Besides, the affairs of the enemy, from such information as he had beyond the rest, still afforded some hope that they would turn out to be worse than their own, if they persisted in the siege; for they would wear the enemy out by cutting off his supplies, especially since now with their present fleet they were to a greater extent than before the masters of the sea. And, in fact, there was a party in Syracuse that favoured submitting to the Athenians, and it was secretly sending proposals to him and urging him not to withdraw. Having knowledge of these things, although in reality he still wavered between the two alternatives and kept pondering them, yet in the speech which he openly made at that time he refused to lead the army away.
For he knew well, he said, that the Athenians would not approve of the generals withdrawing without any vote of their own to that effect. ForThe mental thought to be supplied is: “And it would involve them in personal danger if they did, for . . . .” those who would vote on their case would not be men who would form their judgments from seeing the facts with their own eyes, as they themselves had seen them, and not from listening to the harsh criticisms of others; on the contrary, whatever calumnies any clever speaker might utter, by these the Athenians would be persuaded.