espouse their cause, and send a fleet to Sicily in 416 BC. It is said that this result was in part attained by fraud, the Segestans having deceived the Athenian envoys by a fallacious display of wealth, and led them to conceive a greatly exaggerated notion of their resources. They, however, actually furnished 60 talents in ready money, and 30 more after the arrival of the Athenian armament. But though the relief of Segesta was thus the original object of the great Athenian expedition to Sicily (415-413 BC), that city bears little part in the subsequent operations of the war. Nicias, indeed, on arriving in the island, proposed to proceed at once to Selinus, and compel that people to submission by the display of their formidable armament. But this advice was overruled: the Athenians turned their arms against Syracuse, and the contest between Segesta and Selinus was almost forgotten in the more important struggle between those two great powers. In the summer of 415 BC an Athenian fleet, proceeding along the coast, took the small town of Hyccara, on the coast, near Segesta, and made it over to the Segestans. The latter people are again mentioned on more than one occasion as sending auxiliary troops to assist their Athenian allies; but no other notice occurs of them. The final defeat of the Athenians left the Segestans again exposed to the attacks of their neighbors, the Selinuntines. Feeling themselves unable to cope with them, they again had recourse to the Carthaginians, who determined to espouse their cause, and sent them, in the first instance, an auxiliary force of 5000 Africans and 800 Campanian mercenaries, which sufficed to ensure them a victory over their rivals in 410 BC. This was followed the next year by a vast armament under Hannibal Mago, who landed at Lilybaeum, and, proceeding direct to Selinus, took and destroyed that city as well as Himera. The Carthaginian power now became firmly established in the western portion of Sicily. Segesta, surrounded on all sides by this formidable neighbor, naturally fell gradually into the position of a dependent ally of Carthage. It was one of the few cities that remained faithful to this alliance even in 397 BC, when the great expedition of Dionysius I of Syracuse to the West of Sicily and the siege of Motya seemed altogether to shake the power of Carthage. Dionysius in consequence laid siege