case always exposed to
invasion, and a sufficient force of ships would be left at home to
keep command of the sea.
"We have no excuse, then," said Alcibiades in conclusion, "for
breaking our word to the Egestaeans, and drawing back from this
enterprise. Both honour and policy are pointing the way to Sicily. An
empire like ours is an ever-expanding circle, which lives by growing,
and cannot stand still. It is only by getting more, and always more,
that we can keep what we have. And let not Nicias succeed in his
attempt to set the old against the young, neither let us believe, like
him, that the stability of a state consists in stagnation. It is only
by a hearty co-operation of all ages and classes that any state can
prosper, and a community which finds no outlet for its energies abroad
is soon worn out by discord and faction at home. Above all is this
true of us Athenians, to whom ceaseless toil and endeavour is the very
element in which we live."
The advice of Alcibiades, thus tendered in the garb of political
wisdom, was of fatal and ruinous tendency, and in direct opposition to
the oft-repeated warnings of Pericles.
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