ABSTRACT
Thucydides begins his account of the seventh campaigning season of the war, that of 425, with some minor operations in Sicily and Italy. He then records the fifth Peloponnesian invasion of Attica ‘before the corn was ripe’ (i.e. early in May: 4.2.1), and the despatch of forty Athenian ships to Sicily, under Eurymedon and Sophokles, as decided upon the previous year (cf. 3.115.4-5).1 The instructions given to the two stratêgoi were to call in on Kerkyra on their way, since the pro-Athenians were being harassed by the oligarchs on Mount Istone, and sixty Peloponnesian ships had also sailed to help the latter (4.2.3). So far all was normal, but Thucydides adds that Demosthenes, who was a private citizen at the time, was given leave to make use of the ships, if he so desired, ‘around the Peloponnese’ (4.2.4). It was remarkable, even in Athens, for a private citizen to be given such a command, but Demosthenes was probably already stratêgos-elect for 425/4, and, if so, would enter office in the summer.2
