herodotus

made these offers, and the envoy of the Athenians, answering beforethat of the Lacedemonians, replied to him as follows: "O king of theSyracusans, it was not of a leader that Hellas was in want when itsent us to thee, but of an army. Thou however dost not set before usthe hope that thou wilt send an army, except thou have the leadershipof Hellas; and thou art striving how thou mayest become commander ofthe armies of Hellas. So long then as it was thy demand to be leaderof the whole army of the Hellenes, it was sufficient for us Atheniansto keep silence, knowing that the Lacedemonian would be able to makedefence even for us both; but now, since being repulsed from thedemand for the whole thou art requesting to be commander of the navalforce, we tell that thus it is:--not even if the Lacedemonian shallpermit thee to be commander of it, will we permit thee; for this atleast is our own, if the Lacedemonians do not themselves desire tohave it. With these, if they desire to be the leaders, we do notcontend; but none others beside ourselves shall we permit to be incommand of the ships: for then to no purpose should we be possessorsof a sea-force larger than any other which belongs to the Hellenes,if, being Athenians, we should yield the leadership to Syracusans, wewho boast of a race which is the most ancient of all and who are ofall the Hellenes the only people who have not changed from one land toanother; to whom also belonged a man whom Homer the Epic poet said wasthe best of all who came to Ilion in drawing up an army and setting itin array.[151] Thus we are not justly to be reproached if we say thesethings." 162. To this Gelon made answer thus: "Stranger of Athens, itwould seem that ye have the commanders, but that ye will not have themen to be commanded. Since then ye will not at all give way, butdesire to have the whole, it were well that ye should depart home asquickly as possible and report to the Hellenes that the spring hasbeen taken out of their year." Now this is the meaning of the saying:--evidently the spring is the noblest part of the year; and so hemeant to say that his army was the noblest part of the army of theHellenes: for Hellas therefore, deprived of his alliance, it was, hesaid, as if the spring had been taken out of the year.[152]163. The envoys of the Hellenes, having thus had conference withGelon, sailed away; and Gelon upon this, fearing on the one hand aboutthe Hellenes, lest they should not be able to overcome the Barbarian,and on the other hand considering it monstrous and not to be enduredthat he should come to Peloponnesus and be under the command of theLacedemonians, seeing that he was despot of Sicily, gave up thethought of this way and followed another: for so soon as he wasinformed that the Persian had crossed over the Hellespont, he sentCadmos the son of Skythes, a man of Cos, with three fifty-oaredgalleys to Delphi, bearing large sums of money and friendly proposals,to wait there and see how the battle would fall out: and if the