| #### CHAPTER 161 |

| #### #### Hereat broke in the Athenian envoy, before the Spartan could answer, and thus addressed Gelo - #### "King of the Syracusans! Greece sent us here to thee to ask for an army, and not to ask for a general. Thou, however, dost not promise to send us any army at all, if thou art not made leader of the Greeks; and this command is what alone thou sticklest for. Now when thy request was to have the whole command, we were content to keep silence; for well we knew that we might trust the Spartan envoy to make answer for us both. But since, after failing in thy claim to lead the whole armament, thou hast now put forward a request to have the command of the fleet, know that, even should the Spartan envoy consent to this, we will not consent. The command by sea, if the Lacedaemonians do not wish for it, belongs to us. While they like to keep this command, we shall raise no dispute; but we will not yield our right to it in favour of any one else. Where would be the advantage of our having raised up a naval force greater than that of any other Greek people, if nevertheless we should suffer Syracusans to take the command away from us? - from us, I say, who are Athenians, the most ancient nation in Greece, the only Greeks who have never changed their abode - the people who are said by the poet Homer to have sent to Troy the man best able of all the Greeks to array and marshal an army - so that we may be allowed to boast somewhat." ####  |